M-91 Infantry Rifle History

History, Development, and Use
of the M-91 Infantry Rifle

The results of the Franco-Prussian and Russo-Turkish wars in the 1870's showed that magazine rifles would be the way of the future. Nations would ignore these lessons at their peril. In 1882 the Russian Chief Artillery Administration attempted to develop a magazine fed version of the current service rifle of the day - the Berdan II rifle. Several designs were submitted the following year from a designer from the Tula arsenal named Sergei Mosin. He continued to submit other designs for an 8-round rifle based on the Berdan in 1884 and 1885. Despite this none of the weapons, including Mosin's, reviewed by the Artillery Administration were satisfactory and the project was soon abandoned.

Interest in developing a modern rifle was renewed in Russia when smokeless powder was invented in France in 1885 and as other nations began adopting smaller caliber magazine fed weapons in the late 1880's. In 1889 the Russian government again established a special commission to test new magazine rifles. This commission was led by Major General N. I. Chagin. Many rifle designs were evaluated including those from Lebel, Lee, Mannlicher, and Mauser to name a few. Sergei Mosin and the Belgian designer Leon Nagant also submitted a prototypes which soon became the top contenders.

Mosin's rifle was a five shot 7.62mm (3 line) magazine fed rifle. While Nagant's rifle was chambered in 8.89mm (3.5 line). Nagant submitted his rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition to the commission in October. The two weapons were tested between December 1890 and March 1891 by several regiments of the Russian army. At the end of the competition the Chagin Commission voted 14 to 10 to adopt Nagant's design. Despite this endorsement Lieutenant General P. L. Chebyshev, an influential professor at the Artillery Academy, wrote a report stating that Mosin's rifle would be the better rifle if only because the designer was Russian..

The commission decided to reach a compromise. The Mosin rifle would be adopted but with a feed system designed by Leon Nagant. The end result was approved in 1891 as the Russian 3-line Rifle, Model 1891. Its name was unusual in that it broke from the usual Russian practice of naming a rifle after its designer.

Initial production of the rifle began in 1892 with an order for 3.29 million rifles, but because of the poor state of Russian industry they would have to look abroad for assistance in meeting this goal. The Russians approached the French arsenal at Chatelleraut and placed an order for around 500,000 rifles. These can be identified by 'Chatelleraut' in Cyrillic on the receiver.

Domestic production of the new rifle began in late 1893 at Tula, Izhevsk, and Sestroryetsk arsenals. Over the next three years some 1.4 million infantry rifles and 32,443 training rifles were manufactured. This number increased to 3.8 million rifles by the start of the Russo-Japanese war. The stripper clips for the M-91 cartridges were made both in Russia and in Leon Nagant's Belgian factory by the tens of millions during this time.

Because of resource and monetary constraints the Mosin rifles were issued in two stages. The first stage was completed in 1897 and had some two million of the rifles issued to the army and cadre reserve forces. Most of these were issued to troops in Eastern Poland where they could be used against the greatest perceived threat at the time - Germany. The second stage was completed in 1903 and had 1.7 million rifles in the hands of the cavalry and the remaining reserve units.

The outbreak of the Russo-Japanese war in 1904 was the first combat test of the M-91 infantry rifle. It was popular with the soldiers and proved to be a well suited to the harsh environment of Korea and Manchuria. However the round nosed black powder cartridge used by the rifle at the time was seen as inadequate for long range fire.

The M-91 infantry rifle would undergo several changes between 1908 and 1910 as the Russian army began its drive to modernize. The rear sight was redesigned by V.P. Konovalov during this time. It was a curved leaf sight that took the ballistics of the new spitzer round into account. Another change was the addition of a handguard to the rifle. New barrel bands were also added and sling swivels were discarded in favor of sling slots. The 'dog collar' type sling came into existence during this period. A metal bolt was driven through the stock at the rear of the finger groove to strengthen it against recoil effects.

As tensions increased in Europe and the Serbian situation worsened during the summer of 1914 the Russian army began to mobilize. This caused both Germany and Austria-Hungary to declare war on Russia and her allies. The standard infantry weapon used by the Russian army remained the M-91 infantry rifle, but as the mobilization continued the Russians found that their industry could not meet their need for the rifles.

Because of this the Russians contacted the Winchester company in the United States in 1915 and ordered 1.5 million Mosin-Nagant rifles and bayonets. They also ordered 100 million 7.62x54 cartridges from the Remington Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge company. The Russian government also ordered 1.8 million rifles and bayonets for the New England Westinghouse company.

These Westinghouse rifles were made in their Massachusetts factory on British machinery. All were dated 1915 (even though they were made from 1915-1918) and marked with the words 'English Contract' in Russian. This was because the British government was acting as the guarantor of the Russian contract in case the Russian government defaulted on the loan, not to deceive the Central Powers into thinking they were for England as many people wrongly believe.

As the war began to turn against the Russians many M-91 rifles fell into the hands of the Central Powers. Some sources cite the number of lost rifles to be as high as 240,000 a month. Germany used the captured rifles to arm sailors in its navy. In fact many German minesweepers issued two M-91 rifles to the crews for the purpose of shooting surface mines. They even made their own bayonets for the weapons. The Austro-Hungarian empire made even greater use of the rifle. These rifles were marked AZF (meaning Artillery Ordnance Factory in English) and issued to their front line troops using captured Russian ammunition. The Austrians also made their own bayonets for the M-91.

The Russian army managed to recapture some 700,000 of their rifles from the Central Powers during the successful offensives in Galicia and elsewhere, but this was still far from adequate to meet their needs.

