[www.keralites.net] Mikhail Kalashnikov’s Confession

 

The Troubling Legacy Of Mikhail Kalashnikov's Greatest Invention By Savannah Cox   NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP/Getty ImagesMikhail Kalashnikov, the Russian inventor of the globally popular AK-47 assault rifle. In April 2013, an ailing Mikhail Kalashnikov wrote a letter addressed to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. According to Russian daily Izvestia, Kalashnikov posed the following question in his missive: If his own invention "deprived people of life," Mikhail Kalashnikov would die several months later. As his surname would imply, his invention was the Kalashnikov assault rifle, the AK-47 Oleg Mikhail Kalashnikov celebrates the 55th anniversary of the AK-47 in Moscow in 2002 Nikishin/Getty Images A Vietnamese soldier with an AK Getty images David Silverman/Getty ImagesA Palestinian boy holds a gunman's AK-47 assault rifle during a round of fighting with Israeli soldiers October 26, 2001 ABDELHAK SENNA/AFP/Getty ImagesZairian Tutsi rebel children soldiers play with AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifles and sub-machine 28 November 1996. VASILY MAXIMOV/AFP/Getty ImagesRussian honour guard soldiers march around the coffin of Mikhail Kalashnikov (portrait seen at left), the designer of the iconic AK-47 assault rifle. For most of his life, Mikhail Kalashnikov never indicated that he felt any remorse for his invention and its destructive potential. "My aim was to create armaments to protect the borders of my motherland," Kalashnikov once said in an interview. "It is not my fault that the Kalashnikov became very well-known in the world; that it was used in many troubled places. I think the policies of these countries are to blame, not the designers." Closer to his death, however, things — including Kalashnikov's attitude toward what kinds of behaviors his weapon enables — started to change. "The longer I live, the more often that question gets into my brain, the deeper I go in my thoughts and guesses about why the Almighty allowed humans to have devilish desires of envy, greed and aggression," Kalashnikov continued. As his near-death missive makes clear, this guilt would shake Kalashnikov to his core — so much so that he would state that he wished he had invented something entirely different, something that might have made his parents' lives as poor Siberian farmers a bit easier. "I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work," Kalashnikov said during a visit to Germany. "For example a lawn mower."

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Posted by: Cool Kis <cooolkis@gmail.com>

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