The sculptor Shcherbakov will change the monument to Kalashnikov with a German rifle. Why did a German machine gun appear on the Kalashnikov monument? Monument to Kalashnikov with a German rifle

On the recently opened monument to Mikhail Kalashnikov in Moscow, a diagram of the German StG 44 assault rifle is carved. The editor of Rolling Wheels magazine, Yuri Pasholok, drew attention to this. “Just don’t say that it was them by accident. You have to beat them for this, painfully and in public. These are sculptor boys, damn it!” — wrote Pasholok on his Facebook page.

Photo: Yuri Pasholok/Facebook

There is a historical myth according to which Kalashnikov copied his machine gun from the German StG rifles 44. This rifle was developed in 1942 by designer Hugo Schmeisser. Both machines are really similar in appearance, but they have many differences in the internal structure and principle of parsing.

September 22, 10:46 Sculptor Salavat Shcherbakov said he is ready to make changes to his work, but is not yet sure whether a mistake was actually made.

“We cannot yet find a specialist who claims that this drawing is not an AK-47. I will be really grateful to him if he tells me where the mistake was made. But for now I am confident in the drawings we used to do this, we communicated with the museum, it says AK-47,” Shcherbakov said.

He emphasized that if there was an error in the drawings, changes would be made to the monument. “We will definitely do this, this happens. For example, we understand that according to the portrait the strand is not lying correctly, then we change the monument,” explained the agency’s interlocutor.

The monument was unveiled on Tuesday at the intersection of Sadovaya-Karetnaya and Dolgorukovskaya streets in Moscow. The height of the monument was 7.5 meters; during the work, some of its details were clarified, for example, the model of the machine gun that Kalashnikov is holding in his hands. IN artistic composition figure indicated globe and the image of St. George the Victorious, as symbols of preserving peace and victory “over the forces of evil.”

RIA News"

September 22, 11:28 The executive director of the monument’s customer, the Russian Military Historical Society (RVIO), Vladislav Kononov, said that the diagram of a German machine gun will be removed from the monument.

“We want to thank the person who noticed this drawing, because until today we were not experts in the construction of automatic machines. And now we pointed this out to the sculptor Salavat Shcherbakov. He is on the spot and is going to dismantle this slab, since indeed he and his apprentice something was mixed up. It is important to understand that the military historical society is the customer of the monument, and we had only one wish for the weapon - for the model of the machine gun that Mikhail Timofeevich is holding in his hands. Everything else is a flight of creative imagination of the sculptor and his assistants, so let them figure it out, they will correct this mistake now,” Kononov said.

In addition, as Kononov explained, the incident refutes the myth that M. Kalashnikov was not an independent designer, but relied on the developments of the German designer Hugo Schmeisser.

“And thanks to the mistake made through the fault of the sculptor, everyone can see that the StG and the Kalashnikov assault rifle are completely different assault rifles, and it is categorically incorrect to accuse Mikhail Kalashnikov of borrowing,” noted the director of the Russian Military Historical Society.

Agency "Moscow"

The author of the monument to Kalashnikov, Salavat Shcherbakov, in a conversation with RBC, admitted that an error “could have crept” into the project.

“This is a very small background thing. I’m even surprised how they saw it. We took it from sources. And where we took it, it says “Kalashnikov assault rifle.” Something from the Internet,” the sculptor explained.

Shcherbakov also noted that “if there is an error,” it “can be corrected very easily.”

The sculptor said he and his colleagues are now trying to contact the expert who reported the error. “There is no political motive that one of us slipped this in,” Shcherbakov emphasized.

“We are already in touch with everyone. We’ll calmly find out everything. The biggest negative thing about this is the behavior of the press and the public. It’s just some kind of bacchanalia. But the question is working. We once made a general’s star on his uniform a little smaller. We corrected it “Mistakes happen,” said the sculptor.

Another scandal erupted around the monument by sculptor Salavat Shcherbakov. Claims arose against the author after historian Yuri Pasholok noted on his Facebook page: the composition depicts a diagram of not a Russian machine gun, but a German one assault rifle MKb.42.

In a commentary to the radio station "Moscow Speaks", the sculptor said: if the information about the error in the image of the drawings is confirmed, he is ready to make changes.

