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Mikhail Kalashnikov
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==Early life== [[File:Kalashnikov Mikhail (5).jpg|thumb|left|Kalashnikov, {{circa|1944}}]] Kalashnikov was born in the village of [[Kurya, Kuryinsky District, Altai Krai|Kurya]],<ref name=bse/> in present-day [[Altai Krai]], [[Russia]], as the seventeenth child of the 19 children<ref name=wr>{{cite web|url=http://www.warheroes.ru/hero/hero.asp?Hero_id=9957|title=Калашников Михаил Тимофеевич|website=www.warheroes.ru|access-date=19 September 2017}}</ref> of Aleksandra Frolovna Kalashnikova (née Kaverina) and Timofey Aleksandrovich Kalashnikov, who were peasants.<ref name=wr/> In his youth, Mikhail suffered from various illnesses and was on the verge of death at age six.<ref name="r3" /> He was attracted to all kinds of machinery,<ref name="r1" /> but also wrote poetry, dreaming of becoming a poet.<ref name="KalashnikovSMHpoet" /> He later went on to write six books and continued to write poetry all of his life.<ref name="r2" /><ref name="BBCpoet" /> In 1930, his father and most of his family had their properties confiscated and were [[Dekulakization|deported]] as [[kulak]]s to the village of Nizhnyaya Mokhovaya, [[Tomsk Oblast]].<ref name="r1" /><ref name="r2" /> After deportation, his family had to combine farming with hunting, and thus Mikhail frequently used his father's rifle in his teens. Kalashnikov continued hunting into his 90s.<ref name=r3/> After completing seventh grade, Mikhail, with his stepfather's permission, left his family and returned to Kurya, hiking for nearly 1,000 km. In Kurya, he found a job in mechanics at a tractor station. A party organizer embedded within the factory noticed the man's dexterity and issued him a directive (''napravlenie'') to work at a nearby weapons design bureau, where he was employed as a tester of fitted stocks in rifles. In 1938, he was conscripted into the [[Red Army]]. Because of his engineering skills he was assigned as a tank mechanic, and later became a tank commander. While training, he made his first inventions, which concerned not only tanks, but also small weapons, and was personally awarded a wrist watch by [[Georgy Zhukov]].<ref name=r3/> Kalashnikov served on the [[T-34]]s of the 24th Tank Regiment, {{ill|12th Tank Division|ru|12-я танковая дивизия (СССР)}} stationed in [[Stryi]]<ref name=r3/> before the regiment retreated after the [[Battle of Brody (1941)|Battle of Brody]] in June 1941. He was wounded in combat in the [[Battle of Bryansk (1941)|Battle of Bryansk]] in October 1941<ref name=r3/> and hospitalised until April 1942.<ref name=kpss/> In the last few months of being in hospital, he overheard some fellow soldiers bemoaning their current rifles, which were plagued with reliability issues, such as jamming. As he continued to overhear the complaints that the Soviet soldiers had, as soon as he was discharged, he went to work on what would become the famous [[AK-47]] assault rifle.<ref name=r4/> [[File:AK-SMG-1942.jpg|thumb|left|The SMG predecessor of the Kalashnikov rifle]] Seeing the drawbacks of the standard infantry weapons at the time, he decided to construct a new rifle for the Soviet military. During this time Kalashnikov began designing a [[submachine gun]].<ref name=r5/> Although his first submachine gun design was not accepted into service, his talent as a designer was noticed.<ref name=r3/> From 1942 onwards, Kalashnikov was assigned to the Central Scientific-developmental Firing Range for Rifle Firearms of the Chief Artillery Directorate of the [[Red Army]].<ref name=r6/> [[File:AK-47 type II noBG.png|thumb|350px|right|A Type 2 AK-47, the first machined receiver variation]] In 1944, he designed a gas-operated [[carbine]] for the new [[7.62×39mm]] [[Cartridge (firearms)|cartridge]]. This weapon, influenced by the [[M1 Garand|Garand]] rifle design, lost out to the new [[Sergei Gavrilovich Simonov|Simonov]] carbine which would eventually be adopted as the [[SKS]]; but it became a basis for his entry in an assault rifle competition in 1946.<ref name=Bolotin/> His winning entry, with the designer recorded by the alias "Mikhtim" (so named by taking the first letters of his name and patronymic, '''Mikh'''ail '''Tim'''ofeyevich) became the prototype for the development of a family of prototype rifles.<ref name=k1/> This process culminated in 1947, when he designed the [[AK-47]] (standing for ''Avtomat Kalashnikova model 1947''). In 1949, the AK became the standard issue [[assault rifle]] of the [[Soviet Army]] and went on to become Kalashnikov's most famous invention. While developing his first assault rifles, Kalashnikov competed with two much more experienced weapon designers, [[Vasily Degtyaryov]] and [[Georgy Shpagin]], who both accepted the superiority of the AK-47 design. Kalashnikov named [[Alexandr Zaitsev (engineer)|Alexandr Zaitsev]] and [[Vladimir Deikin]] as his major collaborators during those years.<ref name=r3/>
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