Latest news with #StalinPrize
Daily Mirror
2 days ago
- Health
- Daily Mirror
Scientists capture 'aura' as they find people give off a faint light until death
The 'biophotons' have also been detected in plants and animals All humans emit a glow that is extinguished when we die - scientists have explained. The 'aura' is emitted by all living beings, from plants and single-cell organisms up to humans. The scientific phenomenon is different from the spiritual belief in an aura that can be detected by people with 'psychic abilities' The discovery was imaged by scientists at the University of Calgary, Canada, who detected "ultraweak photon emissions" (UPE) using a special camera. Physicist Vahid Salari said: "UPE is closely linked to vitality. The study of UPE has fundamental importance for basic research, as it can be used for non-invasive insights into the biochemical and metabolic processes of living organisms." UPE is a very low-intensity light that is invisible to the human eye. It is released as part of the chemical reaction involved in all life. The researchers used an ultra-dark environment and specialist cameras to detect UPE in plants, and to watch UPE disappear as mice died. UPE disappeared in the mice when they died, even though their body temperature had not yet dropped. With the plants, scientists found UPE increased if the plant was put under stress, such as heat or damage. The researchers said: " Our results show that the injury parts in all leaves were significantly brighter than the uninjured parts of the leaves during all 16 hours of imaging." The researchers say this means UPE could be used to detect how 'well' a life form is. UPEs, also known as biophotons, were discovered in the 1920s by Russian scientists Alexander Gurwitsch , who was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1941 for his work. Gurwitsch believed the rays were involved in communication between cells. The rays were investigated by Fritz-Albert Popp and a research group at the Universty of Marburg in the 1970s. Some spiritualists believe humans emit a glowing aura that shows our physical, spiritual and mental health. The theory is that a n invisible, multilayered energy field surrounds all living beings and reflects their physical, emotional, or spiritual state; often described in coloured bands. There are said to be seven main layers (etheric, emotional, mental, etc.) that correlate with chakras. The colour of the layers is said to have meaning (e.g., red = drive, blue = calm, violet = spiritual insight). Most scientists attribute perceived 'auras' to visual effects, suggestion, or ordinary heat/EM fields.
Wales Online
2 days ago
- Health
- Wales Online
Humans emit a faint glow that disappears when we die, scientists say
Humans emit a faint glow that disappears when we die, scientists say Researchers at the University of Calgary have used specialised equipment to capture images of the phenomenon The emissions have been seen disappearing at the point of death All humans emit a glow that is extinguished when we die - scientists have explained. The 'aura' is emitted by all living beings, from plants and single-cell organisms up to humans. The discovery was imaged by scientists at the University of Calgary, Canada, who detected "ultraweak photon emissions" (UPE) using a special camera. Physicist Vahid Salari said: "UPE is closely linked to vitality. The study of UPE has fundamental importance for basic research, as it can be used for non-invasive insights into the biochemical and metabolic processes of living organisms." UPE is a very low-intensity light that is invisible to the human eye. It is released as part of the chemical reaction involved in all life. The researchers used an ultra-dark environment and specialist cameras to detect UPE in plants, and to watch UPE disappear as mice died. UPE disappeared in the mice when they died, even though their body temperature had not yet dropped. With the plants, scientists found UPE increased if the plant was put under stress, such as heat or damage. Article continues below The researchers said: "Our results show that the injury parts in all leaves were significantly brighter than the uninjured parts of the leaves during all 16 hours of imaging." The researchers say this means UPE could be used to detect how 'well' a life form is. UPEs, also known as biophotons, were discovered in the 1920s by Russian scientists Alexander Gurwitsch, who was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1941 for his work. Gurwitsch believed the rays were involved in communication between cells. Article continues below The rays were investigated by Fritz-Albert Popp and a research group at the Universty of Marburg in the 1970s.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Stephen Miller Wins This Week's Stalin Prize for Totalitarian Flattery