As the war dragged on one of the more reliable sources for M-91 rifles continued to be the United States where production was quite successful. Over the years 1915-1917 the Remington company made 840,310 rifles while Westinghouse made 770,000 examples. Of these only 131,400 Remington rifles and 225,260 Westinghouse rifles were delivered to Russia by 1917 when the new Provisional Government defaulted on the loan. The government claimed that the weapons failed to meet the quality standards of the Russian government, but were simply not willing to spend the money to buy them.

The United States government then took over the contracts for the rifles in part to save Remington and Westinghouse from financial ruin. They bought some 600,000 rifles from Remington and 200,000 rifles from Westinghouse at the price of $30 per rifle. Both companies still claimed a large loss on the contract, but it was not as large as it would have been initially.

When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 the nation descended into a long bloody civil war. The M-91 infantry rifle was used by both Red and White troops, as well as the various nationalist forces operating in Finland, Poland, and Ukraine. The Poles and Finns would have the greatest success with the weapon as they fought for their independence.

The United States also sent large numbers of M-91 rifles and ammunition to the White forces in an effort to prop up the failing Russian government. Many of these rifles were leftover from those the Tsarist government had ordered, but had failed to pay for. In December 1918 some 77,000 rifles were shipped to representatives of the new Czech government in Vancover Canada. They then found their way to Vladivostok where they were issued to the Czech Legion fighting the Bolsheviks in Siberia.

The rifles were also used by the United States Army from 1918 to 1920 when the US sent 5,000 troops to Arkangelsk and Vladivostok with the purpose of safeguarding supplies for the White Russian armies. The M-91 was not popular with the US soldiers who preferred the M1903 Springfield that they normally used. When the US pulled its troops out of Russia in 1920 all remaining M-91 rifles that they had brought with them were abandoned and recovered by advancing Bolshevik forces.

When the Civil War ended the Bolsheviks sought a way to simplify production of military arms. To further this aim the Revolutionary Military Council stated on 3 October 1922 that only one pattern of rifle would continue to be made for use by the Red Army. This rifle was to be the M-91 Dragoon rifle which offered equivalent performance to the M-91 infantry rifle, but was shorter and weighed less. The remaining M-91 rifles would continue to be used for as long as possible, but they would no longer be produced. An interesting fact was that during this period the rifle was re-designated the Mosin-system 7.62mm Magazine Rifle Model 1891.

After the Civil War the Finns bought many of the M-91's that were captured by the Austrian army in the Great War. They used these rifles well into the 1920's until they developed their own versions of the weapon. The Poles used the M-91 during the early days of their nation, but eventually chose to adopt a Mauser variant in the 1920's. They sold many of their surplus M-91 rifles to the Finns.

Executives at the Westinghouse company began approaching the US government in 1915 about adopting the M-91 rifle chambered in a US military cartridge. They met with some success on 10 February 1916 when the vice-president of the company spoke with the Chief of the US Ordnance Corps about using the weapon if an emergency arose. The war department called back four days later expressing interest in the weapon.

When the Russian government defaulted on its contract in 1918 the United States government stepped in to save the two companies producing the weapon. The US would buy the weapons from the Russians and then ship them to the struggling Russian government as a form of foreign aid. Some 208,000 were also kept by the US government for training and use by their own troops. These examples were marked with the US Ordnance Corps flaming bomb and an American eagle. Owing to the shortage of domestic rifles, the M-91 rifles were issued to state militias and training units.

Following the armistice signed in 11 November 1918 the US government lost interest in the rifle. Many were sold to Mexico and on the US civilian market in the years following the Great War. Some few were converted to the American .30-06 caliber. It should be noted that these converted rifles are VERY unsafe to shoot.

The final chapter of US interest in the M-91 rifle involved attempts to convert the weapon to semi-automatic fire during the Great War. These experiments had the weapon modified to accept an attachment known as a Penderson Device which replaced the bolt of the conventional M-91. The war ended before these experiments could be completed and most examples were destroyed in 1931 by the US government.

The M-91 infantry rifle was an excellent weapon issued to every infantryman of the Russian army. It offered greater range and less weight when compared to the Berdan II that it replaced. It was also the first Russian rifle to incorporate a five round magazine. This had the effect of dramatically increasing the weapon's rate of fire. It was well liked by Russian troops during the Russo-Japanese war as it was rugged, accurate, and well liked by the troops. They stated that the weapon had few significant shortcomings.

One of those shortcomings was the round nosed black powder M-91 cartridge. This cartridge had less velocity and range than foreign cartridges using smokeless powder. Fortunately this deficiency was eliminated in 1908 with the adoption of the smokeless powder spitzer bullet.

The M-91 Dragoon rifle is a manually cycled bolt action rifle. After firing, the user pulls the bolt handle up to unlock and cock the action, then backwards to eject the spent cartridge. When the bolt is pushed forward it strips a round from the magazine and chambers it. The weapon is now ready to fire.

The Mosin-Nagant rifle came about to take advantage of smokeless powder and the new cartridge magazines. In this section you can read more about the weapons the M-91 Infantry rifle replaced and those weapons that eventually replaced it. You can find out more about each weapon by clicking on the links below.

The M-91 Infantry Rifle replaced...	M-91 Infantry Rifle	The M-91 Infantry was replaced by...
Berdan II Rifle	M-91 Infantry Rifle	M-91 Dragoon Rifle

Here are some of the most informative sources that we have used in compiling this information for you. We hope you can find them as useful as we have.