Born
in 1919 into a peasant family in the village of kulak Kouria ( Altai
krai ), it is the 17th in a family of 19 children, eight of whom
survived. In 1925 , he is older than 6 years , he contracted a high fever and narrowly escapes death.4 . Victim
of " dekulakization " organized by Stalin, who wants to eliminate the
kulaks ( considered hostile to revolutionary ideals ) 4, he knows at the
age of 11 years , deportation in Tomsk Oblast , Siberia with his family
. He escaped twice at the age of 15 and 17 years, then worked in a deposit Railway Turkestan - Siberia.
In
1938, at the age of 19, he completed his military service and follows
Kiev school charioteers and shows interest in developing improvements
for Tokarev TT 33, the tank turret and tank motorcycle. Given this ability , Marshal Zhukov sent a course specializing in the mechanical construction of tanks.
As
charioteer , he was badly wounded during the war at the Battle of
Bryansk in 1941 during the operation to stop the German breakthrough to
Moscow . He
made a long stay in hospital and during his convalescence, he began
to draw models of pistols because he had been struck by the technical
superiority of the equipment of soldiers of the German army . He had the idea to create a fast and reliable assault rifle small and present it to the Marshal of Artillery Nikolai Voronov . It
sustains and grows perfecting his machine gun which ultimately will be
retained by the Soviet state to be produced from 1947. This rifle is
named Avtomat Kalachnikova 1947 the famous AK -47 ( commonly called "
Kalashnikov ") . Its
simplicity, lightness and hardiness make it a worldwide success that
have been produced over one hundred million units, including copies . However , intellectual property is collective in Soviet law , the
success of the invention has not the richness of the inventor, who has
kept modestes5 income.
In total, Mikhail Kalashnikov created nearly one hundred and fifty different weapons. It
is , according to its biographie6 man most decorated of Russia ( Order
of Lenin , Stalin Prize in 1949 , two starry medals Hero of Socialist
Labor ) . It is made Doctor of Science and Technology in 1971 and has deposited 35 patents. He was made general in 1994.
He was Deputy to the Supreme Soviet under Stalin and under Khrushchev. He lived in Izhevsk in the Urals , where is installed the Izhmash arms factory. He had a son , Viktor who works in the Izhmash factory.
The
fact that the Kalashnikov rifle has become the most popular assault
rifle in the world made him say that: 7 "I 'm proud of my invention ,
but I 'm sad that it is used by terrorists " during a visit to Germany
, adding: "I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could
use and that would help farmers in their work ... for example a
lawnmower . "
He said in 2009 that "it is not nice to see all kinds of criminals take with my arms. " 8
He died December 23, 2013 at the age of 94 years .
