Talk:Gun control in the Soviet Union

This article is largely false
There are MANY books on the Soviet Union or World War II, that demonstrate that USSR allowed it's population to be armed in World War II, even some crazy stuff, like an anecdote I once read about a woman who managed to get a tank and used it in battle. The USSR did NOT disarm it's population during WWII, in fact it did the opposite because of the Partisans that fought the Germans behind the lines.

173.218.98.78 (talk) 12:15, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Rewriting this article with better sources
I am going to rewrite this article with sources from official Russian law documentation of the time, in an attempt to bring about an honest portrayal of the period in line with the laws at the time. LarsU778 (talk) 06:18, 20 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Any news on this? KetchupSalt (talk) 22:27, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Hunting rifles? And hunting in general
It is mentioned in the text at the moment that only smoothbore shotguns were allowed "by ordinary citizens". But surely with the existence of the 9×53mmR cartridge there must have been provisions for hunting big game? You don't take down moose with smoothbore shotguns. Surely the USSR had a civilian hunting corps? Hunting in Russia mentions hunting clubs, but with no citations. I also get the feeling that the language "ordinary citizens" is POV.

As best I can tell gun laws in the USSR changed quite a bit over the years. A People's Tragedy apparently goes into this for the civil war period, though I haven't read it. This still leaves the periods before, during and after collectivization, the war years, the post-war period until the death of Stalin, the Krushchev era, the Brezhnev era and the Gorby era. For the latter I found this article in the LA Times talking about hunting in the USSR in the mid-80's. Here's a second LA Times article from the same era, which indicates firearm ownership was limited to hunting societies.

Bars (hunting rifle) mentions that specific gun being allowed in 1965, the source being a period hunting magazine. Los (hunting rifle) also mentions 1965 in another issue of the same magazine. KetchupSalt (talk) 17:38, 10 January 2024 (UTC)