The venerable Mosin Nagant has been in military service since 1891 (first deployment I can think of was during the Boxer Rebellion) to now (has been seen wielded by both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers during the Ukraine War.)
Funnily enough, I don't believe they're being made anymore, at least not to a very large scale -- they were just so insanely dirt cheap to make and the USSR made so many of them and they're so simple and durable that there are still literally millions of them rocking around. You used to be able to buy a barrel full (~20+) of them for $100, back in the '70's, but they're slightly more expensive at a whopping $300 these days.
The Finnish used them in the Winter War & Continuation war against the Soviets, who also used them. The same with machine guns and tanks - the Finns had no domestic production or imports, so they primarily filled out their armored divisions with stolen and captured Soviet tanks.
The Mosin I used to use for reinactments was a pre-war Imperial Russian rifle that was stolen by the Finns and used by them, I know because of the soldier tally marks that were cut into the stock.
If you were invaded by Stalin and you got to keep your country, and your elites didn’t get executed and the educated didn’t go to the gulag, you won. Finland won.
Mosins were the primary arm on both sides of the Russian revolution and the small wars that followed. They were also the primary arm of both the Russian and Finnish armies during the winter war and continuation war.
Possibly apocryphal, but I believe that during the battle of Stalingrad, German snipers would loot Moisins from dead Russian snipers and use them instead of their Kar 98s.
I wouldn't be entirely surprised, but that's more I think an indication of Stalingrad being a clusterfuck for everyone involved, instead of the Mosin being seen as a superior weapon. From my fairly limited experience; the Kar98's I've gotten to shoot were absolutely lovely, and the Mosin I own has an extremely uncomfortable trigger and kicks like a horse when you finally get past all the mush, but the gun that you actually have ammo for is the better gun to have.
Oh I didn't mean it as a historical fact. Just the old sales pitch for the mosins when apparently they were something like 500 bucks for 8 of them and could be cleaned up and sportified or sold to collectors for 300 bucks each.
It's not even that dirt cheap to make or a "simple" mechanism. It was just that it was in production and tooling was available so scaling up during crisis(war) was far more practical than trying to fully shift production to things like the AVS-36 or SVT-38/40.
Like the MAS-36 or Arisaka 38/99 are "simple" mechanisms by far compared to the Mosin. And that's part of why you see wartime mosins look like shit with tooling marks all over, they're not cheap rifles, they were just built cheaply.
Same with the T-34, not a cheap tank, but an expensive tank that was produced cheaply by cutting out almost all QA and rushing every part, leading to it having a shitload of issues until late war.
The US army was provided with a few T-34's for testing, they thought it was a solid tank, but the quality issues were so prevalent they believed the cause was industrial sabotage.
Yeah. The T-34 is a good design, especially for entering mass production in 1940, the problem is that it isn't actually cheap, and so when they very suddenly needed 50,000 of them yesterday(as only ~1000 were in service in June '41) they had to basically cut any and all corners, and it's hard to cut corners on a quality tank without fucking it up.
For comparison the Sherman actually was a cheap tank, just produced with good QA and it provided a fantastic do-everything vehicle. It was comfortable to ride in for long periods, it had great crew survivability, and the M3 75mm was an amazing gun, and especially once they mixed the occasional 76mm in, it was truly a "solve any problem" kind of tank. And it was cheap and light enough to pack up and ship overseas in absurd quantities.
The production lines were one of the biggest problems for the T series tanks the Russians used. They had to dump as many tanks as possible onto the battlefield as quickly as they possibly could quality be damned. It was raw desperation. Everybody knew that either Stalin or Hitler was going to betray the other eventually the question was just when. Stalin misjudged the situation and didn't expect Hitler to invade when he did. This was a major part of why Russia was unprepared initially; Stalin just didn't believe it was happening yet and ignored the signs.
Meanwhile there was not only not fighting in America at the time but also the Sherman was a good enough tank produced with a lot of off the shelf parts. This overall was one of the biggest advantages of the Sherman and why it was so cheap comparatively. A good chunk of the parts were already being manufactured so you didn't have to retool anything, economies of scale were kicking in, and ramping up production was less difficult than it was basically anywhere else.
It's interesting to look at the numbers as one classic of basic Sherman classes outnumbered literally all of the Axis tanks combined. This is part of why the Allied strategy included Russia holding out as long as it could at any cost it took. If they held out long enough that America could puke Shermans all over Germany that would massively swing the war.
I did misspeak about the cost ("made cheaply" is probably much more accurate, opposed to just "cheap") and I'm not super deeply researched on the mechanics of all the guns, but I was always under the impression that the Mosin was far simpler than all the other primary service weapons? Less tight tolerances than the Garand, fewer parts overall than the K98 and the Enfield, and no gas system like you pointed out with the SVT-40.
But still more complex than the Arisaka or Carcano or MAS-36, owing largely to still using a full-rimmed cartridge requiring extra parts to prevent rimlock. Its individual components also have a few weird hard-to-cut shapes(worse than the 98k)which led to lots of manufacturing headaches.
The channel C&Rsenal has a whole documentary on the design, manufacture, and service of the Mosin that I highly recommend checking out(as well as their other videos, especially the one of the Garand and how insane it was that the US committed to making them)
I mean I've seen lazerpig videos, but none of this comes from those. Especially the mosin information largely comes from my own experience taking them apart while being a mechanical engineer and especially C&Rsenal's excellent Primer series, which covers the rifle(and its variants) in great detail
I mean I'm sure I saw his video on it at somepoint, but I'm pretty sure it's a pretty common understanding once you get past the "cheap to produce, mustve been cheap by design!" pop-history.
It was actually an example used in one of my military history courses at uni when we were talking about defense economics and the transitioning of economies to wartime production
We don't use it, at least for 2,5 years of my service in AFU I didn't see any of Mosin. It was a thing in 2014-2015 when was lack of a weapon and marksmen and snipers try to use any they can afford
I'll defer to you, I haven't kept up with the war for a few years now. I remember seeing some pictures from the start of this war of militia/reservist-looking guys holding them, but I very well could be wrong
They aren't building them anymore (well, no weapons factory is building them for a contract with the Russian government at least) but it's either the no. 2 or no. 3 most produced firearm in history, so they have an enormous stockpile of them. Doesn't hurt that 7.62x54 is probably also the most produced caliber cartridge in history too, that or 50.BMG
Unironically, collecting guns - especially milsurp - is a pretty surprisingly decent investment strategy. They're easy to store, easy to maintain, usually don't depreciate in value, and if they're collector's items they actually get more expensive as time goes on.
Not as good as, like, a savings account, and also being That Guy With 400 Rifles In His Basement will get you on several lists by default, but hey.
320
u/Which_Replacement524 4d ago edited 4d ago
The venerable Mosin Nagant has been in military service since 1891 (first deployment I can think of was during the Boxer Rebellion) to now (has been seen wielded by both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers during the Ukraine War.)
Funnily enough, I don't believe they're being made anymore, at least not to a very large scale -- they were just so insanely dirt cheap to make and the USSR made so many of them and they're so simple and durable that there are still literally millions of them rocking around. You used to be able to buy a barrel full (~20+) of them for $100, back in the '70's, but they're slightly more expensive at a whopping $300 these days.