We don't really learn anything new about Donald Trump anymore. He's the same old liar and buffoon he's been for 50 years. But sometimes we relearn the stuff we already knew in ways that are so shocking that we have to pause and take stock. One of the old lessons we relearned this week has to do with Trump's adolescent need for constant praise, and the abject willingness of his sycophants to provide it without his having to ask—even, or especially, when the reality screams for rebuke. This is a crucial point that needs to be widely understood, and will be by those with a living memory of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. The operating principle of such regimes was this: The worse actual conditions were, the more fulsome the propaganda had to be. The crops yields were excellent, comrades! Our cars are far superior to the capitalists'! Prisons? What prisons? Which brings us back to Trump's America, which isn't so different in key respects from Enver Hoxha's Albania. Here we have a week when Trump's bumbling, his stupidity, his willed ignorance of history, and his utter refusal to think through policy have never been more fully on display. With all this tariff flip-flopping, he very nearly launched a global economic crisis. As it is, he personally—no one else—cost investors, from large institutional ones to you and me, trillions of dollars. And the lower tariff rates he announced Wednesday as the bond market was about to explode are still the highest since the infamous Smoot-Hawley years. It was a disaster in every way. And as such, it required an especially intense degree of obsequiousness. Bill Ackman: 'This was brilliantly executed by @realDonaldTrump. Textbook, Art of the Deal.' Karoline Leavitt (to White House reporters): 'Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal. You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here.' And the winner of this week's Stalin Prize, Stephen Miller: 'You have been watching the greatest economic master strategy from an American President in history.' For good measure, not exactly on the topic of the tariffs but nevertheless a Stalin Prize contender, we had Pam Bondi at a Cabinet meeting on Thursday: 'President, we've had some great wins in the last few days. You know, you were overwhelmingly elected by the biggest majority.' Wait, what? 'President'? Not 'Mr. President'? Why? Because it's a little closer to 'El Presidente'? For the record, Trump won a plurality, not a majority, and he got four million fewer votes than Joe Biden did in 2020. But there's more: In her next sentence, Bondi invoked 'U.S. Americans.' I haven't heard that one since Miss Teen South Carolina in 2007. If these people are right that Trump was acting the whole time with great intention, then we must seriously consider the allegation that he was manipulating the market with his Wednesday morning social media post about now being 'A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!' If he knew that morning that he was going to announce a pause that afternoon—an announcement that he had to know would send the market skyrocketing—then there's little question that his post constituted market manipulation. The best argument in Trump's defense here is a pretty pitiful one: that he's so incapable of thinking more than 15 minutes ahead that it's hard to believe he knew in the morning what he was going to do in the afternoon. Regardless, we're in an unprecedentedly chilling era in American politics. Literally never in American history have presidential aides and supporters spoken quite like this, employing the kind of flattery one usually sees in totalitarian regimes (which are a couple ticks worse in general than authoritarian ones). What does it tell us about the future? Trump is going to get worse. I think we can say that with confidence. Each week so far has been worse than the last, in terms of the assaults on democracy. His executive order this week concerning Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs is terrifying—perhaps the most frightening thing he's done yet in his war on political enemies. Telling the Justice Department to investigate specific individual Americans because of their political activity arguably goes further in turning the state into an instrument of his personal will than anything else he's done. Bondi said we should rest assured that the Justice Department alone will make any prosecutorial decisions. But the mere fact that Justice is going to use resources to investigate these two men, who are guilty of nothing more than political advocacy Trump didn't like, has terrifying implications for every U.S. American out there. So, yes, things will get even worse. And as they do, the sycophancy will grow ever more insistent and unapologetic. That's how it works. These attempts to win the Stalin Prize are so pathetic they're almost funny—but each one of them is also another assault on democratic values and customs. We can't forget this. This article first appeared in Fighting Words, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by editor Michael Tomasky. Sign up here.