“We are waiting for specifics and a specific specialist. So far we have not been contacted directly,” he said. According to Shcherbakov, in order to clarify the situation, he plans to contact the historian who drew attention to one of the “suspicious” drawings.

“Most likely, the drawing was simply covered by the machine gun lying on top, and maybe he didn’t look at it,” the sculptor suggested.

At the same time, he said: he would not like the issue of specific details that are not in the foreground to become political.

The author of the sculptural composition also talked about how the designs were selected. He noted that if the claims about the image of a drawing of a German rifle are confirmed, then it will be difficult to find the specific culprit, because he worked with different specialists, the NTV.Ru website writes.

This sculptural composition represents a five-meter figure of the gunsmith Kalashnikov on a 4-meter pedestal with the legendary AK in his hands. Behind there is an image of the globe and St. George killing a snake with a spear, and at the foot of the monument to the patron saint of Moscow there are diagrams of weapons. On one of them, the historian identified a drawing of MKb.42.

The historian who noticed the mistake after the scandal erupted on his Facebook he partially justified Shcherbakova. According to him, “the sculptor in this case is a performer and is not required to know the type of machine gun and the drawings.” In addition, the historian writes in response to media requests for comment, “the question is, first of all, for those people who accepted the final version.”

On the afternoon of September 22, it became known that Shcherbakov arrived at the Kalashnikov monument to dismantle the drawing of a German machine gun. At the same time, the executive director of the Russian Military Historical Society, Vladislav Kononov, thanked the person who noticed the erroneous drawing.

According to Kononov, Shcherbakov is already on site and is dismantling the slab. “Because indeed, according to experts, this is a diagram of German weapons,” he said.

Kononov also said that the customer of the monument is the Military Historical Society. However, it regulated only the model of the machine gun in the hands of Kalashnikov, and other design details - “this is the flight of the sculptor’s creative imagination.” In addition, Kononov hopes that the mistake made will allow him to debunk the myth that Kalashnikov borrowed ideas from foreign colleagues, writes Gazeta.Ru.

This is not the first scandal associated with the sculptures of Salavat Shcherbakov. So, in 2014, during the composition “Farewell of the Slavic Woman,” which was inaugurated at the Belorussky Station, veterans were amazed to discover a German Mauser 98.

Soon, Shcherbakov explained: they wanted to depict a Mosin rifle on the monument, but for an unknown reason an error occurred.

Another mistake crept into the memorial inscription on the sculpture of Alexander I, which stands next to Red Square. Among the cannons, muskets and sabers of the 19th century, a flash suppressor and a front sight can be seen modern weapons, very similar to the AK-74 assault rifle.

As for the monument to Kalashnikov, after its opening Shcherbakov had to deal with some cultural figures who criticized this composition.

At a monument to gunsmith Mikhail Kalashnikov unveiled in Moscow, an image of a drawing of the German StG 44 assault rifle was discovered instead of an AK-47. The Russian Military Historical Society (RVIO), which oversaw the construction of this monument, stated that this was a mistake by the sculptor and his apprentices, and thanked the person who revealed this. It was also stated that the drawing of the German StG 44 assault rifle would soon be removed from the new monument.

Photo: ©RIA Novosti/Vladimir Astapkovich

The military-historical editor of Rolling Wheels magazine, Yuri Pasholok, rightly drew public attention to the “oddities” of the new monument.

Pasholok posted a photo of the monument and a scan of a drawing of a German machine gun on Facebook.
“Don’t say it was them by accident. You have to beat someone for this, painfully and publicly,” the expert commented on his unsightly discovery.

Let us recall that the author of the monument to the legendary Mikhail Kalashnikov is Salavat Shcherbakov. His chisel belongs to the stone patriarch Hermogenes, Alexander I in the Alexander Garden, as well as the recently opened, but already famous Monument to Prince Vladimir.

