Free Republic

His name was Mikhail Kalshnikov. He was 94 years old. He died this week a hero of Russia, having lent his name and his engineering skill to the most frequently vilified assault rifle design in the world. Kalashnikov was, according to the BBC, born a peasant on the southern Siberian steppe. He had little formal education, but his innate mechanical abilities led him to design what he called a “weapon of defense” intended to protect his nation. That weapon was the AK-47.

Acknowledging the Deception::by J. R. Nyquist Weekly Column Published: 07.24.2009 Meet Victor Kalashnikov: former KGB officer, scholar, analyst, and writer. He is married to historian and journalist Marina Kalashnikova, the subject of last week’s column. Before the Soviet Union collapsed Victor worked for the KGB in Vienna. After Gorbachev’s bizarre abdication in December 1991, Victor found himself drawn into the Presidential administration of Boris Yeltsin on orders of KGB General Yevgeny Primakov. There he became a research director in the Russian Public Policy Center. “So I turned my attention 180 degrees from Europe to Russia,” Victor explained. “I was quite...