THE streets of Moscow feature many monuments to great figures from Russia’s past: Tolstoy, Pushkin and Tchaikovsky, to name but a few. This week, a new national hero joined their ranks: Mikhail Kalashnikov, eponymous inventor of the rifle. His nine-metre-tall likeness, clad in a bomber jacket and cradling an AK-47, towers over the Garden Ring Road, one of the capital’s main throughways. “He’s so kind, he’s holding it carefully, like a baby,” remarked Natalia Khrustaleva-Popova, a retired factory worker who came to see the sculpture. At the opening ceremony, a lone protester was promptly detained, while a priest sprinkled the bronze behemoth with holy water.
The AK-47—“AK” for Avtomat Kalashnikova, or Kalashnikov’s automatic, and “47” for the year the prototypes were completed—has become one of the world’s most popular and lethal weapons, believed to account for one-fifth of all firearms. Kalashnikov, the son of Siberian peasants, began sketching...Continue reading
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