When Czar Nicholas II abdicated the Russian throne in 1917, the entire course of world history changed. It wasn't just the end of the 300-year Romanoff dynasty, but the end of royal rule altogether. In its place would come a new way of life: communism. About 75 years later, communism would also fall, with the Russian version thereof taking its rightful spot atop the ash-heap of history. But through those changes, from Rasputin to Lenin to Putin, one thing abides: the Nagant revolver.
"The Nagant's a cool revolver, and, in fact, it was designed by Belgian Leon Nagant, who had designed revolvers and other firearms for dozens of years before he came up with the Model 1895 for the Russians," said Philip Schreier, director, NRA National Firearms Museum. "And the idea is pretty neat.
"It's a 7.62 cartridge. It doesn't look like anything else. It kind of looks like a bottleneck wadcutter, and that's because the head of the cartridge is actually sunk into the casing so that when you cock it, the cylinder actually rotates and then advances forward so that there's no gas leak between the face of the cylinder and the breech of the barrel."
Although the Nagant revolver ceased production at the end of World War II, as you can see in this episode of American Rifleman TV, many of the examples still in circulation are still fully functional. Are they the highly tuned precision machines of today? No, but they are a fascinating part of 20th-century firearms history, in all its strangest turns.
