According to the common theory, the gunsmith Mikhail Kalashnikov, being a little -educated sergeant, could not invent a famous machine gun. According to one version, the design of the Kalashnikov assault rifle (AK) was copied from the STG 44 assault rifle of Hugo Schmeisser. The other says that AK was created by Schmeisser himself, who was taken out in the USSR after the war. We checked whether this is so.

The hypothesis of the appearance of one of the most famous machines is much larger, but these two stand out by their prevalence. In particular, one of the most famous apologists of the first version is historian Boris Sokolov. In an interview with Vladimir Kara-Murze in 2017, he declared:

“I think that the main myth is that he created an automatic machine, which is named after him. Any foreign specialist in the history of small arms, when he is called the name of Mikhail Kalashnikov as the author of the original machine, this causes a good -natured smile. Because they know this type of weapons as an assault German rifle of the 44th year, released by the design bureau Hugo Schmyser. The similarity is extremely large - under a different caliber. Actually, the Germans have 7.92, and we have 7.62. In addition, they have a bubble mechanism, he, in turn, was borrowed from Kalashnikov from the American assault rifle Thompson, which, incidentally, was not supplied according to Land-Lease, and it was known to the Germans as trophies.

Of course, the modernization of the German machine gun, the assault rifle of the 44th year is named. But in order to make this modernization, one must still have a higher technical education and know objects such as higher mathematics and sopromat. As you know, Kalashnikov did not possess higher education. And there is no data that he owned these disciplines in the volume of the institute. So he could not calculate all this. ”

Oil into the fire of the conspiralists added a scandal with the monument to Kalashnikov in the center of Moscow, which flared up shortly after this interview. Then on the high relief of the newly installed monument The scheme was discovered The very German STG 44. The Russian military-historical society, which initiated the attitude, promised to dismantle part of the composition, but the waves of ironic comments and reminders of plagiarism could not be avoided. Like indignation:

Although the galaxy of designers, known in Russia as “gloomy Tutton geniuses”, attached a hand to many important inventions of the mid-twentieth century, it should be noted that neither StG nor AK contain any fundamentally new elements of the structure of the weapon. The main technical solutions used in them: gas engines, the methods of locking the shutter, the principles of the shock mechanism and a number of others were known since the end of the XIX-early XX centuries.

The first samples of StG 44 prototypes: MKB.42 (h) and MP43 carbines - fell into the hands of the Soviet military in 1943. Based on the results of the study of these specimens, as well as the American semi -automatic carbine M1 on Meetings The Technical Council under the People’s Commissariat of Defense of the USSR on July 15, 1943 raised the question of the need for urgent development of an intermediate cartridge similar to the German, and, of course, weapons for it.

Explanatory production of intermediate cartridge 7.62 x 39 The designs of N. M. Elizarov and B.V. Semin began in March 1944. And on the first landfill tests of weapons for a new cartridge in April were represented The machine guns Degtyarev, Simonova, Tokarev, Korovin, Sudaev and Kuzmishchev. The best was recognized as AS-44 of the designs of Alexei Sudaev. Unfortunately, the sudden death of the designer interrupted the development of a promising model.

In 1946, a new tour of the competition was held. The designers of Rukavishnikov, Bulkin, Dementyev, Korobov and 26-year-old Mikhail Kalashnikov, who since 1942 worked at the Central Research Polygon of Rifle and Mortary Weapons of the Red Army since 1942, participated in it.

It is important to note that the prototype developed by Kalashnikov did not have many features of the future AK. The principle of operation was a short, not a long stroke of the gas piston, the hinge of the suspension was located on the left, and not on the right, instead of a single fuse-translator, there were separate flag fuses and translator of the type of fire. The housing of the shock mechanism was made in folding down-up on the pin. In the report of a military engineer, senior lieutenant U. I. Pchelintsev, who experienced the first sample AK-46, It was said: "The system is imperfect and is not subject to refinement." However, after additional studies that conducted at the request of Kalashnikov and, probably, not without the influence of his patrons in the military leadership, he called the AK-46 suitable for further refinement.

Returning to Kovrov, Kalashnikov, along with the designer of the Kovrovsky plant No. 2, Alexander Zaitsev, developed actually a new machine gun. In it, how counts, elements borrowed from other participants in the competition or previously known solutions were widely used.

Thus, the design of the bolt frame with a stiffly attached gas piston, the stagnation of the receiver and the placement of the return spring with the guide, the protrusion of which was used to lock the coil box cover, were copied from Bulkina machine gun. Shock-paneling mechanism-from the Czech self-loading rifle of Holek or rifle M1 GARAND. The fire fuel fuse lever is very similar to the one used in the Remington Model 8 rifle. And “hanging” the bolt group inside the receiver with minimal friction areas and large gaps were characteristic of the Sudaev machine gun.

Thus, there are no serious reasons to argue that Kalashnikov stole the structure with Schmaysser - rather, he used the ideas of his other colleagues, and he took a little from each. Moreover, the degree of this borrowing is also disputed at site Group of companies "Kalashnikov".

As for the work of Schmeisser on AK directly in the USSR, there are a number of contradictions. Indeed, German experts were actively involved in the reconstruction of Germany’s military-technical achievements for subsequent use in new Soviet developments. And in October 1945, Hugo Shmaisser was involved in the activities of such a commission at the German plant Simson (previously Gustloff-Werke), and in October 1946 agreed to go on a long-term business trip to Izhevsk. He became one of 16 German specialists who worked at the plant No. 74 (today Izhmash OJSC).

However, all this time Kalashnikov has been developing in the city of Kovrov and at the Schurovsky training ground in the suburbs, almost 1000 km from Izhevsk. In the winter of 1946–1947, Kalashnikov presented actually a new KBP-580 machine, which had little in common with the previous option, and in March 1948 he arrived in Izhevsk to participate in the development of technical documentation and the organization of the first experimental party of the AK-47 automatic machine in the amount of 1,500 units, and not at the plant No. 74, but at the Izhevsk motorized factory No. 524. How speaks The technical consultant of the Kalashnikov concern Vladimir Onoka, “the machine gun was already ready and even released the first batch, and all this happened far from Schmyser, even in theory, without giving him a chance to join the work on weapons.” This information confirms and specialist of the Victory Museum on Poklonnaya Gora Alexander Mikhailov. According to him, none of the Izhevsk designers, especially from among foreigners, did not see a machine gun, nor its designer, or documentation until March 1948. In addition, Mikhailov identified a number of serious structural differences between two machine guns that do not allow us to talk about copying.

The only participation of Schmyser in the fate of AK, as a number of authors suggests, could be his contribution to serial production. However, the author of the publication "Hugo Shmaisser in Izhevsk" I. Shaidurov He also denies this merit, arguing that according to documents, the Germans helped to master the technology only in the production of civilian products, namely motorcycles.