Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov (UK: /kəˈlæʃnɪkɒf/ kə-LASH-nik-off, US: /-ˈlɑːʃ-/ -⁠LAHSH-;[4][5] Russian: Михаил Тимофеевич Калашников, IPA: [mʲɪxɐˈil tʲɪmɐˈfʲejɪvʲɪtɕ kɐˈlaʂnʲɪkəf]; 10 November 1919 – 23 December 2013) was a Soviet and Russian lieutenant general, inventor, military engineer, writer, and small arms designer.

[1] Kalashnikov was, according to himself, a self-taught tinkerer who combined innate mechanical skills with the study of weaponry to design arms that achieved battlefield ubiquity.

[10][11] In 1930, his father and most of his family had their properties confiscated and were deported as kulaks to the village of Nizhnyaya Mokhovaya, Tomsk Oblast.

[3] After completing seventh grade, Mikhail, with his stepfather's permission, left his family and returned to Kurya, hiking for nearly 1,000 km.

A party organizer embedded within the factory noticed the man's dexterity and issued him a directive (napravlenie) to work at a nearby weapons design bureau, where he was employed as a tester of fitted stocks in rifles.

While training, he made his first inventions, which concerned not only tanks, but also small weapons, and was personally awarded a wrist watch by Georgy Zhukov.

[2] In the last few months of being in hospital, he overheard some fellow soldiers bemoaning their current rifles, which were plagued with reliability issues, such as jamming.

[3] From 1942 onwards, Kalashnikov was assigned to the Central Scientific-developmental Firing Range for Rifle Firearms of the Chief Artillery Directorate of the Red Army.

From the AKM, he developed a squad automatic weapon variant, known as the RPK (Russian: Ручной пулемет Кала́шникова, lit.

It is cartridge belt-fed, not magazine-fed, as it is intended to provide heavy sustained fire from a tripod mount, or be used as a light, bipod-mounted weapon.

[10] Kalashnikov's grandson, Igor, ran a German company called Marken Marketing International.

[19] The company revamps trademarks and produces merchandise carrying the Kalashnikov name, such as vodka,[11] umbrellas and knives.

[19] During a visit to the United States in the early 2000s, Kalashnikov was invited to tour a Virginia holding site for the forthcoming American Wartime Museum.

[22][citation needed] After a prolonged illness, Kalashnikov was hospitalized on 17 November 2013, in an Udmurtian medical facility in Izhevsk, the capital of Udmurtia and where he lived.

[28] Translated from the published letter he states, "I keep having the same unsolved question: if my rifle claimed people's lives, then can it be that I... a Christian and an Orthodox believer, was to blame for their deaths?".