Heavy MGs
Vintage Saturday: Desperation
Tomorrow is Armistice Day, and we should all take a few quiet moments to reflect on the nature of war. For all its glamorization, war is the tragic and cruel destruction of life and we […]
Russia
Light MGs
Vintage Saturday: Maxim-Tokarev
Reader Ruy has sent us this great photo of a very unusual gun in action in the Spanish Civil War – a Maxim-Tokarev “light” machine gun.
Handgun
The Obrez and its Cousins
I’m not sure where it started, but the “obrez” has gained a decent bit of recognition among gun folks (particularly gun folks on the internet). The concept is a Mosin-Nagant rifle with the barrel cut […]
Book review
Russian Hand-to-Hand Combat Manual
It has come to our attention that our friend Boris Karpa – who helped us out translating a batch of test reports on the Dror LMG – has released his first work on Amazon. It’s […]
Anti-Tank Rifles
Vintage Saturday: PTRD-41 in Russia
“Fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is ‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia.’” I think the other was “Don’t count on an anti-tank rifle to […]
Vintage photo
Vintage Saturday: Shivering with an AVS-36
Invading Russian never goes well, for any of the parties involved. These two certainly don’t look they’re having such a good time.
Semiauto Rifles
Russian AVS-36 Rifle
Russia (or the USSR, for these purposes) had an early self-loading rifle in the 1916 Federov, but it was not a satisfactory combat weapons, for several reasons. The Soviet military held a number of trials […]
Vintage photo
Vintage Saturday: Russian 1910 Maxim
Ah, the Sokolov mount. Designed, I have no doubt, when the leading medical studies urged you to lift with your back instead of your legs.
Semiauto Rifles
Fedorov – The First Assault Rifle?
Today we have a couple more galleries of Russian Fedorov rifles, both from Russian museums. One set comes to us from our friend Hrachya, and the other is courtesy of DishModels.ru. The Fedorov is interesting […]
Vintage photo
Vintage Saturday – Russian Partisans with a Maxim
I don’t envy that kid having to fire that M38…