
Wednesday, December 25, 2013

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Lt Gen Mikhail T Kalashnikov, the arms designer credited by the Soviet Union with creating the AK-47, the first in a series of rifles and machine guns that would indelibly associate his name with modern war and become the most abundant firearms ever made, died Monday in Izhevsk, the capital of the Udmurtia republic, where he lived. He was 94.
Viktor Chulkov, a spokesman for the republic's president, confirmed the death, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.
Born a peasant on the southern Siberian steppe, Kalashnikov had little formal education and claimed to be a self-taught tinkerer who combined innate mechanical skills with the study of weapons to conceive of a rifle that achieved battlefield ubiquity.
His role in the rifle's creation,...