MANUFACTURER – Ishmash, Izhhevsk Mechanical Plant, Izhevsk, Russia
STATUS – In use
SERVICE – Soviet military, Warsaw Pact and 47 other countries including East Germany, Bulgaria, Cuba, China (Type 59), and Vietnam (K59)
Designed by Nikolai Federovich Makarov, the pistol that bears his name was one of the first post-World War II handgun designs of the Soviet Union. This weapon was to be a new domestic model to replace the Tokarev Model 33 (TT33) as a smaller, more compact, sidearm for general issue. As well as the new handgun, a new cartridge, the 9x18mm, was also designed and intended for a new family of handguns. The Makarov PM was accepted and adopted as the new standard Soviet sidearm in 1951. The weapon itself is a relatively simple blowback pistol, the design of which closely follows the Walther PP series of weapons the Soviets encountered during WWII. One interesting addition to the design was the movement of the magazine release from the side of the pistol grip behind the trigger, to the base of the pistol grip, behind the magazine. This movement of the magazine release was stipulated in the general requirements for the new handgun as it was not uncommon for soldiers in the field to accidentally hit the magazine release on the Tokarev, resulting in a lost magazine. The design was adopted in part because of its extreme simplicity, the weapon only consisting of 27 parts, not including the magazine. This small number of parts helps ease the manufacture of the weapon.
