Georgy Semyonovich Shpagin ( Russian : Георгий Семёнович Шпагин ; 17 April 1897 – 6 February 1952) was a Soviet weapons designer. He is best-known as the creator of the PPSh-41 , a submachine gun that saw widespread use by the Red Army on the Eastern Front . He also worked with fellow Soviet weapons designer Vasily Degtyaryov on the DShK , a heavy machine gun , shortly before the start of World War II .
14-714: Shpagin was born on 17 April 1897 to a Russian peasant family in Klyushnikovo , close to Kovrovo , in what was then the Russian Empire . He attended school for three years before becoming a carpenter at the age of 12 (in 1909). In 1916, Shpagin was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army to fight on the Eastern Front . The following year, he was assigned to repair artillery. After the October Revolution , he joined
28-572: A light anti-tank weapon. During World War II , about 8,000 units of Shpagin's DShK were produced by the Soviet Union . In 1940, he came up with his most accredited design: the PPSh-41 , which would go on to become the staple automatic weapon used by the Red Army on the Eastern Front . The PPSh-41 was a favoured design because it was cheap to produce and easy to maintain at a time when the national arms demand
42-600: A mandate that all future rifle designs be locked breech . From 1946 until 1950, Shpagin was a member of the Supreme Soviet , the national legislative body. During this time, he became seriously ill and was diagnosed with stomach cancer . He died of the disease in February 1952 and was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in the city of Moscow . Shpagin was awarded the State Stalin Prize (Second Class) in 1941, and received
56-456: Is also a street named after him in the latter city. Kovrovsky District Kovrovsky District ( Russian : Ковро́вский райо́н ) is an administrative and municipal district ( raion ), one of the sixteen in Vladimir Oblast , Russia . It is located in the north of the oblast . The area of the district is 1,817 square kilometers (702 sq mi). Its administrative center is
70-457: The Red Army and worked as a gunsmith in Vladimir Oblast . After 1920, he was at a workshop designing weapons in the same area, working with Soviet weapons designers Vladimir Grigoryevich Fyodorov and Vasily Degtyaryov . After nearly a decade and a half of unsuccessful attempts, his workshop released the DShK in 1938. It is still in widespread use as an anti-personnel gun, an anti-aircraft gun, and
84-607: The Russian SFSR , and approximately one-sixth (18%) of them in the Ukrainian SSR . Almost two-thirds (65.7%) of the population was urban, leaving the rural population with 34.3%. In this way, its gradual increase continued, as shown by the series represented by 47.9%, 56.3% and 62.3% of 1959, 1970 and 1979, respectively. The last two national censuses (held in 1979 and 1989) showed that the country had been experiencing an average annual increase of about 2.5 million people, although it
98-468: The city of Kovrov (which is not administratively a part of the district). Population: 30,174 ( 2021 Census ) ; 31,477 ( 2010 Census ) ; 31,148 ( 2002 Census ); 30,044 ( 1989 Soviet census ) . Within the framework of administrative divisions , Kovrovsky District is one of the sixteen in the oblast. The city of Kovrov serves as its administrative center , despite being incorporated separately as an administrative unit with
112-557: The Soviet Union was more populated than both the United States and Canada together, having some 40 million more inhabitants than the U.S. alone. However, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991, the combined population of the 15 former Soviet republics stagnated at around 290 million inhabitants for the period 1995–2000. This significant slowdown may in part be due to the remarkable socio-economic changes that followed
126-614: The dissolution, that have tended to reduce even more the already decreasing birth rates (which were already showing some signs of decline since the Soviet era, in particular among the people living in the European part of the Soviet Union, beginning from 1988 to 1989). Today the population of the 15 former Soviet republics is around 299 million, with much of this growth attributed to the Central Asian states, which have increasing fertility, and in
140-432: The status equal to that of the districts . As a municipal division , the district is incorporated as Kovrovsky Municipal District . The City of Kovrov is incorporated separately from the district as Kovrov Urban Okrug. 1989 Soviet census The 1989 Soviet census ( Russian : Всесоюзная перепись населения 1989 , lit. '1989 All-Union Census'), conducted between 12 and 19 January of that year,
154-644: The title " Hero of Socialist Labour " on 16 September 1945 for his "creation of new types of weapons and raising the combat power of the Red Army " through his acclaimed weapons designs. Additionally, he had received the Order of the Red Star in 1938 and the Order of Suvorov (Second Class) in 1945, in addition to three separate awards of the Order of Lenin (in 1941, 1943, and 1945). In Russia , there are large public monuments dedicated to Shpagin in Kovrov and Vyatka , and there
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#1733106955980168-717: Was a slight decrease from a figure of around 3 million per year in the previous intercensal period, 1959–1970. This post-war increase had contributed to the USSR's partial demographic recovery from the significant population loss that the USSR had suffered during the Great Patriotic War (the Eastern Front of World War II ), and before it, during Stalin 's Great Purge of 1936–1938. The previous postwar censuses, conducted in 1959, 1970 and 1979, had enumerated 208,826,650, 241,720,134, and 262,436,227 inhabitants, respectively. In 1990,
182-565: Was exceptionally high due to Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union . In 1944, Shpagin became a member of the Communist Party . He, in competition with the AS-44 , also created his own prototype assault rifle called the ASh-44, which was operated by a blowback system . However, the ASh-44 design was dropped from trial testing due to it being uncontrollable on full-auto firing, which led to the issuing of
196-400: Was the final census carried out in the Soviet Union . The census found the total population to be 286,730,819 inhabitants. In 1989, the Soviet Union ranked as the third most populous in the world, above the United States (with 248,709,873 inhabitants according to the 1990 census ), although it was well below China and India. In 1989, about half of the Soviet Union's total population lived in
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