The AK-47 turns 60

Sixty years after the AK-47 went into production, Mikhail Kalashnikov says he does not stay awake at night worrying about the bloodshed wrought by it, the world’s most popular assault rifle.

“I sleep well. It’s the politicians who are to blame for failing to come to an agreement and resorting to violence,” Kalashnikov said yesterday at a ceremony marking the birth of the rifle, whose initials stand for “Avtomat Kalashnikov.”

It was before he started designing the gun that he had trouble sleeping, worried about the superior weapons that German soldiers were using with grisly effectiveness against the Red Army in World War II. He saw them at close range, fighting on the front lines.

While hospitalized with wounds after a German shell hit his tank in the 1941 battle of Bryansk, Kalashnikov decided to design an automatic rifle combining the best features of the American M1 and the German StG44.

“Blame the Nazi Germans for making me become a gun designer,” said Kalashnikov, frail but sharp at 87. “I always wanted to construct agriculture machinery.”