MOSCOW -- Mikhail Kalashnikov was a tiny man with a giant name. His eyes were impish, his voice surprisingly squeaky, and the giant general’s hat he wore made him seem even more pixie-like than he was.
By conservative estimates, at least 70 million versions of his famous AK-47 assault rifle have been produced over the last 60 years, accounting for millions of deaths. Yet he always insisted that his invention helped defend his Motherland. “I sleep soundly at night,” he used to tell journalists with a smile.
Until his death on Monday, aged 94, Kalashnikov was one of the most famous living human beings. Billions knew his name, across the world and across generations, and his rifle became emblematic of revolution -- and, later, of civil war and terrorism.
I met him at the celebrations of his 80th birthday in Izhevsk, the home of the original Kalashnikov factory. The old man’s chest was festooned with a full house of Soviet and Russian medals – including two Heroes of the Soviet Union and the Stalin Prize – and he wasn’t shy in his praise of Stalin or in his regret at the fall of the Soviet Union.
Back in the pre-Putin Russia of 1999, that kind of patriotic fervour was less fashionable than it has become today. But Kalashnikov had at least won the right to bang on about the greatness of the USSR with his own blood – it was as he lay in hospital after being wounded at the battle of Bryansk in 1941 that he came up with his great idea for a sturdy, simple assault rifle that could rival the German Schmeisser MP-40.
Kalashnikov called his weapon “a symbol of the creative genius of the Russian people,” and indeed there is something very Russian about the weapon he created. It’s extremely simple – it has only eight moving parts – very reliable and easy to use, and very sturdy.
It’s no coincidence that, alongside the Kalashnikov, some of the most durable technologies still in use, from the 1958 Mi-8 helicopter to the 1965 Proton rocket, are Soviet inventions. Just like Kalashnikov himself, the rifle was simple, tough, and built to last.
The original IzhMash plant is still in full swing today, producing over 50 different variants of the famous original AK-47, including a fully automatic shotgun version that does impressive damage at short range. But because the Soviet Union was generous with its technology – especially technology which could kill capitalists and their running-dog allies – most of the Kalashnikovs produced around the world have been bootleg versions.
Descendants of the original 1947 AK-47 are used by the armed forces of 106 countries. And in the mid-2000s the average global price was just $538, delivering unbeatable firepower per buck.
Journalists aren’t meant to handle weapons. But I did, now and again, usually to be sure not to offend my gun-proud hosts. There was a rebel commander in Chechnya who was very keen to show off his trainee’s marksmanship and contrast it to the useless shooting of visiting journalists – though my companion, C.J Chivers of the New York Times, turned out to be a former Marine and drilled the target perfectly with a small-bore AK-74.
Another commander in Afghanistan, his eyes bloodshot from hashish, insisted on showing us how beautifully the tracer bullets from a PK – a longer, belt-fed version of the AK-47 – sailed down a valley towards Taliban positions. “Taleb, Taleb,” he slurred into his radio. “Time for fireworks.” And indeed the phosphorous-nosed rounds did look rather beautiful, tracing white and green arcs through the blackness of the Afghan night.
It is perhaps sadly fitting that one of the world’s most famous names is also responsible for the most human deaths. Of course, African guerillas or Syrian militiamen would have found other ways to butcher their enemies without Mikhail Kalashnikov’s help. But like all the world’s greatest innovators, from Henry Ford to Steve Jobs, he simplified and he streamlined.
Kalashnikov did not invent killing, but he made it more efficient and accessible. It’s hard to salute Kalashnikov’s bloody legacy today. But at least his motives were pure: to rid the world of fascism -- and protect his homeland.