Founder of Soviet firearms design, creator of the DP-27, DShK, and PTRD
In May 1943, Stalin asked him which machine gun to adopt. Degtyaryov chose not his own DS-39 but Goryunov's rival SG-43: 'The SG-43 is unquestionably the superior model.'
The son of hereditary Tula gunsmiths with three years of parish schooling, Degtyaryov rose from tsarist army private to founder of Soviet firearms design. Learning automatic weapons as Fyodorov's assistant, he headed the USSR's first firearms design bureau at Kovrov from 1918 and completed the DP-27 light machine gun in 1927, the Red Army's standard squad automatic through 1945. Nineteen of his designs entered service including the DShK, PPD, PTRD-41, and RPD, while his bureau became the Degtyaryov Plant (ZiD), still a major Russian arms manufacturer. Second-ever Hero of Socialist Labour after Stalin, four-time Stalin Prize winner, and Major General, Degtyaryov drew the genealogy of Soviet infantry weapons from the 1920s through 1945.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1901–1905Gunsmith and armourer, Oranienbaum Officers' Rifle School
- 1906–1917Assistant to V.G. Fyodorov on the first Russian automatic rifles
- 1918–1931Head of experimental workshop, Kovrov Machine Gun Plant — USSR's first firearms design bureau
- 1927DP-27 light machine gun adopted by the Red Army
- 1930–1939Development of DK/DShK heavy machine gun, PPD submachine gun, and DS-39 medium machine gun
- 1940–1949Chief of Special Design Bureau (OKB) at Kovrov; Doctor of Technical Sciences; Major General
- 1941Emergency design and mass production of PTRD-41 anti-tank rifle (Stalin Prize 2nd Class)
- 1944Completed RPD light machine gun; promoted to Major General of Engineering-Artillery Service
Related historical events
Final years, death, and commemoration
Toward the end of the war Degtyaryov's health declined sharply: he was on leave from 21 May to 1 September 1945 and received the Order of Suvorov, 1st degree, on 16 September. His design bureau was reorganized into a separate Special Design Bureau (OKB) and detached from the Kovrov plant, which itself switched to motorcycle production. Hospitalized in Moscow in early 1948, he dictated an autobiographical book from his bed; it appeared in 1951 as My Life, set down in literary form by G. D. Nagayev. He died on 16 January 1949. His body was brought from Moscow to Kovrov by special train, lay under an honour guard at the factory club from 19 to 20 January, and was buried in the Ioanno-Voinskoe cemetery, the coffin carried to the grave on a gun carriage. His fourth Stalin Prize was awarded posthumously.
By decree of the USSR Council of Ministers on the day of his death, monthly scholarships bearing his name were established: one for a postgraduate and one for a student at the Leningrad Military Mechanical Institute, two each for postgraduates and students at the Tula Mechanical Institute, and five for outstanding students at the Kovrov technical school. On 17 October 1954 a monument by sculptor Matvey Manizer and architect Aleksandr Velikanov was raised in Kovrov, and a bust and several memorial plaques were installed on the grounds of the arms factory that bears his name. The house where he lived opened as a museum on 6 January 1978. In Kovrov a technical school, a secondary school, a kindergarten, a recreation park, the metalworkers' House of Culture and the former Komsomolskaya Street took his name, and streets in Kharkiv, Novosibirsk and other cities of the former USSR still commemorate him.