The Kalashnikov Museum

In 2007 (or 2008?) I was in Izhevsk, Russia, and spent a day at the Kalashnikov Museum there. It's a fascinating place. Very well maintained and with exhibits dating back to early Russian copies of the French Charleville musket up to the latest small arms. Izhevsk is not as old as Tula as a gun manufacturing center, but it back a couple hundred years. In WWII much of the armaments industry moved there because it's deep inside the country along the Kazakstan border. They still manufacture arms there today.



That's me hamming it up with the great man himself.



The PPSH



Dragunov?



A KEDR. I have no idea what this is or when it came about.



This is obviously an SKS and variations thereof.



And variations of the AK.

I'll post some more tomorrow if you guys find these interesting.

 

You do a lot of travelling in Europe matey....Give us a shout if you ever get to UK. I'm sure we could give you a few good days out..
All my travelling came to a halt about 6 years ago. But I've rediscovered the UK...But your making me look at following your itinery...Thats some place to visit....

 

I first visited Russia back in 1990 when it was still the USSR. It was a government exchange/training thing between their KGB Frontier Guards (the nautical wing) and our Coast Guard. That was in the far east at Petropavlovsk Kamchatsky and we were coordinating search & rescue and fisheries enforcement in the Bering Sea and North Pacific. The people fascinated me because they are mostly descendents of the Gulag and they hated the Soviets and were very open about it. In one flat our hosts had most of the living room stacked with crates of English cigarettes with Japanese import labels. Another guy worked in a factory that made batteries (I think car batteries but that was unclear) and for every one that went out the front door, another would go out the back to the black market for hard currency - everybody had yen or dollars or something because you couldn't buy anything worth having with rubles. Smuggling and the black market was a way of life and everyone was in on it. A strange lawless place back then, but very friendly and open... The official exchange rate was 2 rubles to the dollar, but I got as much as 1200 rubles to the dollar. Of course, the only thing you could buy with rubles was local seafood and beer in the restaurants. So, I became very popular buying everyone in a restaurant king crab and salmon dinners. Sometimes I blew as much as 2 bucks in those extravagant displays of wealth. My life as a rock star...
I've gone back several times since then, but it has changed. It's two places really - the Moscow/St. Petersburg crowd are very European, and those in the East are more like American or Aussie rednecks. Of course, being a redneck myself I gravitate to the easterners.



The first production AK - I think.



The hands on displays - you can only fondle the guns themselves!

 

I used to work for Swift, Society of worldwide international financial transactions based out of Culpepper Virginia, but offices and computer sites in banking halls thru world...I was the Tech rep for Scandinavia, looking after Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and for some reason Jersey and Guernsey fitted in..I was given Moscow originally, but my oppo got in first...I'd have loved to have done Moscow. He came back with story's of guides offering far more than a tour of Lenins Tomb....When I cam out of forces, your lot stopped me from travelling east cos I had one of your vetting clauses. Only ran out in 2002. We should arrange a meet with our Eastern friends on the forum in Russia one day....I did nearly see some kalashnikovs first hand on a backup trip to Nigeria, but again my oppo took it instead...He came back minus wallet, watch, and half his hair....Got stopped at a checkpoint...armed geezers took everything..they managed a mile up road to complain...half naked to the govt road block...the Nigerian soldiers took the rest of what they had and wished them luck....and on their way....He stayed with Moscow after that.

 

Any travel that somebody else pays for is fun. Unless, well, you're in the infantry and people are trying to kill you... I'd love to tour western Russia and Ukraine - Stalingrad, Kursk, Kharkov, Crimea. Imagine what you could find with a metal detector?

 

You are awesome....But, we want to know what's in the bag. Going to guess a deck of Russian cigarettes, and a bottle of vodka- 2 litres....What did the Beatles say:
" And Moscow girls make me sing and shout ".. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pvXRl21lB8

Shhh. ..Listen...the urqh has lost its' lisp/accent...

 

Actually, you are exactly right! I bought a souvenir bottle of Kalashnikov vodka in a wooden holder shaped like an AK round.

This is it: