We can wonder how such creators can feel.
Just six months before his death in December Mikhail Kalashnikov described his struggling with the “unbearable spiritual torment” of knowing the carnage the AK-47 rifle wreaked upon the world.
The AK-47, the iconic assault rifle, best known as the Kalashnikov [Avtomat Kalashnikova (Russian: Автомат Калашникова)], is widely regarded as one of the best - and deadliest in the world. It is is a selective-fire, gas-operated 7.62×39mm assault rifle, first designed in 1945 in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov and in 1948 it became introduced as the fixed-stock version into active service with selected units of the Soviet Army.
Mikhail Kalashnikov was born in 1919 to a farming family in rural Russia. His family was viewed unfavorably by the Soviet establishment and deported to Siberia where the young Kalashnikov was forced to hunt with his father's rifle to feed the family. He was a self-taught tinkerer who combined innate mechanical skills with the study of weaponry to design arms that achieved battlefield ubiquity.
Seeing the drawbacks of the standard infantry weapons at the time, he decided to construct a new rifle for the Soviet military. During this time Kalashnikov began designing a submachine gun.
Mikhail Kalashnikov himself personally negotiated many contracts for weapons exports and licensing. Over the course of his career, he evolved the basic design into a weapons family.
He created the AKM , the RPK, the general-purpose PK machine gun.
On his 90th birthday on 10 November 2009, Kalashnikov was named a "Hero of the Russian Federation" and presented with a medal by President Dmitry Medvedev who lauded him for creating "the brand every Russian is proud of".
In the months before his recent death, the world's greatest gun-maker Mikhail Kalashnikov suffered 'unbearable' pain over the lost lives caused by his weapons, an extraordinary new letter reveals.
He sought urgent spiritual guidance from Russia's top churchman on whether he was guilty in the eyes of God, according to his emotional appeal to the Orthodox Patriarch.
"The pain in my soul is unbearable,"he wrote.
'If my machine gun has taken lives of people, does it mean that it is me, Mikhail Kalashnikov, aged 93, the son of a peasant, an Orthodox Christian, who is guilty of the deaths of people, even if they are enemies?'
"The longer I live, the more often that question gets into my brain, the deeper I go in my thoughts and guesses about why the Almighty allowed humans to have devilish desires of envy, greed and aggression. Everything changes, only a man and his thinking remain unchanged: he's just as greedy, evil, heartless and restless as before!"In his letter to Kirill, which was reproduced by the Russian daily Izvestia on Monday morning, the aging designer explained how he turned to God as he grew older.
Mr Kalashnikov wrote that he his conversion began with the sense of “excitement” he felt when he first entered a church at the age of 91, later being baptised into the Orthodox faith.
A spokesman for the Church said Patriarch Kirril had welcomed the letter and even written a reply.
“This letter was very welcome at a time of attacks on the Church. The Patriarch thanked the legendary designer for his attention and position and answered that Mikhail Timofeevich was himself an example of patriotism and appropriate attitude to the country,”Patriarch Kirill’s spokesman Alexander Volkov told the paper.
When we look at the answer we only can find it strange that those who call themselves man of God can give such a reply:
"If the weapon is used to defend the Motherland, the Church supports both its creators and the servicemen using it."The poor excuse of Mr. Alexander Volkov did not help:
“He invented that weapon for the defence of the country, not for the use of Saudi Arabian terrorists.”This clearly should let the members of that church think about the closeness of that church with the Creator and should wonder how much love they have for the Creation of the Supreme Being.
It is good to notice that this reply may not have comforted the dying Kalashnikov, who began visiting Church at the age of 91 in his working hometown of Izhevsk. At his old age perhaps the sense of responsibility for what one does came to him and made him question all his previous actions.
Even when Kalashnikov would not have killed any people himself, he should have been aware of what the tanks he worked at, the guns he designed and let been manufactured would have done to many people and destroyed many families. His designs remains eminently deadly to this day.
