Kalashnikov, designer of the AK-47, dies at 94

Kalashnikov is shown in this 2006 file picture posing with the latest model of his rifle during a news conference in Moscow.

Reuters/AFP/Moscow

Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of the assault rifle that has killed more people than any other firearm in the world, died yesterday aged 94, Russian officials said.

Kalashnikov, who was in his 20s when he created the AK-47 just after World War II, died in his home city of Izhevsk near the Ural Mountains, where his gun is still made, a spokesman for the Udmurtia province’s president said on state television.

“He died about one-and-a-half hours ago,” Viktor Chulkov, the spokesman for the Udmurtia leader Alexander Volkov, said.

The spokesman did not give the cause of death.

Kalashnikov was fitted with an electric heartbeat stimulator at a Moscow hospital in June and had been in hospital in Izhevsk since November 17, state media reported.

The AK-47, which rarely jams even in adverse conditions, went into service in the Soviet armed forces in 1949.

Today, Kalashnikov rifles are still a mainstay of Russia’s armed forces and police.

At a lavish Kremlin ceremony on Kalashnikov’s 90th birthday, then-president Dmitry Medvedev bestowed on him the highest state honour – the Hero of Russia gold star medal – and lauded him for creating “the national brand every Russian is proud of”.

Kalashnikov, a son of Siberian peasants who never finished school, said that pride in his iconic invention was mixed with the pain of seeing it used by criminals and child soldiers.

Lavished with honours for designing the iconic rifle, Kalashnikov has said he had never intended for it to become the preferred weapon in conflicts around the world.

“I created a weapon to defend the fatherland’s borders. It’s not my fault that it was sometimes used where it shouldn’t have been. This is the fault of politicians,” he said during an award ceremony at the Kremlin to mark his 90th birthday.

AK-47’s name stands for “Kalashnikov’s Automatic” and the year it was designed, 1947. Also called the “Kalashnikov”, the rifle and its variants are the weapons of choice for dozens of armies and guerrilla groups around the world.

More than 100mn Kalashnikov rifles have been sold worldwide and they are wielded by fighters in such far-flung conflict zones as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.

But their inventor has barely profited financially from them and lived modestly in Izhevsk, an industrial town 1,300km east of Moscow.

The Izmash factory that was the home manufacturer of the weapon in the central Russian region of Udmurtia has now fallen on hard times after a collapse in orders following the fall of the USSR, a fact that prompted Kalashnikov to make a personal appeal to President Vladimir Putin.

Born in a Siberian village as the 17th child of family on November 10, 1919, Kalashnikov had a tragic childhood during which his father was deported under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1930.

Wounded during combat in 1941, Kalashnikov designed his rifle in 1947, driven by Soviet defeats in the early years of World War II at the hands of far better-armed German soldiers.

In October 1941 in fierce battles around Bryansk he was heavily wounded and shell-shocked.

According to his official Izmash biography, Kalashnikov first conceived of the weapon while recovering in hospital.

The rifle quickly became prized for its sturdy reliability in difficult field conditions and Kalashnikov was honoured with the Soviet Union’s top awards including the Lenin and the Stalin prizes.

Yet the design was never patented internationally and Izmash always complained that its potential income from the weapon was hit badly by the “pirated” versions of the designs made abroad.

The 205-year-old Izmash plant remains one of the main producers of Russian weapons and is treasured as a national icon.

But Izmash has also suffered from dwindling demand and a failure to make up for this with foreign orders – a problem plaguing many specialised post-Soviet industries.