SKS Archives

In 2015, Larry Vickers had a great chance to visit the Central Armed Forces Museum in northern Moscow. While there, he had a chance to visit the museum’s archives and see an original Federov rifle, an early SKS and a preproduction AK-47 that was produced in 1946. He assembled this part of his visit along with a comparison of a German StG 44 and a Type I AK into a video.

The Federov

The Federov Avtomat was arguably the first assault rifle. It was designed in 1913 and produced at the Kovrov Arms Factory from 1913-1925. Roughly 3,200 of these forward thinking rifles were built. Personally, I think the rifle was very novel for its time including the use of the

An overview of the Federov from the video.

Larry steps shows the Federov to viewers and has a lot of great close ups of this rare rifle.

The SKS

The Samozaryadny Karabin sistemy Simonov (SKS) was designed in 1944 and went into production in 1945. Thus, it became known as the “SKS-45” in the USSR and was widely exported. In total, the Soviets produced about 2.7 million SKS carbines first at the Tula Arsenal (1949-1958) and also Izhevsk Arsenal (153 and 1954). The rifle was chambered for the

Larry provides an overview of the SKS carbine

Here, he is holding an early SKS model and gives a quick overview of it.

A Preproduction AK-47

Larry had a chance to review an actual pre-production AK from about 1946 that was used in the Army’s trials of the weapon prior to official adoption in 1947. This is what I especially wanted to see. You see, many people assume the AK-47 was one single assault rifle when, really, it evolved over time. They had the Type I, II, the III/AKM and so forth.

At any rate, Mikhail Kalashnikov and his design team worked on the

Larry shows the Army Trial rifle and the viewer gets to see a number of angles of the rifle.

German StG-44 vs. Type I AK-47

Larry then goes on to argue that the StG-44 greatly influenced Kalashnikov and his design team. Folks, this is a hotly debated topic. As a point of Russian pride, they minimize any thoughts of influence. At this point, it’s really hard to say. If it were me, I’d look at a previous design and get ideas from it to save time, money and reduce the risk of mistakes.