The fact that the Kalashnikov monument contains a diagram of the German StG 44 assault rifle is quite symbolic. (Let us clarify that the concept “automatic machine” is used in relation to small arms This is exactly what we have here, in Russia. In the rest of the world, a different classification is adopted - “submachine gun” and “assault rifle”. But we will call it what we like, and not the world - “automatic”!) The fact is that outwardly our AK-47 suspiciously strongly resembles just this technical work of the talented designer Hugo Schmeisser, which was used by special units of the Third Reich - mountain riflemen (including their second division “Edelweiss”), as well as units of the “Waffen-SS”. We have specifically posted below interesting material about Soviet and German small arms during the Second World War, where, in particular, this same StG 44 is described and shown in illustration form.

There is nothing wrong with the fact that Kalashnikov, to one degree or another, adopted the achievements of the Germans. This is normal practice for the military-industrial complex of any country - any achievement of the enemy is immediately implemented into its own defense structures. This was the case, for example, with the tanks of the French company Renault, which were created during the First World War, in 1916-17, and which for the first time used a turret of circular rotation (360 degrees). This innovation was immediately adopted by tank builders all over the world - and are still in use today! And what - all the armies of the world consider themselves “humiliated” after this?!

Moreover, the Germans, when they captured warehouses with big amount our excellent SVT-40 rifles, they did not consider it shameful to officially equip their units with them - its shooting characteristics were so good! (By the way, this will be discussed below).

After the war, special groups from both the USSR and the USA intensively hunted for the technical secrets of the Nazis - documentation, technologies and finished products. Our outstanding rocket designer Sergei Pavlovich Korolev - “Colonel Sergeev” - was in one of these special forces. It was from Germany that the V-2 engines were delivered, which helped Korolev develop his own rocket engines. They then stood at the entrance to the Museum of Cosmonautics, located on the territory of RSC Energia. At one time I made a publication on this topic in one of the central newspapers of Russia, where I worked at that time. And how funny the situation looked when I visited this Museum again. and... didn’t see these units! In response to my astonished question, the guide, looking at me with pewter eyes, firmly began to assure that they had never been here: apparently, the management of the concern, after publication in the press (and it was the first at that “perestroika” time), considered it “shameful” for S P. Korolev and “lowering his authority as a designer” is the fact that he used the developments of “some Germans.” Truly funny!

Alexey Anatolyevich Cheverda

Small arms of World War II

By the end of the 30s, almost all participants in the coming world war had formed common directions in the development of small arms. The range and accuracy of the attack was reduced, which was compensated by the greater density of fire. As a consequence of this, the beginning of mass rearmament of units with automatic small arms - submachine guns, machine guns, assault rifles.

Accuracy of fire began to fade into the background, while the soldiers advancing in a chain began to be taught shooting on the move. With the advent airborne troops There was a need to create special lightweight weapons.

Maneuver warfare also affected machine guns: they became much lighter and more mobile. New types of small arms appeared (which was dictated, first of all, by the need to fight tanks) - rifle grenades, anti-tank rifles and RPGs with cumulative grenades.

Small arms of the USSR

On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, the rifle division of the Red Army was a very formidable force - about 14.5 thousand people. The main type of small arms were rifles and carbines - 10,420 pieces. The share of submachine guns was insignificant - 1204. There were 166, 392 and 33 units of heavy, light and anti-aircraft machine guns, respectively.

The division had its own artillery of 144 guns and 66 mortars. The firepower was supplemented by 16 tanks, 13 armored vehicles and a solid fleet of auxiliary vehicles.

Mosin rifle

The main small arms of the USSR infantry units of the first period of the war was certainly the famous three-line rifle - the 7.62 mm S.I. Mosin rifle of the 1891 model, modernized in 1930. Its advantages are well known - strength, reliability, ease of maintenance, combined with good ballistics qualities, in particular, with an aiming range of 2 km.

The three-line rifle is an ideal weapon for newly recruited soldiers, and the simplicity of the design created enormous opportunities for its mass production. But like any weapon, the three-line gun had its drawbacks. The permanently attached bayonet in combination with a long barrel (1670 mm) created inconvenience when moving, especially in wooded areas. The bolt handle caused serious complaints when reloading.

On its basis it was created sniper rifle and a series of carbines of the 1938 and 1944 model. Fate gave the three-line a long life (the last three-line was released in 1965), participation in many wars and an astronomical “circulation” of 37 million copies.

