Drawing of a German rifle on the Kalashnikov monument. The sculptor Shcherbakov will change the monument to Kalashnikov with a German rifle. Wehrmacht small arms

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 weapons created by the Soviet designer. 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 “In terms of the concentration of tanks and aircraft, the Battle of Kursk has no equal in history. More than 10,000 tanks and self-propelled guns, 6,800 aircraft, 52,000 guns and 3,200,000 people on both sides were involved in it. The elite were destroyed in the battle German tank units with the latest Tiger and Panther tanks.

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 was decorated not only with classic examples of Soviet weapons - the PPSh-41 submachine gun and the DP-27 light machine gun, but also with 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

However, due to the profanity with which the blogger expresses his indignation at the historical ignorance of the sculptor, “NI” has no right to reproduce the text of the blog in full.

“You can enlarge and compare in Photoshop - everything is repeated there exactly down to the millimeter. That is, yes, the engraving was absolutely exactly removed from this picture.The only trouble is that the picture shows the assembly diagram of the German MKb.42. You can look at encyclopedia of weapons. But the military community was in charge of the work on the monument!” writes the blogger.

However, there is no need to be surprised. Especially after the sensational mistakes in postcards and posters and billboards that were put up for the anniversary of the Victory throughout the country.

“Don’t say it was them by accident. For this you have to beat him, painfully and publicly. These are sculptor boys, damn it!” - Pashalok wrote on his Facebook page.

A monument to small arms designer Mikhail Kalashnikov and his assault rifle was unveiled in the capital on Gunsmith's Day, which is celebrated on September 19. The monument appeared in the city center, at the intersection of Sadovaya-Karetnaya, Dolgorukovskaya and Oruzheyny Lane streets. The author of the sculpture was People's Artist of Russia Salavat Shcherbakov.

It is possible that such an overlap with a machine gun is not accidental. According to one of the popular versions, the German StG-44 rifle became the prototype for complete or partial copying during the development of the AK. Arguments in favor of this version include the external similarity of the guns and the fact that the Kalashnikov assault rifle appeared precisely at the time when a group of leading German gunsmiths was working in Izhevsk. However, experts refute the version that Mikhail Kalashnikov borrowed ideas from StG designer Hugo Schmeisser. Firstly, because in both versions of the weapon there were no fundamentally innovative elements; all of them had been known since the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The novelty of these systems lay in the concept of a weapon chambered for an intermediate cartridge between a pistol and a rifle-machine-gun cartridge; the AK also surpassed the German model in terms of reliability, so there can be no question of any copying. Another argument in favor of the inconsistency of the version is the fact that the AK was developed in conditions of strict secrecy and the involvement of German specialists was impossible. Another assumption is based on borrowing - supposedly the Czechoslovak ZK-420 rifle became the prototype of the Soviet machine gun and German rifle.

There is a hypothesis that does not detract from the talent of the Soviet gunsmith Kalashnikov, but directs him in a slightly different direction. According to it, Mikhail Kalashnikov did not invent anything - he studied the systems and details of the most successful types of small arms, refined, improved some functions and competently combined them, designing the legendary AK-47. It was Kalashnikov who selected and tested the best combinations of elements, looked for ways of joining and introduced productive ideas. Therefore, if he cannot be called an inventor in its pure form, then, without a doubt, he remains the creator of the Kalashnikov assault rifle.

BY THE WAY

The Russian Military Historical Society will remove the diagram of the German StG 44 assault rifle from the monument to Mikhail Kalashnikov on the Garden Ring in Moscow. agency "Moscow" Executive Director of RVIO Vladislav Kononov. He said that the sculptor Salavat Shcherbakov and his apprentice “got something wrong.” According to him, RVIO made a requirement only for the weapon that Kalashnikov holds in his hands - an assault rifle of his own design, Kononov called the rest "a flight of creative imagination." “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,” Shcherbakov told RBC. According to Kononov, such an error only emphasizes how different the AK is from the StG 44, and that accusations of Kalashnikov borrowing the design are “categorically false.”

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 assault rifle from the German StG 44 rifle. 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 a strand of hair is not lying correctly in the portrait, 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. The artistic composition depicts the figure of the globe and the image of St. George the Victorious as symbols of preserving peace and victory “over the forces of evil.”

RIA News"

“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.

On a sculptural composition dedicated to the Soviet designer Mikhail Kalashnikov, a drawing of the German StG 44 automatic rifle was found. A historian drew attention to the diagram of the Third Reich assault rifle on the bas-relief on Facebook. “Don’t say it was them by accident. For this you have to beat him, painfully and publicly. These are sculptor boys, damn it!” reads the caption to the published photo.

