In the grand narrative of World War II, the Battle of Bryansk is a minor conflict, barely deserving of a footnote. But Bryansk has another place in history. It was there that a then-unknown tank commander named Mikhail Kalashnikov decided that his Russian comrades would never again be defeated. In the years following the Great Patriotic War, as Soviet propagandists dubbed it, he was to conceive and fabricate a weapon so simple, and yet so revolutionary, that it would change the way wars were fought and won. It was the AK-47 assault rifle. The AK-47 has become the world’s most prolific and effective combat weapon, a device so cheap and simple that it can be bought in many countries for less than the cost of a live chicken. Depicted on the flag and currency of several countries, waved by guerrillas and rebels everywhere, the AK is responsible for about a quarter-million deaths every year. It is the firearm of choice for at least 50 legitimate standing armies and countless fighting forces from Africa and the Middle East to Central America and Los Angeles. It has become a cultural icon, its signature form — that banana-shaped magazine — defining in our consciousness the contours of a deadly weapon.
Most of want to leave a legacy, something that we’ll be remembered for, perhaps even revered for. Some of us dream of writing the Great American Novel, some want to cure cancer…some might even want to solve the philosophical uncertainties of our world. Few of us dream of inventing a weapon that will kill roughly a quarter-million people on a yearly basis. Somehow, I’d think that if someone was dreaming of solving the world’s population problem, they problem didn’t have anything like the AK-47 in mind.
Then again, Mikhail Kalashnikov wasn’t trying to solve the world’s population problem. He was just trying to come up with a weapon that would give Soviet soldiers an advantage. I doubt Kalashnikov had any idea that his gift to the Soviet military would be his enduring legacy. Since history is written by others, and usually long after our passing, I suppose it would be safe to say that in most cases we don’t get to choose our legacy. Most of us would be happy to be remembered for any contribution, though the deaths of 250,000 people every year would hardly qualify as effective population control.
The AK-47 is truly an amazing, and unlikely, cultural icon. You can find them in every two-bit insurgency around the world, in the barrios of L.A….hell, even my brother in North Carolina has a Chinese version in his closet, though I don’t imagine he has too deal with many insurgencies in his neighborhood.
The AK-47 made war easily and cheaply portable. While not exactly miracles of fine Russian craftmanship, their low-cost, lightweight construction proved ideal for small-scale conflicts where portabililty, speed, and the ability to deliver high degrees of firepower were paramount.
This week, the U.S. military’s presence in Iraq will surpass the length of time that American forces were engaged in World War II. And the AK-47 will forever link the two conflicts. The story of the gun itself, from inspiration in Bryansk to bloody insurgency in Iraq, is also the story of the transformation of modern warfare. The AK blew away old battlefield calculations of military superiority, of tactics and strategy, of who could be a soldier, of whose technology would triumph.
Ironically, the weapon that helped end World War II, the atomic bomb, paved the way for the rise of the lower-tech but deadlier AK-47. The A-bomb’s guarantee of mass destruction compelled the two Cold War superpowers to wage proxy wars in poor countries, with ill-trained combatants exchanging fire — usually with cheap, lightweight and durable AKs.
The calculus of war remains substantially unchanged if you’re dealing in numbers. While roughly 250,000 people die largely unnoticed at the hands of soldiers and insurgents wielding AK-47’s each year in small-scale conflicts, who’s to say that the same number wouldn’t die in major conflicts? Since the end of WWII, when the US and USSR decided that fighting wars by proxy was the way to go, the AK-47 has been front and center.
I wonder if Mikhail Kalshnikov had ANY idea that his lasting and enduring legacy would be contributing to worldwide population control by such violent and bloody means? The AK-47 made the conduct of war around the war a largely retail undertaking, as opposed to the wholesale conflicts the US and USSR planned for during the course of the Cold War. Somehow, planners felt better when people were dying around the world in “low-level” conflicts as opposed the “Big Kahuna”: Soviet and American soldier facing each other across a battlefield with the threat of nuclear conflict lurking nearby.
While the Cold War may be long over, the retail approach to war still prevails, and the AK-47 is perfectly suited to the conduct of this kind of armed conflict. It’s just too bad that such ingenuity couldn’t be expended on something that would save lives instead of taking them.
