Moscow: The sculptor of AK-47 automatic rifle designer Mikhail Kalashnikov’s statue, Salavat Scherbakov, has said that a 7-meter statute of Kalashnikov will be inaugurated in Moscow on 19 September.
Scherbakov told Russian Dozhd television channel yesterday that the date of unveiling of the statue coincided with Gunsmith’s Day in Russia and the day of St Michael in the Orthodox church. “In general, everyone from the Soviet era turns out to have been a believer,” he added, noting that Kalashnikov himself “valued and celebrated” his namesake’s day. A founding stone has been installed on Oruzheyny Pereulok near the Garden Ring in the Russian capital where Scherbakov said “weapons were made for centuries.” The Russian Military-Historical Society has backed the installation of the Kalashnikov monument, which is estimated to cost 538,000 dollar.
“The weapons that Kalashnikov made were weapons designed to fight evil,” he said. “That was his goal.” In a letter to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church before his death in 2013, Kalashnikov wrotethat he was haunted by the thousands of deaths his invention was responsible for. Earlier, in 2014, Russia’s federal stamp distributor issued a commemorative stamp featuring the late Mikhail Kalashnikov. Kalashnikov was also awarded the Order of St Andrew, Russia’s oldest and highest honor, in October 1998.
