Kalashnikov who is a Russian rose to popularity after designing and introducing the AK-47 to the Soviet military service in 1947. But he started designing machine guns in 1942 after he was injured while serving as a tank commander for the Soviet Union’s Red Army during World War II.
The AK-47 was recognized by the Guinness World Records book as the world’s most common machine gun. According to them, AK stands for Kalashnikov’s machine gun and 47 stands for the year it was released. The AK-47 is easy to distinguish because of its banana-shaped ammunition magazine. The fact that it is very easy to use and maintain and reliable in extreme conditions made it the standard weapon for Soviet and Warsaw Pact countries from the early 1950s.
The AK-47 was instrumental in the success of rebel movement in Mozambique during the 1960s and 1970s that the image of this gun is included in the national flag.
Production of the AK-47 in Russia stopped in the late 1960s but they still made variants of the gun.