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Mikhail Kalashnikov interview: ‘I wanted my invention to serve peace – not make war easier'
This article is published as part of The Telegraph's Greatest Interviews series, which revisits the most significant, informative and entertaining conversations with notable figures over our 170 year history. The below interview is introduced by Paul Kendall. It appears as it was originally published. Of all the incredible characters John Kampfner interviewed in his time as the Telegraph's Moscow Correspondent, perhaps the most memorable was Sgt Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47. Invited on an elk hunt with Kalashnikov and his son, Viktor, in central Russia, Kampfner observed a man ill at ease with his legacy. 'The Nazis had superior armoury. I wanted to redress the balance,' the 74-year-old says. Instead his invention had '[made] war easier'. – Paul Kendall Mikhail Kalashnikov is in the back seat of his four-wheel drive, his eyes focused on the snowy pine forest that lies straight ahead. It is the day after his 74th birthday, and he is doing what he likes best – hunting for elk with his son, Viktor, and some life-long friends. We are three hours into the countryside from his adopted home town of Izhevsk, close to the Ural mountains in central Russia, where Europe meets Asia. Kalashnikov is deep in thought. Suddenly the car stops, its bald tyres skidding on the ice, and Viktor jumps from behind the wheel. He brings back the frozen carcass of a hare that must have been run over the night before. 'For the dogs,' he mutters. His father nods and places the dead animal between his feet. Waste not, want not, is a philosophy Kalashnikov understands well. In spite of his inventions and his patriotism, he has little to show for his life's work. The furniture in his two-bedroomed flat in Soviet Street was paid for out of the Stalin Prize he won before he was 30. When he travels to Moscow on private business he usually goes by train – flying is too expensive. His greatest invention, of course, was the AK-47 assault rifle – literally, the Automatic Kalashnikov made in 1947 – a weapon considered so revolutionary by the Soviet authorities that for the first years of production it was carried in a special case to prevent the Allies from getting a good look at it. Photographs were forbidden and cartridge cases had to be picked up after firing. Thus the young Kalashnikov began a life of secrecy and anonymity, sworn to silence and not even able to tell his parents what he was doing. Even as recently as the early Eighties he was ordered not to reply to a letter from an American academic. Designed for the soldier in rags, the AK-47 has become an international cult object. At least 50 million have been made and distributed around the world in the post-war years. In the Sudan they sing, 'Can't get no cash, you're trash without a Kalash', and in Burkina Faso they emblazon it on visa stamps. It figures on IRA murals, Afghan carpets, Nicaraguan statues and emblems of the Lebanese Hizbollah. On the world's black markets, you can pick one up for as little as $100. What Coca-Cola is to the export of American capitalism, the Kalashnikov was to Soviet Communism. Yet Kalashnikov has received barely any royalties, save for a small amount of inventor's rights that have been savagely eroded by inflation. The AK-47 has been produced, sometimes with subtle modifications, in factories across the former Eastern bloc and, in massive quantities, in China because the Soviet Union never sought to restrict 'fraternal' countries from imitating it. Only Soviet Communism, one suspects, could have exploited a technical genius like Kalashnikov with such ruthless disdain. It was in May 1990, on his first visit to the old Cold War enemy, that he was first struck by the inequality of it all. In Washington he was introduced to his American counterpart, Eugene Stoner, who designed the M-16, the closest thing to an American equivalent of the AK-47, which was first issued to US troops in 1961. Kalashnikov's clothes were shabby. The few dollars in his pocket had been given by the factory and the American institute sponsoring the trip. He was dumbfounded. 'Stoner has his own aircraft – I can't even afford my own plane ticket.' He continues to travel, accompanied always by his talkative daughter Yelena, who smooths the path with her passable English. Over the past two years he has been twice to America, once to Germany and most recently to Britain, where he felt most at home on the army shooting range at Salisbury Plain. Sometimes he is asked by the Moscow government to join official delegations, recently to an arms fair in Abu Dhabi, but he does not enjoy the limelight. 