This Russian Rifle Just Might Be the Cockroach of Guns: Meet the SKS

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It’s not perfect. The SKS’ free-floating firing pin, if not cleaned and acting properly, can cause this semi-automatic gun to “slamfire,” meaning it begins to fire in automatic with no way to stop it — which is considerably dangerous. But few would deny the SKS just kept working, in many more places, and long after Sergei Simonov — who died in May 1986 at the age of 92 — could have imagined.

The most iconic rifle of the 20th century is the AK-47. One of the most iconic rifles of World War II — granted, this is more debatable — is the Mosin-Nagant. Both were developed in Russia.

The SKS, short for Self-Loading Carbine of the Simonov System, is the odd one out.

Developed in the interim between the Mosin-Nagant and the AK-47, Sergei Simonov’s semi-automatic carbine had a mere 10-round internal box magazine, an improvement from the fundamentally 19th-century design of the five-round, bolt-action Mosin.

The SKS shared the 7.62x39-millimeter cartridge with the AK-47, but the latter’s 30-round detachable magazine gave the Kalashnikov the extra firepower the Red Army craved in the immediate post-war years. As a result, the SKS saw limited use in the Soviet military beginning in 1949 — and stuck around primarily in the hands of ceremonial, border and reserve units.

But the SKS remained an adaptable, reliable and high-powered weapon. So much so that it persisted into the 21st century’s wars despite the AK-47 being the overall better weapon for government work.

Accounts differ, C.J. Chivers noted in his 2010 history The Gun, as to whether or not a visiting Chinese delegation to the Soviet Union was furious at seeing the SKS under production. The USSR had until this point largely supplied China with M44 bolt-action carbines.