At the end of the 30s, the outstanding Soviet weapons designer F.V. Tokarev developed a 10-round self-loading rifle cal. 7.62 mm SVT-38, which after modernization received the name SVT-40. It “lost weight” by 600 g and became shorter due to the introduction of thinner wooden parts, additional holes in the casing and a decrease in the length of the bayonet. A little later, a sniper rifle appeared at its base. Automatic firing was ensured by the removal of powder gases. The ammunition was placed in a box-shaped, detachable magazine.

The target range of the SVT-40 is up to 1 km. The SVT-40 served with honor on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. It was also appreciated by our opponents. Historical fact: Having captured rich trophies at the beginning of the war, among which there were many SVT-40s, the German army... adopted it for service, and the Finns created their own rifle - TaRaKo - on the basis of the SVT-40.

The creative development of the ideas implemented in the SVT-40 became the AVT-40 automatic rifle. It differed from its predecessor in its ability to fire automatically at a rate of up to 25 rounds per minute. The disadvantage of the AVT-40 is its low accuracy of fire, strong unmasking flame and loud sound at the moment of firing. Subsequently, as automatic weapons entered the military en masse, they were removed from service.

Submachine guns

Great Patriotic War became the time of the final transition from rifles to automatic weapons. The Red Army began to fight, armed with a small number of PPD-40 - a submachine gun designed by the outstanding Soviet designer Vasily Alekseevich Degtyarev. At that time, PPD-40 was in no way inferior to its domestic and foreign counterparts.

Designed for a pistol cartridge cal. 7.62 x 25 mm, the PPD-40 had an impressive ammunition load of 71 rounds, housed in a drum-type magazine. Weighing about 4 kg, it fired at a rate of 800 rounds per minute with an effective range of up to 200 meters. However, just a few months after the start of the war it was replaced by the legendary PPSh-40 cal. 7.62 x 25 mm.

The creator of the PPSh-40, designer Georgy Semenovich Shpagin, was faced with the task of developing an extremely easy-to-use, reliable, technologically advanced, cheap to produce mass weapon.

From its predecessor, the PPD-40, the PPSh inherited a drum magazine with 71 rounds. A little later, a simpler and more reliable sector horn magazine with 35 rounds was developed for it. The weight of the equipped machine guns (both versions) was 5.3 and 4.15 kg, respectively. The rate of fire of the PPSh-40 reached 900 rounds per minute with an aiming range of up to 300 meters and the ability to fire single shots.

To master the PPSh-40, a few lessons were enough. It could easily be disassembled into 5 parts made using stamping and welding technology, thanks to which during the war years the Soviet defense industry produced about 5.5 million machine guns.

In the summer of 1942, the young designer Alexey Sudaev presented his brainchild - a 7.62 mm submachine gun. It was strikingly different from its “bigger brothers” PPD and PPSh-40 in its rational layout, higher manufacturability and ease of manufacturing parts using arc welding.

PPS-42 was 3.5 kg lighter and required three times less manufacturing time. However, despite its quite obvious advantages, it never became a mass weapon, leaving the PPSh-40 to take the lead.

By the beginning of the war, the DP-27 light machine gun (Degtyarev infantry, 7.62mm caliber) had been in service with the Red Army for almost 15 years, having the status of the main light machine gun of infantry units. Its automation was powered by the energy of powder gases. The gas regulator reliably protected the mechanism from contamination and high temperatures.

The DP-27 could only fire automatically, but even a beginner needed a few days to master shooting in short bursts of 3-5 shots. Ammunition of 47 rounds was placed in a disk magazine with a bullet towards the center in one row. The magazine itself was mounted on top of the receiver. The weight of the unloaded machine gun was 8.5 kg. An equipped magazine increased it by almost another 3 kg.

It was a powerful weapon with an effective range of 1.5 km and a combat rate of fire of up to 150 rounds per minute. In the firing position, the machine gun rested on a bipod. A flame arrester was screwed onto the end of the barrel, significantly reducing its unmasking effect. The DP-27 was serviced by a gunner and his assistant. In total, about 800 thousand machine guns were produced.

Wehrmacht small arms

The main strategy of the German army is offensive or blitzkrieg (blitzkrieg - lightning war). The decisive role in it was assigned to large tank formations, carrying out deep breakthroughs of the enemy’s defenses in cooperation with artillery and aviation.

