tsv

I could never deny that Soviet artists had taste, though I had no clue it extended into their weapon procurement too. I don't know if I should ask this in the general firearms thread as to not derail this one, but I hope it wouldn't bother you to elaborate a bit on some of the things that Kalashnikov did to incorporate visual design into the AK. I'm terribly curious since I always thought it was an accident that the AK turned out to be a handsome rifle.

I'm sorry to reply to such an old post, but I was reading through this thread and I can't help but catch on to you mentioning the AK's aesthetics. I can't help but ask whether you mean that Kalashnikov intentionally made his rifle better aesthetically, or that the rifle simply accidentally ended up looking good? I know less than nothing about firearms design and I assume that it is always form-follows-function, so the idea of Mikhail Kalashnikov (and the Soviet procurement system by extention) giving a damn about how their rifle looks sounds crazy to me. I can't imagine communists caring about how their rifle looks laying besides a corpse on a battlefield scorched by nuclear fire.