Small Arms of the Great Patriotic War

This edition widely presents the personal weapons of soldiers used during the Great Patriotic War on both sides of the front: revolvers and pistols, rifles and anti-tank rifles, submachine guns and machine guns. The history of the creation and use of various types of firearms is told with encyclopedic accuracy, the design features and tactical-technical characteristics of each unit are presented in numerous diagrams and tables, and some aspects of combat use are revealed in rare documents. Many samples of infantry small arms from that period, such as the PPSh and PPS submachine guns, the Mosin rifle, and the Maxim machine gun, have become legendary; it is impossible to imagine the image of the Soviet liberator soldier — the ordinary fighter who bore the entire burden of the war on his shoulders — without them. The information presented on the pages of this book will help to understand how Soviet weapons designers, who created highly effective samples of small arms in the shortest possible time, and the valiant warriors who heroically defended our Motherland on the battlefields, day by day brought closer the Great Victory.