Tank units bypassed powerful fortified areas, destroying control centers and rear communications, without which the enemy quickly lost their combat effectiveness. The defeat was completed by motorized units of the ground forces.

Small arms of the Wehrmacht infantry division

The staff of the German infantry division of the 1940 model assumed the presence of 12,609 rifles and carbines, 312 submachine guns (machine guns), light and heavy machine guns - 425 and 110 pieces, respectively, 90 anti-tank rifles and 3,600 pistols. Wehrmacht small arms generally met the high requirements of wartime . It was reliable, trouble-free, simple, easy to manufacture and maintain, which contributed to its serial production.

Rifles, carbines, machine guns

"Mauser 98K"

The Mauser 98K is an improved version of the Mauser 98 rifle, developed at the end of the 19th century by the brothers Paul and Wilhelm Mauser, the founders of the world famous arms company. Equipping the German army with it began in 1935.

« Mauser 98K"

The weapon was loaded with a clip of five 7.92 mm cartridges. A trained soldier could shoot 15 times within a minute at a range of up to 1.5 km. The Mauser 98K was very compact. Its main characteristics: weight, length, barrel length - 4.1 kg x 1250 x 740 mm. The indisputable advantages of the rifle are evidenced by numerous conflicts involving it, longevity and a truly sky-high “circulation” - more than 15 million units.

At the shooting range. Rifle "Mauser 98K"

The self-loading ten-shot rifle G-41 became the German response to the massive equipping of the Red Army with rifles - SVT-38, 40 and ABC-36. Its sighting range reached 1200 meters. Only single shooting was allowed. Its significant disadvantages - significant weight, low reliability and increased vulnerability to contamination - were subsequently eliminated. The combat “circulation” amounted to several hundred thousand rifle samples.

MP-40 "Schmeisser" assault rifle

Perhaps the most famous Wehrmacht small arms of the Second World War was the famous MP-40 submachine gun, a modification of its predecessor, the MP-36, created by Heinrich Vollmer. However, as fate would have it, he is better known under the name “Schmeisser”, obtained thanks to the stamp on the store - “PATENT SCHMEISSER”. The stigma simply meant that, in addition to G. Vollmer, Hugo Schmeisser also participated in the creation of the MP-40, but only as the creator of the store.

MP-40 "Schmeisser" assault rifle

Initially, the MP-40 was intended to arm the command staff of infantry units, but later it was transferred to the disposal of tank crews, armored vehicle drivers, paratroopers and special forces soldiers.

However, the MP-40 was absolutely unsuitable for infantry units, since it was exclusively a melee weapon. In a fierce battle in open terrain, having a weapon with a firing range of 70 to 150 meters meant for a German soldier to be practically unarmed in front of his enemy, armed with Mosin and Tokarev rifles with a firing range of 400 to 800 meters.

StG-44 assault rifle

Assault rifle StG-44 (sturmgewehr) cal. 7.92mm is another legend of the Third Reich. This is certainly an outstanding creation by Hugo Schmeisser - the prototype of many post-war assault rifles and machine guns, including the famous AK-47.

The StG-44 could conduct single and automatic fire. Its weight with a full magazine was 5.22 kg. At a target range of 800 meters, the Sturmgewehr was in no way inferior to its main competitors. There were three versions of the magazine - for 15, 20 and 30 shots with a rate of up to 500 rounds per minute. The option of using a rifle with an under-barrel grenade launcher and an infrared sight was considered.

Creator of "Sturmgever 44" Hugo Schmeisser

Not without its shortcomings. The assault rifle was heavier than the Mauser-98K by a whole kilogram. Its wooden butt sometimes could not withstand hand-to-hand combat and simply broke. The flame escaping from the barrel revealed the location of the shooter, and the long magazine and sighting devices forced him to raise his head high in a prone position.

« Sturmgever "44 with IR sight

In total, before the end of the war, German industry produced about 450 thousand StG-44s, which were used mainly by elite SS units.

Machine guns

By the beginning of the 30s, the military leadership of the Wehrmacht came to the need to create a universal machine gun, which, if necessary, could be transformed, for example, from a manual one to an easel one and vice versa. This is how a series of machine guns was born - MG - 34, 42, 45.

