At one time, namely at the beginning of the twentieth century, in one of the textbooks of the cadet corps there was the following phrase: "Russia is not an industrial or commercial state, but a military state, destined by its very destiny to be a threat to the peoples!" And I must say that the attitude towards military force, as a means of resolving any issues that have arisen, runs like a red thread through the entire history of the Russian state. However, at the same time (and this is one of the paradoxes of our mentality), the Russian state has never been distinguished by any particular aggressiveness. Moreover, the main expenditure on the army until 1917 consisted of appropriations for hay and straw for horses, mentics, tashki, edging and leggings, rather than modern rifles and implements. Obviously, the fashion "to die in beautiful clothes" came to us through Peter the Great, and again due to his specific mentality. Because for a more sophisticated and educated mind it would be obvious that nothing better than a rifle uniform for the Russian army could be invented, including iron helmets, and even more, having shaved all the nobility, it was necessary to keep the soldiers' beards so that they would have a wilder one, compared to Europeans, kind! And to spend money not on cloth, "not worse than English" and not feathers, a la the guards of King Louis, but on the best weapon, and so it was possible to fight in a cloth, if only it was warm.
SVT-38 (Army Museum, Stockholm)
Well, this introduction is needed in order to show, again, the specifics of the Russian mentality and attitude towards the army. However, it is clear that she, the mentality, and the attitude towards her, also did not stand still, but developed. That is why already in the 20s of the last century, along with the reforms in the field of uniforms (well, as without it, my dear!), Serious attention began to be paid to the actual weapon. Here, apparently, the experience of the First World War and the Civil War affected. And not without reason to work on a fundamentally new, now automatic rifle designer V. F. Tokarev started back … in 1920, and in 1921 its first prototype appeared. It was followed by samples of 1922, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1928, 1929, which were tested among others in 1926 and 1928. That is, even then, the country, barely recovering from the hardships of the Civil War, took a serious step towards improving the entire system of small arms of the new Red Army. The work continued in the following years. So, already in 1930 F. B. Tokarev presented a new self-loading rifle with a fixed barrel and a gas vent mechanism for the next tests, followed by the 1931 and 1932 models. They were all different devices, and those who want to get to know their design better have all the possibilities for this, if only they visit the Russian State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation (RGANTD) located in Samara (former Kuibyshev), where they all (well, many!) there are technical descriptions and detailed drawings. I kept it all with my own hands, but … then I was not interested in small arms, and therefore, having looked through it, I put it off. However, this "fishy place" is quite accessible today for many, so I do not make secrets out of it, but on the contrary, I suggest that everyone who is interested and interested in this topic should work in it.
ABC-36 without a store. (Army Museum, Stockholm)
After going through a lot of options, the designer in 1933 decided to install a gas chamber not under, but above the barrel, changed the location of the sight, at the same time replacing the frame sight with a sector one, and put a detachable magazine for 15 rounds on the rifle. Nevertheless, after competitive trials in 1935-1936, for which Tokarev submitted his rifles developed in 1935 and 1936, the Red Army did not accept his rifle, but an automatic rifle S. G. Simonov (AVS-36). Thus, it became the first automatic rifle adopted by the Red Army. It would seem, what else is needed?
But, nevertheless, on May 22, 1938, a competition for a self-loading rifle was announced again. And according to their results, on February 26, 1939, the Tokarev rifle was finally adopted by the Red Army, which received the designation “7, 62-mm self-loading rifle of the Tokarev system mod. 1938 (SVT-38) . Justification? And such that the Simonov rifle showed flaws!
ABC-36 with a shop.
However, on January 19, 1939, Simonov reported to the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) that he had eliminated the shortcomings found in his rifle. To select the best sample on May 20, 1939, a commission was created that was supposed to compare the rifles of Simonov and Tokarev. She noted that the Simon rifle is easier to manufacture, uses less metal and is generally cheaper. That is, it should have been adopted, right? However, on July 17, 1939, the Defense Committee, on the personal instructions of Stalin, nevertheless decided to adopt the SVT-38. The famous historian of Soviet weapons D. N. Bolotin wrote in this regard that the main role here was played by the fact that Stalin personally knew Tokarev, but he was unfamiliar with Simonov. Another very important circumstance was the traditional fear of our leadership that automatic weapons would require too many cartridges, that, having received such rifles, our soldiers would start firing in the white light, as a pretty penny, as a result they would not have enough ammunition. And … again, knowing our mentality, I must say that in this case, Stalin was absolutely right.
The production of new rifles developed very quickly. For example, on July 16, 1939, the first Tokarev rifle arr. 1938, on July 25, it was launched in small batches, and already on October 1, its serial production was started!
Based on the experience of combat use in the Soviet-Finnish war, the rifle was improved, after which, in June 1940, the production of SVT-38 was discontinued, and on April 13, 1940, an improved model of SVT-40 was adopted, and already from July 1, 1940 it was started its manufacture.
SVT-40.
