New book : Tokarev semi automatic and full auto rifles.
- Thread starter Ratnik
- Start date
I have Koldunov book. Most valuable part there, on my opinion, is detailed description of SVT production in Izhevsk.
Bring few more beers to Horilka's public readings, he have it also
I've got Koldunov's book coming as well. Really would like to compare both of them. Nevertheless, these are great addition to my Imperial Russian/Soviet weaponry book collection.
This is one of the reasons why we have small quantity of quality literature about Soviet firearms.
Expences of author are huge, not sure sales will cover it.
Russian archives are absolutely non friendly to researchers. You need to spend big amount of time and money to find few sheets that you need among thousands non related to your research. Archives located in different cities, so you need to spend time and money to travel and live there (and do this during vacations, and lose your salary).
Currently I'm writing a book about PPS SMG's, and understand how difficult it is.
There are many requests for english version. Publisher is doing business. What's the sense for him to doing this, if first run will ends with pdf file online?
Last edited:
Travis Bickle
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Upper Lower Middle Alberta
I would be all in for one if it were in English!
Looks very interesting.
Always wished their was a "Collectors Series" style book for Comm Bloc firerams in English.
Looks very interesting.
Always wished their was a "Collectors Series" style book for Comm Bloc firerams in English.
I am a light weight so by beer 7, I am ready for a nap.
Perhaps one of our Russian speaking members who have a copy of this book, could answer the following question:
Why didn't the Russians allow Simonov to perfect the SVT? Had it been more like the SKS, the SVT-40 had the potential to be a decent rifle.
Why didn't the Russians allow Simonov to perfect the SVT? Had it been more like the SKS, the SVT-40 had the potential to be a decent rifle.
I'm thinking... No time as they were at war when the SVT40 was brought out, immediately after that, they were probably broke, then the SKS came out and they got rid of the full power 7.62X54r in favour of the 7.62X39 then the SKS shortly after transformed into the AK47......maybe?
I believe they wanted to switch to an intermediate round like the 8mm Kurtz they found impressive in German hands. Looking at both rifles the SKS (also Siminov) is a sort of evolution of the SVT, scaled down and with a simplified gas system. The actions are really quite similar. And the SVT was/is a decent rifle, IMO anyway. The Germans and Finns loved it, both armies reissued captured rifles. The Russians found it lacking in durability and ease of maintenance and manufacture for their style of warfare. Like ramming and driving over top of Panther tanks when the T34's main gun proved ineffective....crazy Russians. Mosin Nagants were simply easier to crank out en masse and could take heavy abuse, hence the SVT production ending in the first couple months of 1945.
For anyone not buying the book because it's in Russian, I'll let you know what I've done. I subscribed to an online optical character recognition service that allows you to convert scans to cyrillic word documents. These can be fed into Google translate and what comes out is not bad. I'd say 75% makes good sense. The rest you can work on one word at a time with Google translate if you want. The Chumak book is a tremendous resource and now with most of it "translated" I'm very glad I bought it. The service from Russia was great and Chumak signed the frontispiece.
milsurpo
milsurpo
Travis Bickle
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Upper Lower Middle Alberta
Sounds like a recipe for a severe migraine! lol
Ha-ha. I doubt I would switch to it, not my native, just happen to know the language of archenemy. Bar fights - yeah! Bring your surplus rifles and bayonets to bar fight! What's better - Mauser 1871 with bayo or Swiss Vetterli with bayo?
It's all much simpler. Tokarev did not have a chance to perfect the rifle and resolve some issues. Drastic changes would involve the risks and costs. Only small, non-critical changes were made - mainly to make it sturdier. There were tons of suggested improvements both from Tokarev and from other ppl over the course of war, but commission voted most of those changes down for valid reasons of costs, lack of resources, need for retooling, need for training etc. Also don't forget that Tokarev had to deal with very primitive Soviet machinery and Tokarev and other designers had to cut some angles on lot of their ideas. Russians never had very good machinery, they had been buying it from US and Europe and then trying to create something alike. No free market, no competition, no progress. After the war they moved whole factories from Germany and used that machinery to produce stuff until 1970x.
BTW all soviet designers had been influencing each other and of course they were sourcing their ideas from all around the world. TT-33 was heavy influenced by Browning 1903. If you look at the Simonov AVS-36 then you'll see that very unique muzzle brake. It was designed by Tokarev for his 1930x trial rifles.
So the long story short - in 1936 Simonov was able to provide better rifle design (Tokarev rifle lost), in 1938 - Tokarev won and Simonov's design lost, in 1945 - again Simonov won. Every time there were 4-6 rifles designs competing. And then they captured Hugo Schmeisser and after two years of working for kamrad Kalashnikov new wonder appeared - AK-47. And kamrad Kalashnikov never designed anything apart of AK and AK-based LMG. Funny, eh?
Last edited:
