In Russia, the production of a civilian version of the revolver “Nagant” has been launched. A civilian rifled carbine will be made on the basis of original historical samples of revolvers of different years of manufacture. The weapon will receive a long barrel and a wooden butt, which makes it comply with Russian weapons legislation (the length of the weapon is more than 800 millimeters). The historical prototype of the new-old revolver was an elongated version of the Nagant of the border guard of the Tsarist Army, produced at the very beginning of the 20th century.
Winner by death
The revolver of the Nagant system of the sample of 1895 (GRAU index 56-H-121) is a seven-shot revolver designed and produced by the Belgian industrialists brothers Emil and Leon Nagans for the Russian Empire, which was in service and produced in a number of countries at the end of the XIX – mid-XX century. Let’s recall the history of its adoption.
Before the advent of smokeless gunpowder, the first and only regular Smith-Wesson revolver was in service with the Russian army. The model of a huge caliber of 10.67 mm was designed for smoky powder. Adopted already in 1871, the “American” clearly required replacement. Then the Russian military department finally announced a competition for a new revolver.
The Russian military department has put forward very strict requirements for the new army revolver: 3-line caliber (7.62 mm), simplicity and reliability of the design, high penetration force of the cartridge. Interestingly, the military demanded to reduce the rate of fire, abandoning self-firing, and in addition to this, to abandon the automatic extraction of spent cartridges. Probably, the military was very afraid of the large consumption of cartridges — saving above all.
The favorites in the competition were two Belgian gunsmiths — Leon Nagant with his already well-known revolver of the 1878 model in the world, which underwent two upgrades in 1886 and 1892, and Henri Piper with a revolver «Bayard».
«Bayard» lost due to its higher difficulty. Although there is an opinion that the Nagant won thanks to the connections that Leon personally had in Russia, but his revolver really suited the stated requirements more.
Launched into production in 1895, the revolver began to enter the army quickly. The “nagant” became one of the symbols of the Russian revolution of 1917 and the subsequent civil war, and in the future the word “nagant” became a household word in colloquial speech, so often called any revolver.
Nagan proved himself well in the Russian-Japanese War. Comfortable and unpretentious, he gained respect among officers and soldiers. Then in the First World War, in the fierce trench battles, the revolver distinguished itself by its reliability, it was not terrible to drop it into the sand or mud, shoot in the rain or in the dust.
Only after the end of the Second World War was the nagant removed from service. The reason was primarily the unsatisfactory reloading speed. Nevertheless, nagans served in the police until the end of the 60s, with collectors and special communications until the 80s.
On the hunt and in the collection
The civilian version of the revolver “Nagant” will be pistols stored in warehouses, which will simply be converted into carbines. According to the manufacturers, the new weapon may be of interest to both collectors and lovers of military history, as well as hunters. Apparently, therefore, it is planned to produce both the product in the original caliber of 7.62 by 38 millimeters, and the hunting version in the caliber of 22 (a small-caliber cartridge of ring ignition of 5.6 millimeters).
Interestingly, there was a similar story 10 years ago. In 2011, the company “Izhmash” introduced a new small-caliber revolver carbine, created according to the design scheme of the legendary revolver “Nagant”. The carbine was equipped with two types of cartridges: 22LR and 22WMR. Both types of cartridges are representatives of the 5.6 mm family of cartridges with ring ignition and are used in civilian weapons.
And in 2020, a Russian private company introduced a hunting carbine based on a revolver Nagant model of 1985, codenamed “Shadow-7”. The carbine outwardly was a revolver Revolver with a long barrel and a butt attached to it in the area of the handle of the typeFAB Defense Glock stock. The revolver is designed for a 5.45×18 mm cartridge. According to experts, the carbine “Shadow-7” resembled a weapon from a post-apocalyptic game like Fallout.
Source of information:
https://tass.ru/ekonomika/12677837?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fyandex.ru%2Fnews%2Fsearch%3Ftext%3D