AVS-36: The First Soviet Infantry Battle Rifle

This rifle is lot #1019 at Morphy’s April 2019 auction: The AVS-36 was the first self-loading rifle adopted by the Soviet Union to be a standard infantry rifle, and it was not just semiautomatic, but also capable of fully automatic fire. Designed by Sergei Simonov over the course of about ten years, it would only last a short time in service before being replaced by the Tokarev SVT-38 and then SVT-40. The AVS-36 uses a short s