AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War (20 page)
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Authors: Larry Kahaner
BOOK: AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War
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For his entire life, Kalashnikov had purposely kept his distance from politics. He disliked politicians, blaming them for the misuse of his weapon. However, the importance of this mammoth sale to the Russian economy drove the usually nonpolitical Kalashnikov to denounce American foreign policy.
What a change this was from the naive, less sophisticated Kalashnikov who had visited the United States in 1990, the first time he had ever been allowed to travel outside of Russia.
6
KALASHNIKOV AND HIS GUN VISIT AMERICA
IN 1990, UNDER THE GOODWILL of glasnost, Mikhail Kalashnikov, aging and poor, traveled outside the Soviet Union for the first time. He was the guest of Ed Ezell, small-arms curator at the Smithsonian Institution, who had visited Moscow two years earlier to meet the AK-47’s inventor as part of the museum’s program to videotape the twentieth century’s most influential inventors. Also in the collection were tapes of Eugene Stoner, inventor of the M-16, the AK’s rival.
Soon, the world’s gun titans would meet.
Prying Kalashnikov out of the Soviet Union had not been easy. Ezell wrote him a letter in 1972 through the Soviet embassy in Washington. When Kalashnikov received the envelope with a U.S. postmark he was both astonished and frightened. No one from the United States had ever contacted him before. Despite fame and notoriety in his home country, few outside the Soviet Union knew anything about the man whose weapon had changed the face of modern warfare. At home, he was a war hero who had helped protect the motherland and spread the Communist doctrine to every corner of the globe. To the rest of the world, his name symbolized two extremes—terrorism against legitimate governments and the struggle for freedom against ruthless dictators—but few knew that he was even alive. During the deadly conflicts of the cold war years, Soviet authorities purposely kept this man hidden from outsiders.
Fearful that government agents would deem the American’s note as his compliance in a subversive action, Kalashnikov contacted local Communist Party officials, who subjected him to a lengthy “consultation” during which they suggested he get in touch with the KGB. Kalashnikov’s first instinct upon discussing the unsolicited letter with the local KGB agent was to throw up his hands in an ignorant gesture. “Oh, no! Why should I ever write there, to the States?” After more than a year of these back-and-forth consultations, Kalashnikov received permission to respond to the letter with Ezell’s innocently requested items: a biography and a signed photograph.
The door opened.
Over the following years, Ezell mailed Kalashnikov several books he had authored, including
The AK-47 Story
, which he wrote by piecing together snippets of information about the history of Soviet firearms back to the 1800s, the AK-47, and Kalashnikov. With the softening of Soviet-U.S. relations in 1989, Ezell and a video crew met the sixty-nine-year-old Kalashnikov in Moscow for sightseeing and filming. At first apprehensive, Ezell was put at ease upon seeing an animated, congenial Kalashnikov, who greeted him with a hearty bear hug. It became clear to Ezell over the following days that Kalashnikov deemed the visit an important event for him, the first recognition of his contribution by those outside the Soviet Union. He was also flattered when Kalashnikov told him that he planned to have
The AK-47 Story
translated into Russian so he could see what Ezell and the English-speaking world knew about him.
The AK-47 Story
, which he wrote by piecing together snippets of information about the history of Soviet firearms back to the 1800s, the AK-47, and Kalashnikov. With the softening of Soviet-U.S. relations in 1989, Ezell and a video crew met the sixty-nine-year-old Kalashnikov in Moscow for sightseeing and filming. At first apprehensive, Ezell was put at ease upon seeing an animated, congenial Kalashnikov, who greeted him with a hearty bear hug. It became clear to Ezell over the following days that Kalashnikov deemed the visit an important event for him, the first recognition of his contribution by those outside the Soviet Union. He was also flattered when Kalashnikov told him that he planned to have
The AK-47 Story
translated into Russian so he could see what Ezell and the English-speaking world knew about him.
Over the following days, the entourage visited firing ranges and museums, including Leningrad’s Central Museum of the Artillery, Engineer, and Communications Troops, which housed more than 120 types of AK rifles. Ezell soon understood that he was in the presence of a national celebrity whose name was known on the street by Soviet citizens, yet unknown elsewhere. In a private moment, away from the others, Kalashnikov confided to Ezell that he had appreciated the books he had sent over the years and his attention, but he was unable to express his appreciation during the cold war environment. Now he hoped this would change with the easing of tensions between the two superpowers.
