Meet The SKS
Meet The SKS
A good deal of misinformation and outright nonsense has been written about the SKS, both by political activists and gun enthusiasts. The following is an attempt to set the record at least semi-straight.
As you see, this section comprises several pages, so that it need not be read in any particular order. If, for example, you are not interested in the military history of the SKS, but would like to learn how it came to be so widespread in the US, you can use the menu immediately below to navigate to the relevant page. Or if you simply want to know more about its characteristics, or you're still trying to figure out why anybody would want one, you might prefer to go straight to the last page.
You should be aware, however, that you will be responsible for all this material on the Final Exam.
Origins And History:
The Ancestry And Beginnings Of The SKS
Proliferation:
The SKS Goes International
Cowboy Carbines and And Evil Assault Weapons:
The SKS Comes To The US
What Is The SKS?
What It Is And Isn't; What It Can Do And Can't
History, Part 1:
Early Background
Automatic and semi-automatic weapons development goes a long way back in Russia, beginning clear back in Tsarist times. Even before World War I, Vladimir Fyodorov created a series of experimental rifles, none of them successful. He was up against the basic problem that was to retard Russian and Soviet arms development for decades to come: the standard 7.62mm. Russian rifle cartridge, while excellent for bolt-action rifles, had a really impossible shape for self-loading purposes. Its considerable power also required a heavily constructed weapon.
In 1916 Fyodorov produced a remarkable weapon, the Avtomat, built around the smaller 6.5mm. Japanese cartridge. It was in many ways far ahead of its time, incorporating many advanced features, such as both semi- and full-automatic fire and a high-capacity detachable magazine; and it has with justice been called the world's first assault rifle.
History was against Fyodorov, however; revolution and civil war stopped production, and after the Bolshevik takeover his Tsarist roots were held against him. The rifle itself had reliabiity issues, in the brutal conditions of Russian warfare, and the need for a special cartridge was another strike against it. By 1924 production had been terminated; only a few thousand were ever made.
The Red Army's first generally-issued automatic rifle was introduced in 1936. It was called the Avtomaticheskaya Vintovka (automatic rifle) Simonova, or AVS; and its designer was a middle-aged engineer who had worked with Fyodorov - and, before that, as a machinist on the Avtomat assembly line. His name was Sergei Gavrilovich Simonov.
The AVS, or AVS-36, had many of the Fyodorov innovations, including a high-capacity magazine and the full-auto option. However, it used the standard full-power 7.62mm. round - in accordance with official policy - making it unpleasant to shoot and inaccurate in full-auto mode, while the powerful cartridge stressed the action. It was also easily fouled by dirt and snow. Its career lasted only two years.
In 1938 Simonov's rifle was replaced by the Samozaryadnaya Vintovka (self-loading rifle) Tokareva, or SVT-38. This was a simpler, less ambitious design, considered more reliable than the AVS - though the key factor may have been that Tokarev, the designer, was friendly with Stalin. The Tokarev, like the AVS, used the standard 7.62x54mm. Soviet rifle cartridge, but dispensed with the full-automatic capability. It proved fragile in field use, but in 1940 a beefed-up version was introduced. So it was that the Soviet Union became one of only two nations to enter World War II with a fully serviceable semi-automatic infantry rifle - the other, of course, being the US with the legendary M-1 Garand.
The Tokarev SVT-40, however, never saw anything like the general deployment of the M-1. Throughout the war, the standard Red Army infantry rifle remained the old bolt-action Mosin, supplemented by the excellent PPSh submachine gun. The Tokarev was mainly issued to NCOs, and was not all that popular. It still tended to break down under the heavy pounding of its powerful ammunition, and the obsolete cartridge, with its rimmed and tapered case, continued to give feeding problems.
The Tokarev's shortcomings had already become clear before the outbreak of war with Germany, and by the spring of 1941 Simonov was making good progress on a new carbine which promised to be an improvement. That summer, however, the German invasion began and development had to be shelved.
The Soviets were very much aware of the Germans' work on lower-powered cartridges, and had been following it with keen interest. Contrary to legend, the Soviet 7.62x39mm. cartridge was not copied from captured Sturmgewehr ammunition, but from a similar round, a kind of forerunner of the 7.92 Kurtz, which the Germans had not adopted. The details are unknown; probably Soviet agents managed to spirit a few rounds out of Germany, perhaps even before the war. Whatever the story, the cartridge the Soviets finally produced was far too close to the earlier German 7.92mm. short round for coincidence.
The first weapon designed to fire the new round was the work of Sergei Simonov, whose chief contribution, since the failure of the AVS rifle, had been the design of an antitank rifle. The 1941 carbine design was dusted off and adapted to the shorter cartridge.
Simonov evidently had learned from the problems of the AVS; this time he didn't push any envelopes. The new weapon, produced in 1943, was a simple, robust semiautomatic carbine of very conservative design; with its one-piece wooden stock, folding bayonet, fixed ten-round magazine, and semi-automatic-only action, it was verging on retro even at its birth.
(In fairness, the fixed magazine wasn't Simonov's idea; Stalin had decreed that detachable magazines were too easily damaged or lost. And the bayonet merely reflected Red Army tactical doctrine of the time.)
Since it had originally been meant for a much more powerful round, the resulting weapon was very strongly constructed, more so than necessary for such a light load; which made it a bit on the heavy side, but contributed greatly to the rugged dependability for which it would one day become world-famous.
Certainly it was a huge improvement over the clumsy bolt-action Mosin and the cranky, unreliable Tokarev. In 1944 a small pre-production batch was sent to the Belorussian front for combat evaluation, to the delight of the troops lucky enough to get them. Reports were glowing, and in 1945 the Samoryadnyi Karabin Simonova was officially adopted by the Red Army as the SKS-45.
For the first few years after the war's end, though, the USSR had more urgent matters to deal with; the whole national infrastructure had to be rebuilt and reorganized, while the Red military, faced with the atomic age, had more urgent things on their mind than the production of a new carbine. It was not until 1949 that the SKS actually entered production at the Tula arsenal.
By then it was already obsolete, even within the Soviet service. The legendary Kalashnikov AK-47, a far better military weapon, was already a reality and would soon go into production.
(It is emphatically not true, however, that the AK-47 is in any way a development of the SKS, or in any way related to it; except for a few details, the Kalashnikov is an entirely different design, and its action operates on different mechanical principles.)
Still, the SKS was manufactured in quantity and was for a short time the standard Soviet military rifle; and during this time it underwent some further minor development. But by 1955, when production finally halted, it had been replaced by the AK-47 as a first-line infantry weapon - though it continued to soldier on for many years with support and reserve units; and, because the AK-47 does not lend itself well to snappy drill, it still survives in modern Russian service for honor-guard purposes.
The SKS never really amounted to much in Soviet service; it functioned almost entirely as a stopgap. Its glory days were still to come, in other hands in other lands.