The 7.92 mm MG-42 is rightly called one of the best machine guns of World War II. It was developed at Grossfus by engineers Werner Gruner and Kurt Horn. Those who have experienced it firepower, were very frank. Our soldiers called it a “lawn mower,” and the allies called it “Hitler’s circular saw.”

Depending on the type of bolt, the machine gun fired accurately at a speed of up to 1500 rpm at a range of up to 1 km. Ammunition was supplied using a machine gun belt with 50 - 250 rounds of ammunition. The uniqueness of the MG-42 was complemented by a relatively small number of parts - 200 - and the high technology of their production using stamping and spot welding.

The barrel, hot from shooting, was replaced with a spare one in a few seconds using a special clamp. In total, about 450 thousand machine guns were produced. The unique technical developments embodied in the MG-42 were borrowed by gunsmiths from many countries around the world when creating their machine guns.

https://www.techcult.ru/weapon/2387-strelkovoe-oruzhie-vermahta

“It’s a very small background thing. I'm even surprised how they saw her. We took it from sources. And where we took it, it says “Kalashnikov assault rifle.” Something from the Internet,” the sculptor explained.

Shcherbakov also noted that “if there is an error,” it “can be corrected very easily.”

The sculptor said he and his colleagues are now trying to contact the expert who reported the error. “There is no political motive that one of us slipped this in,” Shcherbakov emphasized.

“We are already contacting everyone. We'll find out everything calmly. The biggest negative thing about this is the behavior of the press and the public. Just some kind of bacchanalia. But the question is working. We once made a slightly smaller star on the general’s uniform. We fixed it. Mistakes happen,” the sculptor said.

The sculptor then could not explain to RBC what caused the mistake, assuring that there was no malicious intent, and the young team “tried very hard.”

The Ministry of Culture of RBC stated that they are not installing monuments, recommending that “questions should be addressed to the Russian Military Historical Society or to the author of the sculpture, Salavat Shcherbakov.”

Earlier, singer Andrei Makarevich criticized the monument to Kalashnikov, who named his “mediocre, ugly sculpture.” Responding to this statement, the executive director of the Russian Military Historical Society, Vladislav Kononov, published on his Twitter page a photograph of Mikhail Kalashnikov’s daughter, who, according to Kononov, stated that “the dog barks, the caravan moves on.”

Shcherbakov himself called criticism from Makarevich “unethical.”

“If it was a normal conversation with arguments, that’s one thing, but when a person just barked, as they say, it’s disrespectful not only to me, but also to the millions of people who like it [the Kalashnikov monument],” the sculptor said in a conversation with RBC correspondent.

The Sturmgewehr 44 rifle was developed in 1943 by designer Hugo Schmeisser. In total, more than 400 thousand of these rifles were produced before 1945. The design allowed for single and semi-automatic fire due to the removal of powder gases. The shooting was carried out with 7.92 mm caliber cartridges. The sighting range was about 500-600 m. The rifle was equipped with a magazine for 30 rounds.

According to one hypothesis, the Kalashnikov assault rifle is a copy of the StG 44 rifle. “Rumors of plagiarism are also fueled by the fact that after the war, more than 50 samples of the StG 44 rifle were taken to the city of Izhevsk, where the AK-47 was actually created, for technical disassembly,” wrote in the magazine " Military Review" However, the authors of the note indicated that the StG 44 and AK-47 are “completely different” from each other. “If you look at each detail of the machines separately, you will not find anything in common with each other,” they wrote in the note.

Monument to Mikhail Kalashnikov on September 19 at the intersection of Sadovaya-Karetnaya and Dolgorukovskaya streets. Its author was the sculptor Salavat Shcherbakov. The monument was opened, among other things, by the Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, who stated that Mikhail Kalashnikov is “[inventor Ivan] Kulibin of the 20th century” and is “a cultural brand of Russia.”

The 9.8 m high monument represents the figure of Mikhail Kalashnikov, who is holding an AK-47 assault rifle. The pedestal depicts the main developments of the gunsmith - various modifications of the Kalashnikov assault rifle and machine gun.

