The revolutionary sailor is one of the brightest and most recognizable symbols of the Russian Revolution of 1917, along with the red flag. Watching films, rare footage of the chronicle, or, more likely, photographs of that era, many citizens should have paid attention to the machine-gun belts with cartridges tied on the chest cross to cross and around belts. Really at that time there were no cartridge boxes for carrying ammunition?
In fact, the tradition of wearing machine-gun belts to the "Maxim" cross over appeared decades before the Russian Revolution. An unusual tradition appeared in Russia along with the very first machine guns. So, the first 12 pieces were purchased back in 1889. In 1897, another 291 machine guns arrived in the country. In 1901, another 40 pieces, and in 1904, Russia signed a contract with the Anglo-American by Vickers, Sons and Maxim, a contract for the production of machine guns at the Imperial Tula Armory factory.
Completely equipped, together with the machine, the Maxim version of the First World War weighed about 291 kg. Early versions of the machine gun were so heavy and bulky that they required up to 7 people to be crewed. At the same time, the weapon itself was considered not a lot, not a little - an artillery system... One 6-meter machine-gun belt for "Maxim" was designed for 250 rounds of 7.62 × 54 mm R caliber. Stored and transported, including on the battlefield, cartridges for "Maxim" in special metal containers. As a result, cartridges alone without a tape weighed 3.4-3.8 kg.
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The figure seems small, but with the addition of a textile tape of 6 meters, as well as a metal container, the mass of only one set of ammunition takes off to almost 10 kg. And this, in turn, is such a weight that it is not easy to carry alone in your hand for at least some representative time. So the Russian soldiers and sailors came up with the idea of leaving the containers in the rear, and instead hanging all the ribbons for Maxim like garlands on a Christmas tree for soldiers at a rate.
In addition, the Mosin rifle also used 7.62 × 54 mm R cartridges, exactly the same ammunition as the Maxim machine gun of the 1910 model was fed. Therefore, during the years of the Revolution and the Civil War in Russia, both the Reds, and the Whites, and the Greens began to actively use tied chest and around the waist machine-gun belts as an impromptu bandolier, unloading for ammunition for rifles and trimmed.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about why why the leader of the world proletariat Vladimir Ulyanov took on a pseudonym.
Source: https://novate.ru/blogs/250322/62494/