[agrostis]

Minor correction: in 1947, when the AK was developed, World Wide Socialist Revolution, as you put it, was not on the agenda for quite some time. The idea of Soviet autarky (“establishing socialism in one particular country”) has been adopted by Stalin as far back as in 1924, the World Revolution slogan has been removed from the USSR Constitution when it was revised in 1936, and by 1943 Stalin has done away with Comintern, the organization which was conceived (by Lenin and Trotsky, originally) with the aim of propagating revolution to capitalist countries.

In 1947, USSR was indeed preparing for a possible World War III against the US and UK, but the general idea of this war, at least in the East, was that of a conflict of nations. That said, guerilla tactics and the involvement of irregular fighting forces had proved to be quite effective during WWII, and so, of course, the new weapon had to be designed with such uses in mind.

[walshemj]

No pre ww2 research had proved in a number of places that a weapon smaller intermediate cartridge around 7mm was better that the traditional bulky long ranged rifle caliber weapons the SMLE for example - especially for non professional army with little training.

The AK was just good implementation of the concept and influenced by the German STG 44 and the use of SMG's like the PPSh-41 by Soviet forces.

the UK post Ww2 tried to move to this with the EM-2 .280 but was stymied by the USA's instance on retaining the macho full power rifle cartridge.

[agrostis]

I have to confess that my knowledge of the history of weapons is rudimentary, so I gladly accede to your point; my previous remark only concerned Soviet geopolitics as it stood in 1947 vs. 1920.

[redthrowaway]

And your point was correct, and sloppy of me. I knew that one of the reasons Trotsky split from Stalin was over Socialism in One Country (in addition to the growing bureaucracy), but I'd thought it was still always the plan to eventually spread socialism globally.