In the post-war years, weapons in the Soviet Union did not lose their relevance: time passed, new, more modern models were required. A striking example of the existence of such a trend was the history of the creation of the Stechkin automatic pistol, which became a real national weapon legend. True, few people know that the pistol for the elite special forces was originally supposed to become the most massive, but something went wrong.
After the end of World War II, the Soviet command decided to put into service Red Army compact submachine guns that would be able to replace the PPSh and PPP. It was required to create a model that would be suitable "for arming the officers of the Soviet Army as a weapon of self-defense and attack, as well as a weapon of close combat." Initially, this place was occupied by the Makarov pistol, but it quickly became clear that he could not be considered such a weapon.
Initially, the following parameters were determined for the new pistol: the army pistol should be designed for the already successfully worked out cartridge of 7.62 × 25 mm. In addition, with good power and ballistics, it would make it easier to obtain the necessary performance characteristics. True, this brought a lot of unnecessary work to the engineers during the design, especially with regard to the locking unit. In this case, the new Soviet pistol cartridge 9 × 18 mm was considered more promising.
When the competition for the creation of a new pistol was announced, the list of participants looked very original. So, a potential performer could be P.V. Voevodin is a very experienced designer, who was credited with the victory almost from the very beginning. Another participant in the competition was another legendary designer - M.T. Kalashnikov. Therefore, at first, Igor Stechkin, a recent student of the Tula Mechanical Institute, who decided to compete with the first two gunsmiths, in general, few people considered as a winner. And in vain: after all, it was his sample that was recognized as the best one presented for testing.
Despite the victory, Stechkin's pistol did not completely suit the military. Therefore, it was necessary to carry out several cycles of revision, for example, to reduce the weight of the pistol and butt complex. True, the customers themselves admitted that their initial requirements for the new weapon turned out to be overestimated: for example, according to the Novate.ru editorial office, it turned out to be simply impossible to create a reliable wooden butt holster weighing three hundred grams, so the 150-gram version was recognized as suitable more.
When the modified sample was completed, and the tests began, it became clear that the Stechkin automatic pistol (abbreviated APS) was completely met the expectations of the military: in a number of characteristics, he turned out to be even better than the famous brainchildren of Makarov and Tokarev, and also demonstrated his reliability. Moreover, its capabilities turned out to be as close as possible to those of full-fledged submachine guns, therefore, the command decided that the weapon is capable of working equally effectively with single shots, and queues. As a result, in 1951, the APS was put into service, and a year later the designer Stechkin received the Stalin Prize of the II degree for its development.
Initially, it was planned to make the Stechkin the main army pistol - they would be armed with junior officers, artillery gun crews, heavy machine guns and grenade launchers, tank crews and other military personnel for whom the larger Kalashnikov assault rifle turned out to be too bulky. And at first, the APS was very well received. True, this popularity turned out to be short-lived: even though the pistol is lighter and smaller than the AK, however, for peacetime it was not very convenient: to carry such a non-compact and heavy unit in comparison with other similar types of tools difficult.
That is why the APS never became a mass army pistol, and in 1958 it was completely removed from production - most of the already assembled samples remained in warehouses. However, twenty years later, it again became relevant, however, not in civilian life, but in war: with the outbreak of hostilities in Afghanistan, the APS and designed in the early seventies by its silent modification of the APB was actively used by special forces groups of the GRU, pilots of attack aircraft and fighter-bombers, military reconnaissance officers and other special divisions.
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At the end of the eighties, a deterioration in the crime situation began to be observed inside the country, therefore, the Ministry of Internal Affairs decided to arm the police with "Stechkin". But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the history of this famous weapon did not end. Over time, the army still abandoned the APS, but in the special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs "Stechkins" are still used and remain popular. And, according to its users, the age of the automatic pistol of the late forties of the last century is not over yet.
Do you want to know more about the most famous Russian "firearm"? Then read: Kalashnikov assault rifle: the history of a great weapon and its creator
A source: https://novate.ru/blogs/010521/58825/
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