'Russia, the West, it's basically the same. They're out to make money from you. All they want is some free advice on improving their weapons.' Meanwhile he continues to work at the Izhevsk arms factory to which he has devoted most of his life, and where many of the Soviet Union's secret weapons have been produced. Izhevsk has been making guns for more than a century. Until two years ago it was a closed city. Now it is seeking foreign orders to keep its hundreds of thousands of workers from the dole. Many are already on short-time or enforced 'holiday'. Officially, Kalashnikov retains the title of chief designer. He goes in most days, turning his meticulous attention to designing hunting rifles. His most recent design is to receive its first testing in the woods tonight. By the time we reach the hunting lodge, the temperature has slipped below minus 20°C – perfect conditions for hunting, although there is not much time before the sun sets. We warm ourselves by the open fire and gulp down small glasses of cranberry vodka before setting off. One quick inspection of the weapons and it is time to get moving. Kalashnikov and the others don their valenki, the felt-lined boots designed a century ago and which have no modern match, and their tulupi, ankle-length woollen coats. We clamber on to the back of an army truck, shielding our faces from the biting cold. The vehicle grinds into action, drowning out all conversation. For Kalashnikov, it makes no difference. A lifetime of firing weapons has left him hard of hearing. The hunters spot small footprints and the lorry veers down a steep incline in pursuit. On we go, around and around the forest, but the elk eludes us. Morale begins to drop: thoughts turn to the warm lodge and to an evening of jokes and reminiscences. Kalashnikov's face creases up. Suddenly, someone cries, 'Over there!' A split second later three shots ring out and an animal tumbles to the ground. The truck races between the trees to the booty. The elk has been shot clean through the neck. They jump down and tie its body to a rope and the lorry drags it the remaining mile home across the snow. The mood lightens. It is Viktor, they decide, who should claim the spoils. It is pitch dark by the time we get back. Before the evening meal, Kalashnikov decides to take a sauna, the favoured Russian way to unwind. He strips and scampers the 20 yards to the banya hut. Inside, he breathes slowly and deeply, his gold teeth glinting through the steam. Alone with him, I ask about his invention. Was he the creator of another Frankenstein? Had his monster grown out of control? He pauses and reflects, his voice thick with emotion. 'When Germany invaded, I saw my comrades in pain. They were being wheeled into hospital, injured in defence of their Motherland against the Fascists. Courage was not enough. The Nazis had superior armoury. I wanted to redress the balance.' Kalashnikov skips 40 years to a Soviet Union in collapse, where ethnic conflicts have engulfed many of the former republics, and where army conscripts and their officers sell the rifles bearing his name for a song. 'Do you think it's pleasant seeing all those hoodlums using your gun? Armenians and Azeris killing each other. We all lived so peacefully before.' This was the great family of nations that was the Soviet Union, or so the propaganda went. He recalls meeting Yeltsin, who visited Izhevsk a year ago. 'I told him I saw no reason why he had to get rid of our USSR, our Motherland.' It is a view shared by the millions of Kalashnikov's fellow countrymen who sincerely believed in the idea of a unified but diverse nation. What most appalled him and countless others was the sight of Russian killing Russian in the heart of Moscow during the battle for the White House last October. 'Look at how much it's costing to repair that building, billions they say. What was the point of it all? I thought we voted for those people in parliament.' Kalashnikov, an army man through and through, is slipping into the murky waters of politics, of which he normally steers well clear. He quickly brings himself into line, dismissing the whole subject with a curt: 'Anyway, politicians aren't worth talking about'. But it is not hard to draw conclusions. Here is a man who loved his country intensely, believed in the ideals of unity, and is depressed by the disintegration he sees all around him. Even now, he is restrained in his criticism of Yeltsin. Authority, after all, is authority. He was, he says, very obliging when senior officials in the Kremlin guard came to visit the other day, enquiring about the latest guns. They were presumably preparing themselves for another hardline revolt-one can never be too sure these days. Back from the banya, and with the smell of the evening meal filling the hunting lodge, I ask how one of the great inventions of modem times was the work of a country boy with only a rudimentary' education, who could not draw and knew nothing about guns. 'Perseverance,' says his daughter Yelena. 'When I ask him to do a job around the house, to repair the lavatory for instance, I know he'll do it better than any plumber. He never stops until he's done it right.' Her father agrees: 'It's hard to divert me from my work, even on holiday. I can go hunting or to the theatre but I never stop thinking about my work.' His beginnings could not have been more humble. After basic secondary schooling he became a technician on the Turkestan-Siberian railway. It was the time of Stalin's crash industrialisation programme and the young Kalashnikov wanted to play his part in the great experiment. To begin with, he tried his hand at a device to measure fuel consumption in train fuel tanks, but nothing much came of it. Then the war came, and he was drafted as a tank mechanic to the front, near Brynsk in the west of Russia. Within months he was injured and it was in hospital that he became obsessed by his dream. 