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Regardless, there are two questions: were the Soviets considering using the Ross officially as a sniper’s rifle in any capacity, and if they were, was it in the Red Army or only the MVD internal security forces (which were under NKVD control) The MVD constituted an elite force that AFAIK was never deployed in front line combat operations; they were the Praetorian Guard of the regime in a sense. Their needs in terms of quantities would be much smaller than the Red Army’s, and like most elite formations, their options in terms of equipment were probably wider.
I expect the Ross would have been of much more interest than the P14 for sniping purposes if only because the turn-bolt of the P14 made it no better than the M-N from a functional point of view, though the rifle’s stock design and iron sights were far superior to the M-N. (And the stock superior to the Ross as well)
But, it could well be that for the Soviets the Ross was simply a convenient and highly accurate “test-bed” on which to evaluate and develop their scope and mount designs; witness the grainy illustration which appears to show an early side rail mount, but with a Zeiss Zeilvier instead of a PE series scope. That would tend to suggest work done before the PE scopes were available, but the mount is not one imported from Germanyicon, though it could be said to be inspired by German designs.
Apparently the Rosses didn’t all go in the smelters or to the front during WWII, even though old junk like Berdan rifles did in late 1941. And as we all recall Rosses showed up again as the Soviet running deer rifles in the 1956 Olympics, so they certainly weren’t entirely forgotten either.
Can’t say I’ve ever seen the bolt of the M-N as “simple” compared to the Lee Enfield or P14!
I seriously doubt if any consideration was given to the Ross rifle. While its straight pull bolt was easy to operate, that it jammed made it less reliable. As for the P14 rifle, why bother even considering it? Retooling, manufacture of jigs, training of workforce all mitigate against a new foreign design instead of the M91/30.
The PE scope was not available when Sniper was filmed in 1931. Even if the PE scope was developed earlier and in time for the film, I question whether the Soviets would allow new technology to make a screen debut. State secret? Finally regarding the movie, you do raise a valid question as to the film's distribution outside of the Soviet Union. Are you aware of any other WW I or interwar movie about snipers; especially those in the West?
As to simplicity of the M91/30 bolt to the P14, just look at the number of parts and ability of the soldier to disassemble it. I've disassembled the K98 and 03 bolt but never tried a Lee-Enfield (lemme check the manuals).
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No definitive proof as yet that is true; only logical deduction. Doubtful that swine such a Yagoda had much interest in such matters; they were too busy manoeuvring within the state and party apparatus. Besides, these developments were well underway before Yagoda had any role in the OGPU/NKVD. Incidentally, have a look at his wiki biography and note his taste for pornography etc. and the strange bruises and marks on his "adopted daughter"!
What evidence is there that sniping was not taught in the Reichswehr? The rifles were there, we know that from photos if nothing else. It was an army known for thoroughness; are we to believe rifles were issued without the men being trained to use them? Its priority level is debatable, but I doubt the German Army had forgotten the lessons it taught the Allies in WWI.
Logical deduction and hard evidence are two different things. You may well be correct but per Whacker's book, German Sniper Rifles, there were no Reichswehr sniping schools in the interwar era. The old tradition of giving the scoped rifle to the best shot in the company prevailed. The only thing the soldier was taught was how to maintain it and to adjust it for distances.
While the Soviets may have had enthusiasm, they lacked equipment and they'd have to be iron sighted snipers since Soviet optics were not available until the PE scope was developed. Similarly, a shortage of rifles in the early World War II compelled the United States, Britain and Australia to resort to iron sighted rifles for training purposes. The aforementioned acquisition of German scopes allowed the NKVD Border Guards to have scoped rifles, but not the Red Army. That had to wait.
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One should remember that for example, the mechanized and armoured forces of the German Army were the creation of a small group of “tank enthusiasts” such as Guderian, who frankly admitted their intellectual debt to Fuller and the other British “tank enthusiasts” of WWI and the interwar period; not the German General Staff as a whole. The difference was that Hitler soon forced the army leadership to allocate resources to armoured warfare, whereas Fuller and those like him in the British Army had no such advocate, or at least not one who could overcome the fanatical resistance of the “Equine Tammany Hall” who in Fuller's phrase, dominated the senior officer corps.
