Has anyone ever seen a nagant rifle?

C

chack

Moderator
I know that the Nagant brothers submitted their design to Imperial Russia and it was never adopted. They did use the magazine in the M91 design and added nagant's name to the rifle as a concession. Ironically, much of what Nagant contributed to the design was later removed or modified when the Soviets updated the design. In Russia it's known as "Vintovka Mosina" and Nagant isn't gtiven any credit. Of course those are the same people that claim to have invented airplanes, rockets, baseball, and the jeep.

I wonder if there is an example of the original Nagant rifle design in a museum soewhere or even a picture or schematic.
 
I guess my question with this is can you explain weather the early "Nagant" adopted by the Czar is closer to the original design by the Nagant brothers or are the Finnish Nagant rifles. Also what design changes were done by the Imperial Armorers? I own several of the rifles pre-communist and post Czarist the 1898 I own is the oldest of the set I had always thought that Mosin
(spelling) had "refined" the rifle to make it easer to build in Russian factories.

Mace
 
There were several stages during the design of these rifles, but Mosin's primary addition to the final product was in the design of the magazine and cut-off that allow it to work smoothly with the rimmed 7.62x54R round; Zhuk's "Vintovki i Avtomaty" shows line drawings of an earlier 1887 experimental rifle with a tube mag in the buttstock (27-1), and both a single-shot rifle built by Mosin when he was in charge of the Tula Weapons Factory (27-2) and the version submitted by Leon Nagant to the 1889-90 trials (27-3). The Tula State Weapons Museum has an example of the rifle that Mosin submitted at the same time, as well as the 1st and 1,000,000th M1891 rifle off the line (below, with inset).
 

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my unbderstanding is that Nagant's rifle was never produced beyond prototype stage. It was submitted for evaluation by Russia and rejected. Sergei Mosin designed the bolt and most of the rest of the M91. Nagant's contribution to it was the inturrupter in the magazine to prevent rim lock.

Calling a M91 a nagant would be like calling a Garand a Mannlicher because it uses an enbloc clip.

Meat grinder, the picture you linked to looks like a M91 mosin, not a nagant
 
"Calling a M91 a nagant would be like calling a Garand a Mannlicher because it uses an enbloc clip."

Common nomenclature in the United States is a "Nagant" M91. Kind of like calling a full blood Arabian just a Horse. The horse doesn't care. I know I have 3 Arabians and ride every day.

Mace
 
Common nomenclature in the United States is a "Nagant" M91.
Click to expand...

Common nomenclature in the US, a magazine is a clip, any long gun with a scope is a sniper rifle, and race cars only turn left.

Doesn't make any of them correct....
 
Common nomenclature in the United States is a "Nagant" M91.
Click to expand...

I don't understand why you would say that, the nagant is a revolver and Mosin is what the M91 is referred to far more often by collectors all over the world.

I do see them referred to as Nagants far more often than SMLE are called "Lees" or Carcanos are called "Mannlichers" although it would make just about the same amount of sense (very little) to do so.
 
Some pictures of a rifle identified as a Nagant Model 1888 experimental rifle show one clear distinction - the bolt handle is behind the receiver bridge, which is not split and incorporates the clip guide.

BTW, calling the SMLE a "Lee" would be perfectly correct, as Lee was the designer. The "Enfield" refers only to the type of rifling used.

Jim
 
According to Lapin's "The Mosin-Nagant Rifle", in Oct 1889 Leon Nagant presented his "3.5 line (8.89mm)" rifle and 500 rnds of ammo to the Russian government (Chagin Commission). From Dec. 1890 to Mar. 1891, both Nagant's and Mosin's rifles were tested by officers and men of at least two different Russian units (they are listed, but too much spelling for me). When it was all said and done, not only did all the units prefer Nagant's rifle, but the commission voted 14 to 10 in favor of Nagant. So naturally, the powers that were went with Mosin's...after all it was Russian, it had to be better! The story says "rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition for testing". So there had to be at least one!
 
I'm surprised there are so many Russophiles on the board. However, I understand that the official Russian and Soviet name was merely M/91, together with all the variations. Only later did they tend to incorporate the designer's name.

Do you realize nearly 1,900,000 Mosin-Nagant rifles were manufactured in the United States, although not all were delivered to Russia.
 
I have one with a strange Russian name - New England Westinghouse Company. Is that anywhere near Tula?

Jim
 
I have one with a strange Russian name - New England Westinghouse Company. Is that anywhere near Tula?

Must be right next to Remington, by the Volga!

The Czar's Imperial government actually originally contacted for 1.5 million from Remington and 1.8 million from New England Westinghouse (the "English Contract" connection). US sailors and doughboys were actually issued some of these rifles to help battle those Bolshevik bad guys, well into 1920. Check out "The Polar Bear Expedition...just the tip of proverbial US-Mosin Nagant iceberg.
 
An odd sidelight is that Jeanette Rankin, (R-Montana), who was much more of a leftist radical than the sanitized Wikipedia article indicates, introduced legislation to ban the soldiers who went on that expedition from re-entering the U.S., claiming that they would be carrying disease and have some kind of twisted minds. Of course, her main goal was to punish those who fought against the Bolsheviks. (At that time, before FDR made Communism respectable by recognizing the USSR and many closet Communists became Democrats, it was the Republicans who were the pacifists and against big business, and who tended to support Communism and other radical "peoples" movements.) Her bill failed, needless to say, and the troops came home without mysterious diseases or insanity.

Another unintended consequence of the expedition was that it allowed the Soviet propaganda machine in the Cold War years to claim, rightly, that the U.S. was an aggressor nation which invaded the peaceful USSR, while the Soviets had never invaded U.S. territory.

Jim
 
Even wilder...General Graves in control of US forces at the other end of Russia, in Vladivostok, was under direct orders to remain neutral and NOT fight the Bolos. His enemies foreign and at home tried mightily to besmerch his good name and have him removed. But he and his forces held their ground and completed the mission to protect a portion of the Trans-Siberian Railway, while remaining neutral. His story is very interesting reading.
 
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