Historical Information about Russian Weapons
 

Hi everyone,

I'm a new member here, and I joined really to ask if anyone can point me at information regarding the kinds of weapons that might have been in use in Tsarist Russia, more specifically at the start of the 18th Century, and even more specifically still, by an officer of the cavalry.

Preliminary research seems to suggest that they might carry a flintlock pistol, a sabre (shashka?) and a dagger (kindjal?), but I'd rather not make definitive statements based on this preliminary research without conferring with someone who knows this area better than I can hope to in the time frame that is open to me.

thanks for any help or information,

Azh

Shashkas and kindjals entered Russian military only in the 19th century, after Caucasian wars.
You may look for a book by Kulinski published by Atlant
http://www.atlant-tpg.ru/enz.html
This is the most complete encyclopedia of Russian weapons; it is in Russian but there are shorter, 1-2 paragraph, descriptions of each weapon in English.
Costs 2,000 rubles + shipment. Send them an e-mail and they respond very quickly.
Shipment will take about month and a half, though.....

Ariel, thanks for your reply.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'm able to wait as long as it would take to post the book to Australia, and for me to get back there - I'm currently living the nomad existence while doing a "world" tour of 5 countries and 3 continents.

Although I learned to speak (a little) Russian about 30 years ago, I never learned to read it, and unfortunately I've forgotten most of it.

If those weapons are not appropriate for the timeframe, could you suggest ones that would be? I don't need to be too in-depth, just time-period-appropriate.

thanks again,
Azh

Until XIXth century most of the arms used by russian cavalry was either purchased in Europe or, much rarely so, made by local masters (often Solingen masters invited to Russia). Formal patterns as such did not exist; slight uniformity was achieved through the fact that there were a few big contracts for thousands of blades, therefore certain units had somewhat uniform weaponry; however, sabres and more importantly their maintenance were de facto responisibility of individual troopers - while there were 2-3 arsenal that employed on average 20 or so workers that were formally responsible for repair, the nessessity to repair/maintain tens of thousands of swords was too much for their meager resources.

As a result until 1820 or so all you can see de facto is that troopers were purchasing weapons according to their means and even to lesser extent according to their units - like palashes for cuirasiers and so on.

Interestingly that when the government tried to catalogue weapons that cavalrymen had on hands after napoleonic wars, you can find almost everything in these records - even persian wootz, but mostly Solingen.

Azh, is this any close to what you are loking for?http://web2.airmail.net/napoleon/Rus...cavalryweapons

that's a little later than my particular time period, but the information was still quite interesting, thanks for finding that one for me.

Azh

This is interesting.

it would presumably mean in my time period (1710-1711, after the disbandment of the Streltsy, during one of Peter The Great's periodic wars against the Turks), the officers, being mostly nobles, would have had fairly decent weapons, while the common soldiery would not necessarily have had as good weapons.

I'm still of the opinion that an officer of the cavalry would have been armed with a sword/sabre, dagger and musket pistol, even if the names I was given weren't the right ones for the time period. I'll also admit that I learned more about kindjal while I was trying to research when they started being used than I ever thought I would want to know. They seem like fascinating items, and the photos I found in threads in this forum were a great help in visualising what other sites only gave descriptions for.

Azh

Well, I base my statements on a single article that relates the story of swords
' maintanence in the russian army. I suspect Ariel has this mega-volume on russian arms, so he probably knows way more about the subject.