The Shpagin submachine gun is still one of the most widespread small arms in its class. Over the years, over 5 million units of this machine were produced in the USSR. More than 1 million more licensed copies were produced worldwide. The machine turned out to be so massive that it “floated up” in various hot spots up to the beginning of the XXI century. And this despite the fact that in the Soviet Union itself they began to gradually abandon it back in 1949. Hence the reasonable question: where did the millions of small arms go?
Rearmament is not an instant process. It almost always drags on for many years, even with the most competent organization and the right leadership. So the departure from the PPSh in favor of more modern weapons in the USSR stretched out for several years. They changed the PCA for the recently appeared Kalashnikov assault rifles. First of all, the units were rearmed, which, in the event of a new war, would be the first to be raised on the whistle to defend the Fatherland. At the same time, old weapons were removed from parts and sent to storage.
Despite all its simplicity, the PPSh nevertheless cost money, and considerable money at that. Especially when it comes to really large amounts of weapons. And therefore, in the first decade after the adoption of the Kalashnikov assault rifle, they were in no hurry to get rid of the submachine guns of the Second World War. All of them were sent to warehouses, and from there they were distributed to other divisions and law enforcement agencies, to which new machine guns had not yet reached. So, for example, a large number of PPShs in the early 1950s were transferred to the armament of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.
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When the whole country was armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, the “grandfather's” PPShs again went to the warehouses, this time to the “bins of the motherland”. For many more years, these weapons were kept in case of war. At the same time, with each new year, the disposal of old submachine guns was gaining momentum. The most hopeless and neglected samples were sent for scrap. Usable assault rifles were usually sent as aid to Allied countries. In most cases, assistance with old types of weapons was provided free of charge. Suffice it to say that the Soviet Union gave its satellites so many PPShs that these machines were actively used in African countries back in the 1990s.
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At the same time, an insignificant part of the PPSh of the Second World War still remained in warehouses. For example, in the Russian Federation, the last PPSh was officially decommissioned only in 1994. And in the neighboring Republic of Belarus, the PPSh were in service until 2005. However, despite this, many machines are still gathering dust in warehouses. The reason is simple. Disposal of weapons is often much more expensive than storing them in a box of grease.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about why on some Kalashnikov models the butt is made with pimples.
A source: https://novate.ru/blogs/290720/55481/