Sergei ivanovich mosin biography of williams

Key Point: These rifles saw action both under the old Czar and the new communist order. Other countires also saw the weapon in action as well.

One of the most widely used weapons of the twentieth century was the predecessor to the legendary AK rifle. Developed at the end of the nineteenth century for the Czar’s armies, the Mosin Nagant infantry rifle ended up becoming the standard issue weapon of the new Soviet Union. An unassuming but accurate and reliable weapon, the “Mosin” served well into the twenty-first century, making it one of the few weapons to see continuous service over the span of three centuries.

This first appeared in  and is being reposted due to reader interest.

In the late nineteenth century, Russia’s large land army grew increasingly dissatisfied with its arsenal of obsolete rifles. The standard issue rifle was the Berdan II, a single-shot rifle that fired the x58mmR bottle-neck black powder cartridge. This arrangement greatly limited the firepower of Russian infantrymen, who needed to load a fresh cartridge after every shot. The Berdan II was also large and heavy, weighing pounds with an overall length of 51 inches.

New technologies promised a huge technological shift in small arms already underway in the West. A move away from black po

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