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Museum of famous gun maker Kalashnikov to be opened in his village

A museum of a famous gun maker Mikhail Kalashnikov will be created in his native village of Kurya in the Altai Territory

BARNAUL, November 10 (Itar-Tass) —— A museum of a famous gun maker Mikhail Kalashnikov will be created in his native village of Kurya in the Altai Territory, a source in the Altai territorial cultural department told Itar-Tass on Thursday.

Mikhail Kalashnikov turned 92 on Thursday. The museum construction project was presented and coordinated with him in the year of his 90th birthday. “A memorial complex, which is dedicated to our outstanding fellow countryman, a worldwide known designer of firearms Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov will be created in Kurya. Next year the reconstruction of a building, which earlier housed a children’s arts school, will be launched. We together with leading Russian museum specialists are forming museum funds and are designing future expositions,” Governor of the Altai Territory Alexander Karlin said.

Kalashnikov has made a list of 13 models of guns, which he would like to see in his museum. All exhibition models of firearms, which the Izhmash armory produced in the seventies of the previous century, were already brought to Altai from Izhevsk. There are such models of Kalashnikov submachine guns and machine guns as AK-74, AK-105 and RPK-74m.

Apart from the firearms the museum will put on display the books from Kalashnikov’s library, the photos from the family archives, medals, the military uniform, a collection of hand watches, which Kalashnikov had gathered for many years. Among the exhibits, which the gun designer passed to his native village, are memorable medals and New Zealand’s silver coins with the image of the gun maker.

Mikhail Kalashnikov was born on November 10, 1919 in the village of Kurya in the Altai province. The submachine gun, which he designed, was put into service under the brand of AK-47 in 1949. This firearm is the most popular in the world and its image is put on the national emblem of 60 countries. The Izhevsk armory has designed dozens of models of submachine guns on the basis of a submachine gun AK-47 under the supervision of Kalashnikov. The doctor of technical sciences, an academician of 16 Russian and foreign academies, a gun designer Kalashnikov has 35 patents for inventions.