The opening of the monument to Mikhail Kalashnikov, authored by Salavat Shcherbakov, seems to have become the main news event of this week. First, we discussed the ethics of erecting a monument to the designer of the most common small arms in the world, then we switched to the artistic merits and demerits of the sculpture. Numerous experts have spoken on the topic, right down to the most important of the main ones. Yuri Loza criticized Andrei Makarevich, who criticized the monument, and practically put an end to this issue.

I don’t really understand what to criticize here

Yuri Loza, singer, composer

But it was not there. Yesterday, military historian Yuri Pasholok discovered a drawing of the German StG-44 assault rifle on a sculptural composition in honor of the Russian designer Mikhail Kalashnikov. It was found on the side surface of the monument next to samples of the created Soviet designer weapons. What adds evil irony is the ongoing debate on the Internet that Kalashnikov simply stole his design from the Germans, wrested this secret from the German gunsmith Hugo Schmeisser, who worked in captivity, and appropriated it for himself.

Looking for an expert

How could the explosion diagram of a German machine gun end up on the monument? You can do a simple experiment - go to Google, ask for “drawing of a Kalashnikov assault rifle,” look at the pictures, putting “large” in the results, and find that same diagram on the first page of results. If you go to the site, then everything is signed correctly, but if you don’t go in and download it straight away without thinking, you can publicly disgrace yourself. This is what was demonstrated.

But wait a minute, the monument was created by the Rostec state corporation together with the Russian Military Historical Society. Didn't they have a couple of historians to check the resulting monument? Judging by the reports, there were historians and they made models of machine guns and machine guns on a 3D printer. What's the end result? Vladimir Medinsky pompously talks about a wonderful historical monument, on which is a drawing of a German assault rifle.

By the way, since we are talking about one of the most favorite topics for debate on the Internet - did Kalashnikov steal the idea of ​​​​an assault rifle from the StG-44? No. And there is a lot of serious evidence of this. Despite the external similarity, inside they are completely different in design. Has Kalashnikov seen the StG-44 and its drawings - of course, he has. There are no weapon designers who create their weapons from scratch, having no idea about their structure, the latest developments and innovations. Do designers look at each other for successful solutions? Of course, the StG-44 also contains a lot of parts spotted from earlier rifles. Among other things, the authorship of Mikhail Kalashnikov also belongs to the RPK (Kalashnikov light machine gun), perhaps a more ingenious invention. It has been used without any major changes since 1961 until now.

And so it will do

It would seem that anyone can make a mistake. Well, they were negligent, didn’t check, the consultants missed the mark, seven nannies have a child without an eye. The problem is that for most of the characters involved, this has already become the norm. On August 23, 2017, on the territory of the Prokhorovskoe Field museum-reserve, the Russian Military Historical Society, chaired by the Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, erected a stele in honor of the victory of the Red Army over the armored units of the Wehrmacht in the Battle of Kursk.

And there were factual errors in the inscription on the stele. The inscription on it reads "According to the concentration of tanks and aircraft Battle of Kursk has no equal in history. It involved more than 10,000 tanks and self-propelled guns, 6,800 aircraft, 52,000 guns and 3,200,000 people on both sides. Elite German tank units with the latest Tiger and Panther tanks were destroyed in the battle.

However, none of the four divisions in which these tanks were used was destroyed. Yes, they suffered serious damage, but they were defeated only in the spring of 1945. It would seem like a small thing, but this is a monument, the inscription on which will be read by thousands of people.

And there are many such examples. In 2014, the monument “Farewell of a Slav” was unveiled at the Belorussky railway station, which depicted a girl escorting a guy in World War I uniform to the front. And literally a week later a scandal erupted: the heraldic composition “1941” included in the monument turned out to be decorated not only with classic examples of Soviet weapons - the PPSh-41 submachine gun and light machine gun DP-27, but also two German Mauser 98k rifles.

As you may have guessed, the monument was conceived and created under the patronage of the Russian Military Historical Society, it was cast in bronze by the sculptor Salavat Shcherbakov, and opened by Vladimir Medinsky. The rifles were cut down and the correct ones were soldered in their place, but does that make it any easier?

What is written with a pen...

But there was also a reconstruction of the 1941 parade, held on Red Square in November 2016, when trucks and armored cars of the Soviet army