And they were. During a later presentation before the Virginia Gun Collectors Association, Ezell spoke about his visit to Moscow and mentioned that he would like to bring Kalashnikov to the United States to meet Eugene Stoner but did not have funding in the Smithsonian budget. In concert with a hunting club called NORVA in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, the group footed the bill for the arms maker, his daughter Elena, and an interpreter to visit.
On May 15, 1990, Kalashnikov arrived at Washington’s Dulles Airport, the first time he had been permitted to visit a foreign country. After decades of animosity between the two nations, Kalashnikov had worried about his treatment by the American bureaucracy, but his anxieties disappeared when Customs and Immigration officials moved him and his small group quickly through the line.
The next day was the big day. He and Stoner finally met at the Seaport Inn in the Old Town section of Alexandria, Virginia, a restaurant where President George Washington had dined and slept two centuries earlier. Both men knew each other’s work intimately, but the two had never met or even corresponded, because the gulf of the cold war was too wide.
Before the gun makers met over dinner, Kalashnikov’s hosts took him shopping for new clothes to replace his tattered ones. The inventor of the world’s most popular firearm was so poor that his hosts gave him money for his purchases. He explained to them how the government had never patented his design, and it was licensed for free to many countries. Kalashnikov never saw a ruble from his work beyond his small government stipend. On a shopping trip to buy a pair of shoes, Kalashnikov didn’t see his size. He became dejected, until one of his hosts told him that the salesman could walk in the back and look for a different style in his size. His face brightened. This was typical of Kalashnikov’s Soviet perspective, where scarcity was commonplace and you made do without life’s niceties.
The irony of the situation was not lost on Stoner or Kalashnikov’s hosts. They saw a man whose invention was found in virtually every country, and had made millions of dollars for middlemen and gun dealers, yet he was a pauper who knew practically nothing of the outside world. His country had kept him purposely isolated.
These two symbols of the cold war were cordial as they discussed their competing weapons, but when they talked about money, Kalashnikov began to understand the stark difference between the Communist and capitalist marketplace. Stoner said that he made about one dollar per M-16 sold. At the time, about six million were in circulation. Kalashnikov admitted, sheepishly, that he made no money from his invention, which had sold ten times the number of M-16s, but added that he did it for the motherland, and it didn’t bother him a bit. Clearly, it did. The rest of the evening went well, but one could see Kalashnikov and his daughter engaged in lively but whispered discussions. They were talking about how much money Stoner enjoyed from the M-16 and scores of his other inventions. They were flabbergasted to learn that Stoner flew around the country in his own plane.
This visit to the United States opened Kalashnikov’s eyes. His government had awarded him medals and citations but no money. Schoolchildren knew his name and studied his contributions. He was a hero in Russia. On the other hand, Stoner had no military medals, and only gun enthusiasts and military historians knew his name, but he had benefited richly from his invention.
During dinner, Elena asked her father, “Would you like to trade places with Stoner?”
“No,” he answered, honestly and sincerely. Still, there was a trace of envy in his voice.
Over the following days, the arms designers visited the Smithsonian Institution, the NRA’s National Firearms Museum, and a hunting lodge owned by the gun club at Star Tannery, Virginia, near the West Virginia border. There, both men fired each other’s weapons, and it was clear that each understood the other’s firearm intimately. Stoner introduced Kalashnikov to skeet shooting and as the two fired in turn, Ezell noted how they had bonded, not needing an interpreter to get their thoughts across. He was fascinated at how well these two men got along. “They are self-made men,” Ezell later said. “Gene Stoner has made a lot of money and Kalashnikov has a lot of social status in the Soviet Union, but neither one of them is pompous. They are both down-to-earth people. Both are relaxed and secure in knowing they are good at what they do, but don’t have to bandy that about and try to impress anybody with it. I think that’s one of the reasons they get along.”
