Nikolay Mikhailovich Afanasyev (Russian: Николай Михайлович Афанасьев; 14 November 1916 – 15 March 2009), also known as Nicolai Michaelovich Afanasiev, was a Russian firearms designer.

[1] Nicolai Michaelovitch Afanasiev was born in Russia on 14 November 1916 in St. Petersburg.

In 1939 he was drafted to serve in a tank corps in Mongolia, where he started to work on machine gun design.

After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, he volunteered for front-line service.

He was allowed to be a fighter from September 1941 until the fall of 1942, when he was recalled to work on armaments, initially on improving fuses for 82- and 120-mm mortars.