MOSCOW, September 22. /TASS/. The Russian Military-Historical Society told TASS on Friday it has decided to remove a sketch of German StG44 rifle from a plate on the pedestal of the newly unveiled monument to the creator of legendary AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifle.
Earlier media reports said that one of the plates on the pedestal of the monument dedicated to Mikhail Kalashnikov, the work of the renowned sculptor Salavat Shcherbakov, had a sketch of German StG44 rifle rather than the famous AK-47 rifle.
"The dismantling will take place. We see that this is a completely different rifle. So, it differs from Kalashnikov rifle. If we leave this rifle here, a lot needs to be explained to the people who pass by the monument. To avoid further misunderstanding and distortion, the dismantling will be carried out," Nadezhda Usmanova, who heads information policy department at the Russian Military-Historical Society, said.
The sculptor insisted that the possible error on the monument still needs to be proved. "I don’t have any saboteur in my team who might have chosen a wrong sketch on purpose, and I didn’t do that either. There may have been a mistake, but we still need to find out if it is or it is not."
He also stressed that if the error was confirmed, nothing needs to be dismantled. The sculptor explained that the sketch covers just 4 decimeters out of the 5 square meter sculpture. "Simply, the sketch is corrected. And there is no more problem," Shcherbakov said.
The monument to Kalashnikov was unveiled in downtown Moscow on September 19. The eight-meter figure of the designer holding an AK-47 assault rifle was mounted by the Russian Military Historical Society with the support of the Moscow State Duma and the Rostec state corporation. The composition also features the images of the terrestrial globe and Saint George.