The Reichswehr remained a highly conservative organization, philosophically and militarily, but not to the extent of obtusity. It is to the credit of the German senior officer corps that having seen the armour advocates proved right in 1939/40, almost all of them became convinced and cooperative, unlike the ____________s who continued to predominate in the British high commands, who despite being decisively defeated in 1940, and having the lesson repeated several times by Rommel in the desert made a sort of perverse virtue out of muddling on in the usual way as though refusing to adapt to circumstances, at the cost of uncounted thousands of lives and very nearly the war itself, was evidence of some sort of moral victory. Not for nothing did Fuller remark that “there are two truly conservative institutions in the world: the Catholic Church and the British Army”! Not that other armies in the Anglosphere don’t have such people as well, to say nothing of the Frenchicon Army, though Fuller thought them very quick to adapt new ideas so that may be an unfair comment.
The point of all that is, that the high command of the Reichswehr were not the types to be hypnotized by mechanization and automatic weapons to the exclusion of sniping, nor did they have any philosophical reasons for abandoning the lessons of the Great War; quite the reverse in fact. Their highly developed training and instinctive thoroughness predisposed them to use whatever was useful, and sniping which every officer who served at the front in WWI would remember was highly effective, would be as much a part of that as mortars, machine guns etc. If anything they might have been predisposed to exaggerate its effectiveness, given that trench warfare was almost an ideal scenario for sniping. Armies are perpetually and inevitably preparing to fight the previous war as we know.
As for the poverty of the Soviets in the 20s and 30s, they were well able to find money for what the regime wanted, even at the cost of millions of lives. Sniping is a force-multiplier, perhaps the most potent conventional one to this very day in terms of efficacy and economy. That alone could explain much of the Soviet interest.
Absent a memoir or documentation proving contrary to that, I'll stand by Whacker that the Reichswehr did not operate sniping schools. The Reichswher had more important things to do. Von Seeckt wanted every private to be able to function as a sergeant, every sergeant to be able to perform the duties of a Hauptman, etc.
We had talked about foreign designs and the Soviets earlier. In hindsight, the Soviets did not automatically reject foreign designs. The Vickers 6 ton tank became the T-26, the Christie fast tank became the BT series of tanks (later evolving into the A20, T-32 and later T-34), Some of those multi-turret Soviets tanks were influenced by British designs. For ships, the Tsarist Russians relied on Italian designs (those Marat type four triple turret battleships) and for the Soviets, Italian designs for cruisers.
I don't disagree with you that the Soviets were enthusiastic about sniping. They were and produced the first post WW I sniping manual in 1933 and were screening recruits for snipers during the basic induction process. This was during a period that the Western Allies (of WW I) were removing scopes and selling them for surplus. Soviets may have had a sniping program that preceded the manual, but I've found no evidence and it was only until the PE scopes were produced that they could equip their snipers with optically equipped rifles.
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I see no evidence of any loss of interest; merely a possible conflict of resources and the dramatic force and weapon reductions mandated by the Treaty of Versailles. There are photos of optical equipment being broken up post-war for example. But anyone who knows the Germans knows they found as many ways as possible to evade and conceal, and which country would not in that situation?
Do we see a sudden influx of ex-military scopes on the German market in the 1920s? Such scopes are seen in civilian mounts, but no more than one could ascribe to soldier souvenirs etc. Many a sniper took his scope home with him if he could in every country - except of course for those who never wanted to such things again...
A. J. Whacker in his book on German Sniper Rifles asserts that while some sniper rifles were retained by the Reichswher, there was no specialized training. It was thought by the Reichswehr that sniping arose because of trench warfare and that the Reichswher did not anticipate trench warfare in the near future.
The scopes were sold as surplus in the 1930s, not the '20s when the Reichswher began converting then back to normal configuration. Instructions were issued on how unit armorers were to accomplish this. This practice was stopped in 1935.
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There is one other possible source of Russian/Soviet interest in this matter and that is among those Russians who served in the Russian expeditionary force in France in WWI and may have received training or at least visited schools etc. They certainly would have experienced German sniping in the West, but then they did to a perhaps even greater degree on what we call the Eastern Front, since the Germans and Austrians had no serious counter-snipers to contend with and tended to “get away with murder” from what I’ve read, though the impact of that experience on the military leadership is debatable given their well-known indifference to losses, and the fatalism and endurance of the soldiery.
Very possible for Tsarist officers to visit the Western Front and see the schools, but lets not discount that the Tsarist Russians experienced German sniping on their own front too. Hence their development of their own periscope rifle. This is largely a counter measure and the nature of a periscope rifle makes it less steady than a nornal scoped rifle. Even if Tsarist officers did learn about sniping from visiting a school, would any of them survive the purge of the Tsarist officers or later White Russian officers after the revolution? Unless they defected to the Reds, their chances of survival was slim. Heck, even if they turned Red, their chances of surviving a pre-war purge was also slim. Purges, it's what the commies do well. :D