Those who are familiar with the work of Vladimir Mayakovsky remember the lines from his poem "Left March". Addressing the revolutionary sailors, the poet exclaims: "Your word, Comrade Mauser!" And the imagination immediately draws the image of the legendary self-loading pistol, which became popular thanks to literature and films about the revolution and the civil war. What was this weapon of the revolutionary proletariat?
People of the older generation undoubtedly remember what a military weapon, named after the German designer Mauser, looked like. A pistol with characteristic individual features could be seen in many Soviet films telling about the heroic past of the Land of the Soviets. A memorable angular profile, an elongated barrel, a massive wooden butt-shaped holster - these attributes were present in the image of many Red Army commanders and security officers.
It is interesting that the combat "Comrade Mauser" was not originally on the standard army armament in any of the countries of the world. As a rule, only special-purpose units had it. The pistol, oddly enough, was considered very capricious in operation, difficult in preventive maintenance and relatively expensive even in terms of mass production.
And yet, not only army officers, but also hunters, and brave travelers, and even criminals very often preferred the Mauser to all other types of personal short-barreled weapons. Its undoubted advantages include the maximum compactness, power and solid firing range, which reached 1000 meters. Additional convenience was provided by a wooden butt fastened to the pistol, using which, an experienced shooter could very tightly put the entire magazine with a capacity of 10 rounds on the target. The reload time of the Mauser with a new magazine did not exceed a few seconds, and this is also a very valuable property in combat conditions.
A significant difference that made the Mauser stand out from its counterparts was its self-loading: the cartridges were fed upward under the action of a special spring, guaranteeing a quick replacement of the shot cartridge case with the next cartridge. The cartridges in the Mauser store were staggered in two rows, which made the weapon compact. The center of gravity of the weapon, shifted slightly forward, increased the accuracy of the fire.
Despite these and other advantages, alas, the Mauser K-96 did not pass its first tests, which were carried out by the German military department in 1896, which immediately made the pistol unsuitable for use as a regular army weapon. Despite the commission's verdict, the Mauser brothers nevertheless began production of their favorite pistol. The gunsmiths' intuition did not disappoint. The popularity of the pistol was so high that the production of the Mauser was curtailed only at the end of the thirties of the XX century. "Comrade Mauser" took its rightful place not only among the models of personal weapons of attack and defense, but also turned into a popular artistic image.