They also shared a sense of humor. In between skeet-shooting rounds, Kalashnikov relayed to Stoner how the AK-47 was field-tested for durability, drawn through mud, dragged over sand and brush. He asked Stoner how the M-16 stocks were tested, and Stoner replied that they were hoisted up a flagpole at Aberdeen Proving Grounds and dropped repeatedly. Kalashnikov responded, “In the Soviet Union, this is what they do to gun inventors whose guns jammed in combat.” This was a somewhat cutting remark about M-16s jamming in Vietnam but it was done goodnaturedly, as Kalashnikov knew that the rifle had malfunctioned because the army had insisted on using rounds that Stoner had not approved and had advised against deploying.
A high point of Kalashnikov’s visit was a trip to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, about thirty-five miles south of Washington, D.C. The base is widely known in military circles as the place where amphibious warfare techniques were conceived and tested, as well as the tactics of close air support using helicopters. The base is also home to the real-life FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit, famous for its profiling of serial killers, which most people know through fictional characters such as Hannibal Lecter in
The Silence of the Lambs
.
The Silence of the Lambs
.
The openness of the military base surprised Kalashnikov, especially when he was allowed to watch marine training in action. He also witnessed new firearms testing and was fascinated at how computers processed firing data in real time, allowing on-the-spot correction of production defects and other changes. “It’s very impressive here . . . the shooting ranges and the workshops,” said Kalashnikov. “I liked the U.S. Marines who I saw for the first time in my life . . . a year and half ago this would have been impossible just to imagine that.”
Kalashnikov received unexpected praise from Major General Matthew P. Caulfield, who was then deputy commander for training and education and the director of the Marine Air-Ground Training and Education Center. Caulfield remarked to the inventor, “I must admit that I personally would prefer to fire your gun in combat, Mr. Kalashnikov.” This candid comment came from a professional soldier who, as a captain, had commanded a company in Vietnam and participated in the siege at Khe Sanh, a turning point in the Vietnam War. Caulfield’s experience at Khe Sanh surely colored his remarks to Kalashnikov.
On January 21, 1968, a sudden and ferocious attack on the Khe Sanh Marine Corps base by North Vietnamese forces stunned and shocked Americans, including those in the Johnson administration who had underestimated the Communist resolve. Every night for almost two months, television news covered the siege as the North Vietnamese bombarded the base, even digging trenches and tunnels on the perimeter hoping to overrun the outpost from a close-in vantage point. Located only a few miles from the North Vietnamese border, Khe Sanh had become a symbol of U.S. determination in winning the war, and losing it was likened to the French loss at Dien Bien Phu, which, fourteen years earlier, had spelled the end of that country’s occupation. The battle sparked a public debate over whether Khe Sanh was of crucial strategic importance and worth the fight or simply a line drawn by commanders’ ego in the sand. Ultimately, U.S. forces prevailed, but not before 205 Americans were killed, with hundreds more wounded, and about 8,000 North Vietnamese dead. The military abandoned Khe San a few months later, which further eroded the American public’s support for the war as it appeared the base had no military value from the start. As it turned out, the vicious attack on Khe Sanh was a diversionary tactic designed to siphon off U.S. resources in preparation for the upcoming Tet Offensive.
With the Khe Sanh debacle still on his mind, Caulfield told Kalashnikov, “I always wanted to have a Kalashnikov, but there was one thing that stopped me. Your gun’s rate of fire was different from that of an M-16, and it had a different sound. If my soldiers had heard it, they would have opened fire on me thinking I was Vietcong.” Even today, now retired Caulfield remains bitter about the malfunctioning M-16s supplied to him and his men in Vietnam. “Everyone knew it but the damn generals,” he says.
KALASHNIKOV’S VISIT TO THE UNITED STATES opened a new world of travel for him and brought him notoriety beyond Russia’s borders. For the first time, people outside saw the man who gave his name to the world’s most popular weapon. Newspapers wrote stories about him. Filmmakers wanted to do documentaries about his life. All this attention was foreign to Kalashnikov, but he took it in stride, even enjoying the accolades once he got over the initial shock. All his adult life he had accepted the meager offerings of his country, because it was his patriotic duty. Now, no longer insulated from the rest of the world, he told his story to an interested and eager world press.
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