Illegal Production of Army Firearm in Private Workshops in Tula and the Fight against Them in the Late 19th — Early 20th Centuries

Abstract

The article deals with the little-studied problem of illegal production of military weapons in one of the weapons centers of the Russian Empire. On the basis of archival documents of the police and the corps of gendarmes, he comes to the conclusion that this crime was caused by the modernization of Russia in the second half of the 19th century. The main types of illegally assembled and manufactured weapons are domestic single-shot and magazine rifles, much less often revolvers, which was due to the need of consumers for such weapons. Methods of production, relations with the customer (forms of payment, delivery of weapons to customers by rail by couriers and further by wagons, less often by sea) are revealed. The main markets for weapons illegally collected in Tula were the South Caucasus, Transcaucasia and Manchuria (the outskirts of the empire, with an unstable political situation). Since the late 1890s, the state began an active fight against the illegal assembly of weapons in Tula, but until the Great Russian Revolution, the problem was not resolved. The change in the legal framework for the manufacture of small arms, the elimination of the class of gunsmiths and their privileges, the very possibility of significant earnings that exceeded the semi-annual income from legal activities, became catalysts for the offense throughout the entire time period under study.