'I decided to build a gun of my own which could stand up to the Germans. It was a bit of a crazy escapade, I suppose. I didn't have any specialist education and I couldn't even draw.' His first designs did not attract much attention, but on release from hospital he went back to his engine workshop in Siberia to try to make a prototype. Nobody seemed to mind that he spent all his time on his 'hobby' and it was not long before he was on his way to Alma-Ata, the capital of Kazakhstan, with his first model in his hand. On arrival in the town he was briefly arrested for carrying unauthorised firearms, but the police soon released him when he told them of his dream project. Kalashnikov went straight to the Communist Party official in charge of defence matters and pleaded for advice. He was sent to the workshop of the prestigious Moscow Aviation Institute, which had moved to Alma-Ata during the war, but soon became frustrated because he felt his talent was not recognised. He then took his prototype to Samarkand, the ancient city in Uzbekistan, where he consulted a friendly general who recommended several modifications. Eventually, after a determined battle with the bureaucrats, Kalashnikov finally made it to Moscow. There he could compete against the best. The early days were not easy. The diminutive sergeant was scorned by the top brass, including generals such as Vasily Degtaryov, the Soviet Union's most prominent weapons designer between the wars. Kalashnikov was so shy that he signed his sketches 'MikhTim', the first syllables of his first names. But he persevered, and by 1949 had been awarded the Stalin Prize and made a Hero of Socialist Labour. The same year he was transferred to Izhevsk to supervise production and by the mid-Fifties the AK-47 was standard issue to the Soviet armed forces. General Degtaryov had been usurped. Kalashnikov joined the Communist Party only in 1953 – he could not avoid it. He was neither a believer nor a rebel, he simply wanted to get on with his job. It was only in the Sixties, when he became a member of the Supreme Soviet, the parliament that met for a few days a year in Moscow, that he came out of the obscurity of Izhevsk. He met his wife Yekaterina at an army testing range near Moscow. She was a graphic artist and helped him put his designs on paper. They married in 1943 and had four children, although he saw little of them because of his work schedule. Yekaterina died in 1977 after a long illness, and his youngest daughter Natalia moved in to keep him company -but tragedy struck again when she died in a car crash six years later. He has lived alone for the past ten years, although Yelena goes around on Sundays to do the cleaning. 'After a long day together, I get the feeling he wants me to go,' she says. His deafness increases his isolation. Sometimes, it seems, he pretends he cannot hear just to be on his own. His only perks are a driver and a country dacha by the lake, and even these were granted by the local authorities only after a friend, a retired Tatar colonel, shouted at a pompous official: 'You think you're God, but they'll write about Kalashnikov, not you, in the history books.' Inevitably, a loner like Kalashnikov has only a small circle of friends – mostly from the army and the arms industry. The exception is Dr Valentin Sokolov, an expert on animal husbandry who became the deputy prime minister of the local region for a while. Dr Sokolov has remained at his side, through thick and thin, playing the fall guy in countless hunting stories. 'They always suspected Kalashnikov,' Sokolov recalls. 'He stood out from the bureaucrats because he had a brain. They were jealous and thought him wilful.' Wherever he travelled within the old USSR, Kalashnikov took Sokolov with him. 'The locals thought I was his bodyguard,' the doctor says with pride. Dinner is ready and the Kalashnikov clan assembles. Sokolov is to his right, Viktor to his left. There is also Yuri, the manager of the hunting lodge, Boris his assistant, and Nikolai, a burly man who used to be the Defence Ministry's representative at the Izhevsk plant. We squash on to two wooden benches in the small kitchen, as Yelena dishes up the traditional hunters' feast – elk's liver fried with onions, and boiled tongue. The toasts commence – to the Motherland, to hospitality and to a meeting with foreigners that would have been impossible until recently. Kalashnikov and addresses the assembled group. His voice is shrill and loud, his language terse. The words seem strangely rehearsed – perhaps this time they are. There is much that he wants to say. 'My life's not been easy. I wanted my invention to serve peace. I didn't want it to make war easier.' Each sentence is received in silence. It is as if we are at a confessional. 'You see, constructors have never been given their just deserts in this country. If the politicians had worked as hard as we did, the guns would never have got into the wrong hands.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
