Mikhail Kalashnikov was born and grown up in the Altai region, in a small village of Kurya. The family of Kuban farmers moved to another place in the middle of Siberia hoping for a more comfortable life, as before the revolution they gave free allotments of land free of charge in the Altai region. The Kalashnikovs had three children for the moment of the move. Mikhail was born already here, among the harsh beauty of the Siberian foothills.
Even nowadays, it is not so easy to get to Kurya. There are several hours of driving from Barnaul, the capital of the Altai region, to the village. Despite the fact that the word “Altai” evokes associations of mountain cliffs and rocky peaks, Kurya itself is located on a vast steppe plain, and there are several dozens of kilometers to the nearest mountain from these places. Here Mikhail Kalashnikov spent his childhood.
In 1980, a bronze bust was mounted in the native village of the designer, commemorating the famous fellow villager in the memories of the residents of Kurya. The hero of the occasion came to the opening ceremony in person, but for him Izhevsk had already become a native city by that time. Mikhail Kalashnikov met his fellow villagers, friends of his youth, shared his memoirs. Having connected his life with Izhevsk, Mikhail Kalashnikov always recalled the village of his childhood and missed the native land. There is a long way from Izhevsk to Kurya. According to Mr. Kalashnikov, he often dreamed of flapping wings like a bird and finding himself among his native fields and copses.
The house, where the Kalashnikovs used to live, was located on a river bank. Now this place is in desolation, there are almost no more residential facilities here. Coastal landscapes fascinate with their beauty and comfort. One can only guess what splendour was opening from the windows of the family house. The Loktevka River, quietly descending from Mount Sinyukha, sparkles with its shallow waters. But the would-be designer used to drown in Loktevka more than once.
Mikhail Kalashnikov recalled with sadness his native school, the doorsteps, which he dreamed of crossing again. The old facade of the school building still please the eye. Nowadays, there is a memorial museum of Mikhail Kalashnikov. Mr. Kalashnikov gave many rarities from his personal archive, i.e. photographs, letters, household items. There is also a room, which imitates entirely the flat of the designer in Izhevsk with his personal items and houseware. Only huge stoves remained from former interiors. Mikhail Timofeevich with a smile recalled how schoolchildren, who committed offence, were sent to stand behind those stoves for punishment. In cold winter days, it could hardly be called punishment. Relaxed schoolchildren joyously fell asleep in a warm corner near the stove.
Mr. Kalashnikov told his fellow villagers that he had a craving for technical inventions already in his childhood. Mikhail liked to make small wooden houses, repair faulty mechanisms and parts. Any device, which came into his hands, was thoroughly studied and analyzed. So that the strict father couldn’t take the found item away, the young designer used to hide his trophies in an attic, where he disassembled and assembled them again with the use of the father’s bench-work tools. For Mikhail Kalashnikov it was interesting why the device got faulty, how it operated before and what caused the failure.
The craving for designing and creating technical devices has been always typical for Mikhail Kalashnikov, i.e. when he worked at the railroad, when he was in the army and during the years of work at the Izhevsk Machine-Building Plant. The top achievement of the talented designer and the main outcome of his life was the invention of the legendary AK-47 assault rifles, which was acknowledged worldwide as the main firearm of the contemporary times.