The StG 44 assault rifle (Sturmgewehr 44, also known as MP 43/MP 44) was developed by designer Hugo Schmeisser during World War II. Until 1945, about 420 thousand copies were manufactured.

“We have no information about the error yet. We depict seven machine guns, the eighth machine gun is in the hands of. In addition, we depict plumbing and drawing tools. If there is an error, we will correct it. The most important thing now is to separate what is happening from political chatter,” he said.

According to Shcherbakov, he would like the historian Yuri Pasholok, who discovered the error on the monument, to personally contact the sculptor, “so that I understand what and where the error is.” “At the same time, someone says that this specialist from social networks actually does not exist. If there is a specialist and he is right, then we will be very grateful and will make certain corrections,” noted the author of the monument.

At the same time, according to Kononov, the fact that the mistake was discovered suggests that the StG and the Kalashnikov assault rifle are “completely different assault rifles, and it is categorically incorrect to accuse Kalashnikov of borrowing”

The monument to Kalashnikov, created by sculptor Salavat Shcherbakov, was inaugurated at the intersection of Sadovaya-Karetnaya and Dolgorukovskaya streets in the center of Moscow on September 19. The public reaction to the new Moscow landmark turned out to be mixed. Many Muscovites are embarrassed by the figure of the famous weapons designer and are not sure that such individuals should be immortalized. This position was outlined, in particular, by the musician.

At the same time, the artist is confused not only by the ethical side of the issue, but also by the aesthetic one. "OK. Let Kalashnikov. But why such a mediocre, ugly sculpture?” says the musician. According to him, even in Soviet times, “this idol” would not have passed the artistic council. “Well, why are we spoiling our city like this, disgracing ourselves in front of the whole world?” he concluded.

Makarevich was supported by his colleague, the singer who performed last year at the Eurovision 2016 contest. “I can’t remain silent... it’s disgusting to erect such a monument in the center of the capital. A man with a machine gun in his hands! The entire government cares so much about the psychological state of children, constantly introducing new bans, and then immediately erects a monument to Kalashnikov with an assault rifle in the center! What do we teach children? Fight? Make this picture the Norm!? There are not enough emotions to express indignation,” the artist wrote on his Instagram (original spelling).

“No dancer or singer will listen to the opinion of the sculptor on how he danced or sang. This is a profession, and you don’t need to get involved in it,”

- said Shcherbakov. According to him, even professionals behave modestly and do not absolutize everything as the ultimate truth.

The installation of the monument was timed to coincide with Gunsmith's Day in Russia. The website published a congratulation to workers of the military-industrial complex from Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which the Russian leader also mentioned Kalashnikov. “We are rightfully proud of Russian craftsmen, engineers, designers, whose creative genius created unique, world-famous weapons. The names of such talented gunsmiths as Pavel Zakhava, Georgy Shpagin, Mikhail Kalashnikov will forever remain in the military, heroic history of the Fatherland,” the text of the congratulations says.

It is worth noting that the sculpture depicting the world-famous gunsmith installed in Moscow is not the first work on this topic. The previous monument to Kalashnikov was erected in 2015 at the military memorial cemetery in Mytishchi, where the designer was buried after his death in 2013.

Of course, we are no longer surprised by anything, but on the monument to Kalashnikov, unveiled in Moscow, they placed a diagram of the German STG-44 assault rifle. Historian Yuri Pashalok drew attention to this

The building that housed the “sharazhka”, where Hugo Schmeisser worked from 1945 to 1952. In 1953 he died, and all “Kalashnikov’s inventions” stopped

From the memoirs of Hugo Schmeisser:


“If it weren’t for that idiot Misha Kalashnikov, who always got under our feet and prevented everyone from working, we would have invented the AK-47 not in ’52, but in 1947, as planned.
There was nothing worse and more harmful for the engineering bureau than this arrogant cretin, who was always meddling with his bast shoes in our drawings. Otto twice tried to strangle him, Hans tried to beat him with a crossbar, and Fritz tried to stab him with a compass. The blockhead did not understand that he was disturbing everyone. I, as best I could, reassured my friends in misfortune: at least we were warm and fed, unlike our comrades at the logging site. The turning point was 1951, when Misha went on a long drinking binge: Albert came up with the idea of ​​giving him alcohol, in which we washed the springs of test specimens. Realizing that we could easily get rid of him with the help of vodka, I reluctantly stole 12 liters from the laboratory and ordered them to be given to Mikhail. We had nothing to clean our test samples with, but we were spared his presence. Now he appeared at the office once a month, unshaven and scary as hell, with shaking hands, demanding his eternal chekushka. We gave him a new can and sent him away. By the end of the year, the test copy was ready. Misha was brought to the shooting in a children’s sleigh, drunk and with an accordion.”