24-02-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Mikhail Kalashnikov interview: ‘I wanted my invention to serve peace – not make war easier'
This article is published as part of The Telegraph's Greatest Interviews series, which revisits the most significant, informative and entertaining conversations with notable figures over our 170 year history. The below interview is introduced by Paul Kendall. It appears as it was originally published. Of all the incredible characters John Kampfner interviewed in his time as the Telegraph 's Moscow Correspondent, perhaps the most memorable was Sgt Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47. Invited on an elk hunt with Kalashnikov and his son, Viktor, in central Russia, Kampfner observed a man ill at ease with his legacy. 'The Nazis had superior armoury. I wanted to redress the balance,' the 74-year-old says. Instead his invention had '[made] war easier'. – Paul Kendall Mikhail Kalashnikov is in the back seat of his four-wheel drive, his eyes focused on the snowy pine forest that lies straight ahead. It is the day after his 74th birthday, and he is doing what he likes best – hunting for elk with his son, Viktor, and some life-long friends. We are three hours into the countryside from his adopted home town of Izhevsk, close to the Ural mountains in central Russia, where Europe meets Asia. Kalashnikov is deep in thought. Suddenly the car stops, its bald tyres skidding on the ice, and Viktor jumps from behind the wheel. He brings back the frozen carcass of a hare that must have been run over the night before. 'For the dogs,' he mutters. His father nods and places the dead animal between his feet. Waste not, want not, is a philosophy Kalashnikov understands well. In spite of his inventions and his patriotism, he has little to show for his life's work. The furniture in his two-bedroomed flat in Soviet Street was paid for out of the Stalin Prize he won before he was 30. When he travels to Moscow on private business he usually goes by train – flying is too expensive. His greatest invention, of course, was the AK-47 assault rifle – literally, the Automatic Kalashnikov made in 1947 – a weapon considered so revolutionary by the Soviet authorities that for the first years of production it was carried in a special case to prevent the Allies from getting a good look at it. Photographs were forbidden and cartridge cases had to be picked up after firing. Thus the young Kalashnikov began a life of secrecy and anonymity, sworn to silence and not even able to tell his parents what he was doing. Even as recently as the early Eighties he was ordered not to reply to a letter from an American academic. Designed for the soldier in rags, the AK-47 has become an international cult object. At least 50 million have been made and distributed around the world in the post-war years. In the Sudan they sing, 'Can't get no cash, you're trash without a Kalash', and in Burkina Faso they emblazon it on visa stamps. It figures on IRA murals, Afghan carpets, Nicaraguan statues and emblems of the Lebanese Hizbollah. On the world's black markets, you can pick one up for as little as $100. What Coca-Cola is to the export of American capitalism, the Kalashnikov was to Soviet Communism. Yet Kalashnikov has received barely any royalties, save for a small amount of inventor's rights that have been savagely eroded by inflation. The AK-47 has been produced, sometimes with subtle modifications, in factories across the former Eastern bloc and, in massive quantities, in China because the Soviet Union never sought to restrict 'fraternal' countries from imitating it. Only Soviet Communism, one suspects, could have exploited a technical genius like Kalashnikov with such ruthless disdain. It was in May 1990, on his first visit to the old Cold War enemy, that he was first struck by the inequality of it all. In Washington he was introduced to his American counterpart, Eugene Stoner, who designed the M-16, the closest thing to an American equivalent of the AK-47, which was first issued to US troops in 1961. Kalashnikov's clothes were shabby. The few dollars in his pocket had been given by the factory and the American institute sponsoring the trip. He was dumbfounded. 'Stoner has his own aircraft – I can't even afford my own plane ticket.' He continues to travel, accompanied always by his talkative daughter Yelena, who smooths the path with her passable English. Over the past two years he has been twice to America, once to Germany and most recently to Britain, where he felt most at home on the army shooting range at Salisbury Plain. Sometimes he is asked by the Moscow government to join official delegations, recently to an arms fair in Abu Dhabi, but he does not enjoy the limelight. 