"Muddying the waters is the slightly more that implied suggestion that Kalashnikov's history and role in the actual design of the rifle that bears his name is probably closer to a state sponsored parable than a factual account of events."
Maybe... Maybe Not. Again, let me use my professional area of expertise in the subject of Soviet Aerospace design to lead a lesson.
In the Soviet system, the OKB (Experimental Design Bureau) was a very small engineering design bureau named after the chief designer. The design was formalized there, with prototypes built either internally or by contractors. After the design was handed over to the state, the state did acceptance trials and those designs selected for production were assigned to the variety of state-owned GAZ's for production. This is a complete contrast to the "design and build" business model of western firms. That's why there was no "Kalishnikov Factory" and similarly no "MiG Factory". There was an absolute separation between OKB and GAZ.
By Wikipedias definition: OKB = "Опытное конструкторское бюро" - Opytnoye Konstruktorskoye Buro translated to Experimental Design Bureau. During the Soviet era, OKBs were closed institutions working on design and prototyping of advanced technology, usually for military applications.
Note that they are only *design and prototyping* institutions, not production factories. This is a very important distinction to make. Interestingly enough the Russian word "конструкторское" transliterated as "Konstruktorskoye" and with the cognate in English of "Constructor" means "The construction place" in the context of "making something new from ideas" as opposed to the one who builds in series production. it has the connotation of a place of original imagination. "Konstruktor" means more or less "inventor". "Skoye" means more or less "place.
In any event:
OKB's were set up very rapidly when a "Chief Designer" (after which the OKB would be named) was identified as having potential to design a system that the state was interested in. An OKB could range in size from perhaps four people to perhaps 500. All were run "from top to bottom" by the Chief Designer around whom the OKB had been assembled. At times two shared the role and name, MiG being an example (Mikoyan and Guerevich, leading the the correctly spelled "MiG" as opposed to "Mig"). Even the largest of the OKB's were small, and the Chief Designer was expected to be, well... the CHIEF designer. Otherwise competition from his subordinates would result in THEM being cherry picked out and given their own design team and OKB name.
In MiG, for example, Mikoyan himself had hand on his french curve and pencil and Guerevich had slide rule and aerodynamic tables in hand for all designs up to and including MiG-23. They LITERALLY designed the MiG-15, MiG-17, MiG-19, MiG-21, and MiG-23. They were assisted by draftsmen, specialized systems engineers (pneumatics, hydraulics, electrics, powerplant, etc), but the actual design of the vehicle was not very well distributed as a "collective" effort, but truly was more of an individual "cult of ability" design.
Aerospace OKB's you might have heard of include MiG (Mikoyan & Gurevich), Sukhoi, Tupolov, Beriev, Lavochkin, Mil, Sikorsky (before he emigrated to the USA), etc. Engine designers for these had their own OKB's: Kuznetsov, Klimov, Tumanski, etc. Same with many many many other military design OKB's spread across the spectrum of industries.
In firearms, we see the names Kalishnikov, Simonov, Mosin & Nagant, etc., etc. Each of these was similarly a small engineering team led by one Chief. This was Soviet policy long before WW-II, and the system of naming "Objekts" after the chief designer was long established. Naturally when "Objekt 611" or whatever became world famous, credits and praises and fame was heaped on the Chief Designer, who stood out in front as the face of the OKB that was named for HIM. Equally, if an OKB failed, the Chief Designer was often sent to the GULAG (another acronym). At times very talented designers rotated between fame, the GULAG, and then back into a new OKB as a valued designer based on the whims of Stalin. The Soviets had no problem tossing an engineer into prison to contemplate his failure and then to ressurect him when his expertise was again needed.
