MOSCOW, January 13. /ITAR-TASS/. A legendary gun designer and author of the AK-47 machine gun Mikhail Kalashnikov, who died in December 2013, six months before the death wrote a letter of repentance to Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill.

In that letter, the Izvestia daily writes, the designer shared with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church his emotional concerns and doubts about his responsibility for the death of people killed from the gun he had invented.

“My inner pain is unbearable, I have been facing one and the same unsolvable question: as my gun deprived people of lives, then I, Mikhailo Kalashnikov, of 93, a son of a peasant woman, a Christian and an Orthodox, am guilty of the deaths of people, be them even enemies?” the newspaper quoted the letter.

In that letter, Kalashnikov also presented his views on the future of the country and mankind.

“Correct, more churches and monasteries have appeared in our land, but the evil is not diminishing still!.. Good and evil live on, they are neighbors, they are fighting, and, more scary, is that they jointly find peace in our souls — this is the conclusion I have approached in the end of my life on the Earth. It is a sort of perpetuum mobile, which back in my young years I dreamed to invent. Light and shadow, kindness and evil — two opposites of one, which are not capable of existing without each other? Is it really the way God has made? And the mankind has to vegetate in that co-existence?” Kalashnikov wrote in the letter.

The patriarch’s press secretary Alexander Volkov told Izvestia Kirill had received the letter and even replied to it.

“That letter was very timely during the attacks on the Church. The patriarch thanked the legendary designer for the attention and position and replied saying that Kalashnikov was an example of patriotism and correct attitude towards the country,” Volkov said.

He added the Church had a quite clear position concerning the designer’s responsibility for the deaths of people - whenever guns protect the Fatherland, the Church would support both the designers and the military using them.

The Izvestia newspaper writes it has a copy of the letter. It was dated April 7. The letter was printed, and was hand written by Kalashnikov.