'Russia, the West, it's basically the same. They're out to make money from you. All they want is some free advice on improving their weapons.' Meanwhile he continues to work at the Izhevsk arms factory to which he has devoted most of his life, and where many of the Soviet Union's secret weapons have been produced. Izhevsk has been making guns for more than a century. Until two years ago it was a closed city. Now it is seeking foreign orders to keep its hundreds of thousands of workers from the dole. Many are already on short-time or enforced 'holiday'. Officially, Kalashnikov retains the title of chief designer. He goes in most days, turning his meticulous attention to designing hunting rifles. His most recent design is to receive its first testing in the woods tonight. By the time we reach the hunting lodge, the temperature has slipped below minus 20°C – perfect conditions for hunting, although there is not much time before the sun sets. We warm ourselves by the open fire and gulp down small glasses of cranberry vodka before setting off. One quick inspection of the weapons and it is time to get moving. Kalashnikov and the others don their valenki, the felt-lined boots designed a century ago and which have no modern match, and their tulupi, ankle-length woollen coats. We clamber on to the back of an army truck, shielding our faces from the biting cold. The vehicle grinds into action, drowning out all conversation. For Kalashnikov, it makes no difference. A lifetime of firing weapons has left him hard of hearing. The hunters spot small footprints and the lorry veers down a steep incline in pursuit. On we go, around and around the forest, but the elk eludes us. Morale begins to drop: thoughts turn to the warm lodge and to an evening of jokes and reminiscences. Kalashnikov's face creases up. Suddenly, someone cries, 'Over there!' A split second later three shots ring out and an animal tumbles to the ground. The truck races between the trees to the booty. The elk has been shot clean through the neck. They jump down and tie its body to a rope and the lorry drags it the remaining mile home across the snow. The mood lightens. It is Viktor, they decide, who should claim the spoils. It is pitch dark by the time we get back. Before the evening meal, Kalashnikov decides to take a sauna, the favoured Russian way to unwind. He strips and scampers the 20 yards to the banya hut. Inside, he breathes slowly and deeply, his gold teeth glinting through the steam. Alone with him, I ask about his invention. Was he the creator of another Frankenstein? Had his monster grown out of control? He pauses and reflects, his voice thick with emotion. 'When Germany invaded, I saw my comrades in pain. They were being wheeled into hospital, injured in defence of their Motherland against the Fascists. Courage was not enough. The Nazis had superior armoury. I wanted to redress the balance.' Kalashnikov skips 40 years to a Soviet Union in collapse, where ethnic conflicts have engulfed many of the former republics, and where army conscripts and their officers sell the rifles bearing his name for a song. 'Do you think it's pleasant seeing all those hoodlums using your gun? Armenians and Azeris killing each other. We all lived so peacefully before.' This was the great family of nations that was the Soviet Union, or so the propaganda went. He recalls meeting Yeltsin, who visited Izhevsk a year ago. 'I told him I saw no reason why he had to get rid of our USSR, our Motherland.' It is a view shared by the millions of Kalashnikov's fellow countrymen who sincerely believed in the idea of a unified but diverse nation. What most appalled him and countless others was the sight of Russian killing Russian in the heart of Moscow during the battle for the White House last October. 'Look at how much it's costing to repair that building, billions they say. What was the point of it all? I thought we voted for those people in parliament.' Kalashnikov, an army man through and through, is slipping into the murky waters of politics, of which he normally steers well clear. He quickly brings himself into line, dismissing the whole subject with a curt: 'Anyway, politicians aren't worth talking about'. But it is not hard to draw conclusions. Here is a man who loved his country intensely, believed in the ideals of unity, and is depressed by the disintegration he sees all around him. Even now, he is restrained in his criticism of Yeltsin. Authority, after all, is authority. He was, he says, very obliging when senior officials in the Kremlin guard came to visit the other day, enquiring about the latest guns. They were presumably preparing themselves for another hardline revolt-one can never be too sure these days. Back from the banya, and with the smell of the evening meal filling the hunting lodge, I ask how one of the great inventions of modem times was the work of a country boy with only a rudimentary' education, who could not draw and knew nothing about guns. 'Perseverance,' says his daughter Yelena. 'When I ask him to do a job around the house, to repair the lavatory for instance, I know he'll do it better than any plumber. He never stops until he's done it right.' Her father agrees: 'It's hard to divert me from my work, even on holiday. I can go hunting or to the theatre but I never stop thinking about my work.' His beginnings could not have been more humble. After basic secondary schooling he became a technician on the Turkestan-Siberian railway. It was the time of Stalin's crash industrialisation programme and the young Kalashnikov wanted to play his part in the great experiment. To begin with, he tried his hand at a device to measure fuel consumption in train fuel tanks, but nothing much came of it. Then the war came, and he was drafted as a tank mechanic to the front, near Brynsk in the west of Russia. Within months he was injured and it was in hospital that he became obsessed by his dream. 