Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov was the 17th of 19 children and, as a boy, he dreamed of becoming a poet. Fate had other things in mind for the talented mechanic, as his surname suggests. He would go on to create the single most popular weapon in human history, the AK-47 - Avtomat Kalashnikova, Russian for automatic Kalashnikov of 1947. Even though Kalashnikov felt regret at the ubiquity of his creation, he took pride in its reputation for reliability, emphasizing his rifle was "a weapon of defense" and "not a weapon for offense". (Curiously, Dr Richard J Gatling believed his early machine gun would reduce battlefield deaths because soldiers would be too afraid to fight.) It’s difficult to grasp the enormity of the Russian gun’s popularity as the following demonstrates.
Approximately 100 million AK-47 assault rifles had been produced by 2009 and about half of them are counterfeit, manufactured at a rate of about a million per year, according to estimates.
Because the weapon symbolizes rebellion, it appears on the flag of Mozambique and on the coats of arms of several developing nations. It also appears on the flag of Hezbollah, the Shi’a political and military organization, to demonstrate armed struggle against oppressive forces.
Kalashnikov insisted he was only motivated by service to his country, but he did own 30% of a German company, Marken Marketing International (MMI), still run by his grandson, Igor, which produces merchandise carrying the Kalashnikov brand - such as vodka, umbrellas and knives.
The inventor was haunted by the massive global bloodshed he was responsible for, so six months before his death, he wrote to the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, to ask, "I keep having the same unsolved question: if my rifle claimed people's lives, then can it be that I... a Christian and an Orthodox believer, was to blame for their deaths?" The Patriarch assured the dying man he was headed for Heaven.
When Kalashnikov died on this date in 2013, his net worth was estimated at US$1.5 million.
Does the saying "Do not blame the shoe if you don't like the dance" apply here? Or the quote of the Amish grandfather to his grandson in "Witness" "A gun is a machine made for one purpose: to kill"?
Speaking of firearms, I never knew until a couple of weeks ago, that Karl Marx's sister Onya, invented the starting pistol.