Any modernization is aimed at improving the technical characteristics and correcting the identified deficiencies. But in this case, it was not possible to get rid of many of the shortcomings! Meanwhile, it was noted that adjusting the gas vent mechanism is inconvenient, the magazine is unreliable, but the main thing is the rifle's sensitivity to factors such as pollution, dust, thick grease and high and low temperatures. The rifle was described as heavy, but it was not possible to reduce its weight - this was reflected in the strength of the parts. Therefore, the weight of the SVT-40 was reduced by reducing the size of the wooden parts, and many holes were drilled in the casing of the gas outlet mechanism.
Author with SVT-40 rifle. Unfortunately, there were few photos from its full-scale sample, fewer than from all other rifles. The reason is that photographing it … is inconvenient, and even more inconvenient to disassemble. Perhaps the lack of experience affected. But we took it apart together, my collector friend and me. Both with higher education, who have never been in the hands of any weapon. And in the end, having disassembled it, we barely assembled it later, and only then we remembered that we hadn’t filmed it in disassembled form. But we simply did not have the strength to repeat all this again. So you can understand yesterday's collective farmers with three classes of education, young men from the villages of Central Asia and mountain auls, when, having entered the army, they received such weapons in their hands and had to take care of them. In my opinion, some of them were just … afraid of this rifle and, having fired a couple of times, they just threw it and it’s good if they didn’t surrender after that. And here's another interesting thing: it seems that it is not heavier than ordinary rifles and it seems to be good in the hands, but all the same - I personally have the impression of it as of something uncomfortable or awkward. Although God forbid I can not explain where it came from. Just before that, the Romanian carbine in his hands took - mine, and tried on this one - well, "shafts - shafts!" She seemed especially uncomfortable to me with a bayonet, but it is clear that this is just my purely personal opinion.
Rifle production, meanwhile, was rapidly gaining momentum. July - 3416 pcs., August - 8100, September - 10700 and in just 18 days in early October - 11960 pcs.
In 1940, the Red Army entered service with a sniper version of the SVT-40 rifle, and sniper rifles arr. 1891/30 stopped producing. But she gave more dispersion than the old "mosinka", and attempts to increase the accuracy of sniper SVT-40 failed despite all efforts. For this reason, from October 1, 1942, their production was discontinued, but the production of sniper "three-line" decided to resume again. In total, in 1941, 34782 SVT-40s were produced in a sniper version, in 1942 - 14210. Production of the rifle continued until the end of the war, but … at first it went on an increasing, and then on a downward, although all of them were made about one and a half million units, including about 50,000 SVT-40 sniper rifles. Well, in total, 1,031,861 rifles were produced in 1941, but in 1942, only 264,148, and the same dynamics was observed in the future. The GKO decree on the termination of its production was followed only on January 3, 1945 (only two weeks earlier than the decree on the termination of the production of the rifle model 1891/30. However, it's still funny that there is still no order to remove the SVT-40 from service !
Well, and then on May 20, 1942, the State Defense Committee adopted a new decree concerning this rifle - to begin its production in a version capable of firing bursts. The rifle received the designation AVT-40 and in July it began to enter the army. That is, it was already a fully automatic rifle, unlike the self-loading SVT-40, and in fact was a light machine gun. True, continuous fire was allowed only in exceptional cases, for example, when repelling an enemy attack.
Well, it is clear that the change in the firing mode led to an even greater decrease in the survivability of the rifle parts, the number of delays increased sharply, and the confidence of the Red Army soldiers in this rifle fell even more. Reports from the fronts of the Great Patriotic War began to constantly come across reports that “both self-loading (SVT-40) and automatic (AVT-40) rifles are not used enough in combat conditions, which the troops explain by the complexity of the design, insufficient reliability and accuracy of self-loading and automatic rifles ". In fact, the reasons were somewhat different. So, sailors and marines, also armed with Tokarev rifles, fought with them throughout the war and never complained about all this. The answer is very simple: young people with at least some education were recruited into the navy, while everyone was taken into the infantry. And it is clear that a guy or a man-peasant in age, who had never held anything more complicated than a shovel or a ketman in his hands, simply due to his low culture and technical literacy could not properly maintain this rather complex and well-maintained “fighting mechanism”. The Germans, who included it in the Wehrmacht's arsenal, did not complain about the rifle, the Finns did not complain, they even wanted to release their own automatic rifle on its basis. And only our fighters, taken into the army literally from the plow … complained, which is not surprising if you think about it. The situation that took place during the First World War was repeated, and was described in detail by the famous Russian and Soviet gunsmith V. G. Fedorov in his book "In Search of Weapons", in which he wrote how our soldiers in the 5th Army of the North-Western Front received brand new Japanese rifles, purchased by his commission with colossal difficulty, did not even bother to remove abundant grease from them. they were naturally covered during their transportation from Japan. And of course, when shooting, they gave continuous misfires! The officers immediately began to speak out in the sense that the Japanese "as our former enemies, deliberately slipped us unusable rifles!" Therefore, they say, "I had to quickly retreat, and many threw away their useless weapons." However, none of these officers, too, looked into the mechanism of the sent rifles and did not explain to the soldiers that the grease must be removed! However, what are the commanders - so are the soldiers.
And here all the same thing happened one to one! It turns out that with all the shortcomings that this rifle really had, it turned out to be too difficult for our "collective farm", but Tokarev cannot be blamed for this!