'I decided to build a gun of my own which could stand up to the Germans. It was a bit of a crazy escapade, I suppose. I didn't have any specialist education and I couldn't even draw.' His first designs did not attract much attention, but on release from hospital he went back to his engine workshop in Siberia to try to make a prototype. Nobody seemed to mind that he spent all his time on his 'hobby' and it was not long before he was on his way to Alma-Ata, the capital of Kazakhstan, with his first model in his hand. On arrival in the town he was briefly arrested for carrying unauthorised firearms, but the police soon released him when he told them of his dream project. Kalashnikov went straight to the Communist Party official in charge of defence matters and pleaded for advice. He was sent to the workshop of the prestigious Moscow Aviation Institute, which had moved to Alma-Ata during the war, but soon became frustrated because he felt his talent was not recognised. He then took his prototype to Samarkand, the ancient city in Uzbekistan, where he consulted a friendly general who recommended several modifications. Eventually, after a determined battle with the bureaucrats, Kalashnikov finally made it to Moscow. There he could compete against the best. The early days were not easy. The diminutive sergeant was scorned by the top brass, including generals such as Vasily Degtaryov, the Soviet Union's most prominent weapons designer between the wars. Kalashnikov was so shy that he signed his sketches 'MikhTim', the first syllables of his first names. But he persevered, and by 1949 had been awarded the Stalin Prize and made a Hero of Socialist Labour. The same year he was transferred to Izhevsk to supervise production and by the mid-Fifties the AK-47 was standard issue to the Soviet armed forces. General Degtaryov had been usurped. Kalashnikov joined the Communist Party only in 1953 – he could not avoid it. He was neither a believer nor a rebel, he simply wanted to get on with his job. It was only in the Sixties, when he became a member of the Supreme Soviet, the parliament that met for a few days a year in Moscow, that he came out of the obscurity of Izhevsk. He met his wife Yekaterina at an army testing range near Moscow. She was a graphic artist and helped him put his designs on paper. They married in 1943 and had four children, although he saw little of them because of his work schedule. Yekaterina died in 1977 after a long illness, and his youngest daughter Natalia moved in to keep him company -but tragedy struck again when she died in a car crash six years later. He has lived alone for the past ten years, although Yelena goes around on Sundays to do the cleaning. 'After a long day together, I get the feeling he wants me to go,' she says. His deafness increases his isolation. Sometimes, it seems, he pretends he cannot hear just to be on his own. His only perks are a driver and a country dacha by the lake, and even these were granted by the local authorities only after a friend, a retired Tatar colonel, shouted at a pompous official: 'You think you're God, but they'll write about Kalashnikov, not you, in the history books.' Inevitably, a loner like Kalashnikov has only a small circle of friends – mostly from the army and the arms industry. The exception is Dr Valentin Sokolov, an expert on animal husbandry who became the deputy prime minister of the local region for a while. Dr Sokolov has remained at his side, through thick and thin, playing the fall guy in countless hunting stories. 'They always suspected Kalashnikov,' Sokolov recalls. 'He stood out from the bureaucrats because he had a brain. They were jealous and thought him wilful.' Wherever he travelled within the old USSR, Kalashnikov took Sokolov with him. 'The locals thought I was his bodyguard,' the doctor says with pride. Dinner is ready and the Kalashnikov clan assembles. Sokolov is to his right, Viktor to his left. There is also Yuri, the manager of the hunting lodge, Boris his assistant, and Nikolai, a burly man who used to be the Defence Ministry's representative at the Izhevsk plant. We squash on to two wooden benches in the small kitchen, as Yelena dishes up the traditional hunters' feast – elk's liver fried with onions, and boiled tongue. The toasts commence – to the Motherland, to hospitality and to a meeting with foreigners that would have been impossible until recently. Kalashnikov and addresses the assembled group. His voice is shrill and loud, his language terse. The words seem strangely rehearsed – perhaps this time they are. There is much that he wants to say. 'My life's not been easy. I wanted my invention to serve peace. I didn't want it to make war easier.' Each sentence is received in silence. It is as if we are at a confessional. 'You see, constructors have never been given their just deserts in this country. If the politicians had worked as hard as we did, the guns would never have got into the wrong hands.'