Here's an example, using Tupolev, who went on to design the TU-144 Supersonic transport as well as many other influential swept wing jet designs postwar. Taken from a book review of his biography:
On the evening of 21 October 1937, four agents of the NKVD (the KGB’s precursor) entered the offices of Andrei Nikolayevich Tupolev and arrested him. Tupolev, the principal figure in the early development of Soviet aviation and a leading aircraft designer, was led away to immediate imprisonment. With this reprise of a scene played thousands of times during the Stalin era began one of the most bizarre (and telling) episodes of Soviet history. For Tupolev found himself not in the cells of Lefortovo or Butyrka prisons but locked away with hundreds of other aviation specialists and ordered to carry on his aircraft-design work. Like most of the NKVD’s deeds, the tale of the prison workshops remained unknown and may never have seen the light of day if not for Leonid Kerber and his book Stalin’s Aviation Gulag. This fascinating story is all the more compelling since it is based on Kerber’s own imprisonment with Tupolev and on the long professional and personal relationship that followed. Stalin’s Aviation Gulag relates how Kerber, Tupolev, and hundreds of other aviation specialists were arrested and forced to work in three NKVD-run prison workshops (sharaga in Russian). Tupolev and his design team were imprisoned, along with the Petlyakov and Myasischev design teams, in the buildings Tupolev had worked in prior to his arrest—later to become the Tupolev Design Bureau. There the men lived and worked, isolated from their families and allowed outside only in the “monkey cage”—a rooftop enclosure of steel bars. Once, when the aircraft of a sharaga design team flew over Red Square in a May Day parade, the jailed designers were permitted to view the fruits of their labor from the monkey cage. Kerber paints the entire grim picture with similar vignettes: sharaga colleagues who disappear in the night, summonses to NKVD headquarters for interrogation on design projects, and books inscribed with the names of known purge victims appearing in the prison library. Tupolev, Kerber, and most of their design team somehow survived and even managed to design and fly a plane, the TU-2 bomber, under these horrendous conditions. Then, in 1943, they were released as abruptly as they had been arrested.
So much for the Soviet way of dealing with folks that didn't meet immediate expectations.
Without a real grasp of this dynamic, I am not sure that anyone can really understand that the very fact that there was an OKB named after Kalishnikov REALLY means that he was the boss and that he did the heavy lifting as leader of the team. if someone else had been at all influential, we would know his name. The Soviets only very rarely ignored the opportunity to provide a new "Hero" for public consumption, and as was seen with MiG being named after two equally influential "Partners", had Kalishnikov had anyone else in his OKB worthy of special recognition, we would know that name. The only exceptions were for programs of extreme secrecy (rocketry and nuclear physics) where the designers were anonomous and often restricted to living in industrial cities that concentrated that area of expertise into secure zones for the sake of state security. Korolev would be an xample fo this (Chief Designer of the Soviet Space Program). In fact Korolev was simply called "The Chief Designer" for his pubic name, as Soviet citizens knew exactly what that term meant: The head of an OKB.
Note also that the general way to running an OKB was to shine as a star in someone elses, and to be recognized for it, and to be promoted. You were not promoted WITHIN your existing OKB, you were given your own. Rarely was someone identified "from scratch" as having the potential to step right up to the position. For this to occur, the man was generally outstanding. Rapid rise into the position was generally earned by merit. "Merit" did include loyalty to state as well as technical ability, and past history of being a soldier, from a proper family, etc., etc., did influence things. But at the end of the day you needed talent too... and lack of same was not rewarded.
The following is a pure guess, based on my knowlage of the complexities of design of aerospace vehicles and the staffing of the OKB's for them: My *educated professional guess* is that during the original design phase of the AK-47 the total staffing of the team would have been on the order of perhaps 25 men including the Chief Designer, a couple of Assistant Designers, several draftsmen, and a handful of tool and diemakers, plus helpers and assistants. He would have been able to draw upon experts from other industries (steel, machine tool, etc.,) to incorporate their input into the production engineering questions that form an integral part of every design.
Willie
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) the SKS and AK-47 were developed separately but almost simultaneously. (SKS 1944-45, AK 1946-47) The SKS was designed to be what it was, and the AK was designed to be something slightly different. So it wasn't a matter of having one old design they maybe could modify. They had two contemporary designs to choose from, and pretty much chose to make both.
