According to various sources, about 70 million Kalashnikov assault rifles of various modifications were manufactured by the middle of 1990, both in the USA and abroad, including those made under license and others without permission. Their number has risen to perhaps 100 million by the present time (2008).
Russia marks AK-47's 60th birthday (ABC News Article - 2006)
With his shock of white hair, brown sandals and hearing aid, the designer of the world's deadliest assault rifle took a philosophical outlook as he celebrated his invention's 60th anniversary on Friday. "It was the Germans who turned me into an arms designer," Mikhail Kalashnikov, 87, said at celebrations in Moscow of the 60th anniversary of the creation of his AK-47 automatic rifle. "If I hadn't taken part in the war, I would probably have made technology to ease the tough work of the peasants," said Mr Kalashnikov, who grew up in a peasant family in the remote Altai mountain region by the Mongolian border. Instead, he created a rifle that has become an iconic brand, as symbolic of Russia as vodka and fur coats, and the weapon of choice of guerrillas and dozens of armies around the world. Mr Kalashnikov started working on his rifle in 1947, driven to design by Soviet defeats in the early years of World War II at the hands of far better-armed German soldiers. The Kalashnikov quickly became prized for its sturdy reliability in difficult field conditions. It can also be built relatively easily - "in any workshop," he said. More than 100 million Kalashnikov rifles have now been sold worldwide.
Russia’s Trademark Gun, but Others Grab Profits, by C. J. CHIVERS (New York Times, 2007)
The automatic Kalashnikov, the world’s most abundant firearm and a martial symbol with a multiplicity of meanings, turns 60 this year. In some places this is cause to shudder. In Russia it is treated as a milestone to celebrate, and a chance to cry foul.
Once strictly Communist products, the AK-47 and its offspring are killing tools so durable and easy to use that they were heralded as achievements of state socialism and industrial might. Uncoupled from the laws of supply and demand by their origins in planned economies, they flowed from arms plants in the tens of millions, becoming national defense and foreign policy instruments for the Soviet Union and allied states.
A beautiful AK-74 (note the identifying groove in the stock)
But the 60th birthday party has displayed the rifle’s evolving place in both the market and the Kremlin’s mind. These days the Kalashnikov is seen through capitalist lenses, and argued about in ways that could not possibly have been envisioned by its Communist creators.
In cash-hungry Russia, Kalashnikov is now an informal brand. And as purchases of Kalashnikov rifles and their derivatives continue on foreign markets, Russian arms manufacturers and exporters worry not about ideology and world dominance, but over sales opportunities lost.
The back story manages to be both odd and unsurprising. Russia’s anger is at the United States, a potential customer that has become, once again, a premier distributor, handing out the weapons to indigenous police officers and soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. The United States was also a bulk purchaser in the 1980s, when it supplied mostly Chinese and Egyptian Kalashnikovs to anti-Soviet insurgents in Afghanistan.
In returning to the Kalashnikov market, the Pentagon has shunned purchases from Russia, opting instead for AK-47 knockoffs available for sale or donation from other countries’ stockpiles. (The true AK-47 was short lived and swiftly modified; its many variants, almost all of which the Soviet Union helped create via foreign aid, are often inaccurately called AK-47s, by now universal shorthand.)
In Afghanistan, the United States has selected the AMD-65, a short-barreled Hungarian Kalashnikov copy with a forward hand grip and futuristic muzzle, as the standard weapon of the Afghan police. It has received most of its projected 55,600 AMD-65s via its foreign military sales programs, according to data provided by
Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan.
The next photo shows a Hungarian AMD with a side-folding stock, and a Yugo with an underfolder. These fine firearms belong to Carlos, and the photo is used with his permission.
Another 10,000 Kalashnikov knockoffs were transferred in 2006 to Afghanistan from Slovenia. At least some weapons being handed out, based on an examination of the shipping containers and rifles this spring in Afghanistan, are inexpensive Chinese clones.
Similarly, in Iraq (which once had its own Kalashnikov plant, built with Communist help) the United States scrounged or purchased more than 185,000 Kalashnikov-style rifles and light machine guns for Iraqi security forces from 2003 and 2006, according to the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.
Golden AKs of Saddam Hussein
It did so without buying a single weapon from Russia, which, as creator of the underlying design that all automatic Kalashnikovs share, regards itself as the rightful owner of an informal but global brand. These transfers have alarmed and irritated Russian officials and arms merchants, and split the AK-47’s 60th birthday celebrations between parties and bitter pleas.
.......to be continued
