1933 Soviet Sniper Manual and other things

[Surpmil]

Other than the cinematic evidence I have not seen any documentation on the White Russians being supplied with scoped rifles; but I find it hard to believe that the Soviets would resort to providing a film producer with a dummied-up scoped M91/30 when foreign scoped rifles were readily available. The Soviets certainly had machinists who could make mounts or prop makers who could fabricate a prop mount & scope (and glue it on) for non close-up views. If prototypes were being developed at th time of the filming, it is unlikely that the Soviets would allow it to be have a cinematic debut. Second, would the Soviets spend time and money to make German style mounts for a foreign rifle? Limited resources in the Soviet Union mandates that any skills would have been used to develop mount prototypes for a M91/30 and besides, they had German mounts that could have reverse engineered. I'm certain those scoped Ross rifles were real. 1931 predated the unsuccessful Soviet primsatic PT scope's debut and before the PE was developed. In the typical Soviet pechant for secrecy, use the Ross and keep any potential foe in the dark about Soviet sniper rifle development.

It seems pretty clear that these rifles represent experimentation that was going on. By 1931 had the Soviets not settled on using the Mosin-Nagant as their sniping rifle? I'm not a student of the M-N, but IIRC the first PE/PEM scopes we see are dated 1931? So perhaps by the time the movie was made, these Ross and P14 models were no longer under consideration and effectively just experimental "left-overs" which could be used without divulging any secrets.

As in my previous, we don't know exactly why they were using Rosses (and P14s), but we can hypothesize. One other reason the Ross is suitable for sniping is that the straight-pull action requires less obvious movement to operate the bolt, in particular no need to raise the hand/arm to rotate the bolt. A good deal of work was done at RSAF Enfield to develop a straight-pull sniping rifle, apparently just for this reason. To use the Ross action was of course "politically unacceptable"

Ross rifles were very accurate, but why send a SMLE with scope when the jam prone (when dirty) Ross would do? I doubt if the Canadian War Ministry would allow top line SMLEs to go to Russia instead of the Ross. Recall that Canada like the US supported the White Russians. I already mentioned the other German equipment and mounts the Soviets bought before Timoshenko's film, but it is highly unlikely that the secretive NKVD would share with a film production.

IIRC the CEF turned in most of their small arms before leaving the Continent or the U.K. in 1919. Probably some SMLE's and Rosses were brought back to Canada, but I suspect all the SMLE snipers were returned to U.K. stores from where they had been issued. There is no record of them being in Canada post-WWI, unlike the Ross-Warner & Swasey rifles and scopes which were in store here until WWII (except for WWI losses of course). Most of the sniping rifles used by the C.E.F./Canadian Corps were Rosses fitted with Winchester A5 scopes by Canadian armourers; the scopes being purchased directly and possibly supplied from UK purchases as well. AFAWK, except for some examples in museums, the Rosses with A5 scopes were scrapped after WWI.

The Canadian Dept. of Militia & Defence would have had no part in deciding what the British War Department sent to Russia unless such weapons came from Canadian sources and there is no evidence that any did.

It is unlikely that any Ross sniper rifles accompanied the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force, (sent at British request) and even more unlikely that any such arms were handed over to the White Army. Certainly not the Warner & Swasey rifles as we have precise counts for those.

By 1942, there is no need for Gen. Morozoff to be deceptive about sniping. The Soviets were already making grandiose & unsubstantiated claims of one shot, one dead nazi and bragging how effective their snipers were. They asserted that a sniper killed "Field Marshal" von Kleist in 1942 (never mind that von Kleist wasn't a field marshal yet & he died post-war in Soviet capivity). Also in 1942 two snipers and political organizer Nikolai Krasvachenko were sent to represent the oviet Union at the International Student Conference. One sniper was Lt. Vladimir Pchelintsev (156 kills) and the other was Jr. Lt. Lyudmila Pavlichenko (309 kills).

There is one scene in that film that puzzles me. Check out the P14 at 11:20. Scope seems offset and what is that band behind the distance dial? Prop? Your thoughts please?

Well, let's think about this: if the Red Army began to study sniping in the early 1920s, and received training or at least training materials from the Reichswehr, we can be pretty sure they being both thorough and untrusting of "imperialist" states like Weimar Germany, would also do their own research. That research would naturally involve first all the open-source material available, of which H-P's book was the most well-known and detailed, though not the only by any means. So logically they had those books in hand by the mid-20s at the latest. As I mentioned, it's quite possible that materials on sniping were provided to Imperial Russian military missions and attachés during WWI. Touring sniping schools was a popular diversion for senior officers and foreign guests etc. after all. Considerable effort was put into helping the Russian Army before the Bolshevik coup in October 1917; I expect we provided them with all sorts of training and tactical materials and instructional manuals etc. Quite possible that the Bolsheviks acquired those materials after they took over, and by the early 1920s would have had time to start digesting such materials.

As you may know, Stalin's purges more or less destroyed the officer corps of the Red Army in the late 1930s, so those who oversaw developments in the 1920s and up to the mid 1930s, were mostly dead or imprisoned after 1937. True, some survivors were released from the Gulag to fight, such as Marshal Rokossovsky who emerged minus some finger nails, but I'm not sure how many overall. As far as I can tell, Gen. Morozov/Morozoff may have been a senior officer on the Northern Front in 1942, and he may have been cited in the article because he had something to do with the development of Red Army sniper doctrines, or just because he had an aristocratic sounding name that might have been thought to resonate better in the West

H-P's book may have played a notable part in the development of Red Army sniping doctrines, but the Red Army hung by a Lend-Lease thread in 1942 and it was wise to be polite to temporary allies like us. It was never Soviet custom to admit any technical debt to "imperialists", so it's doubtful such an "interview" was ever published in the Russian-language press in the USSR. No one in the West would quibble about that in 1942 either.

Not to say that H-P's book was of no value, but it is a general interest review of the subject after all. As much or more interesting material is found in Eric Parker's biography of H-P, which the Soviet's "friends" in the West had also no doubt purchased on their behalf, along with whatever else was thought potentially useful. One point that suggests some influence is the Red Army doctrine of snipers working in pairs, which AFAIK was never the German practice.

As for the P14 in the movie it appears the scope is a long eye-relief model set forward of the boltway perhaps to address the perpetual problem of loading the magazine with a scope in the way, but looking more closely it is probably just something made up for the movie to contrast with what the hero using. Straps have never worked well as a method of holding scopes onto rifles!

One of the few advantages of the Winchester A5 was that it could be slid forward in the mounts to allow the Ross to be clip loaded.

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[Riter]

It seems pretty clear that these rifles represent experimentation that was going on. By 1931 had the Soviets not settled on using the Mosin-Nagant as their sniping rifle? I'm not a student of the M-N, but IIRC the first PE/PEM scopes we see are dated 1931? So perhaps by the time the movie was made, these Ross and P14 models were no longer under consideration and effectively just experimental "left-overs" which could be used without divulging any secrets.

As in my previous, we don't know exactly why they were using Rosses (and P14s), but we can hypothesize. One other reason the Ross is suitable for sniping is that the straight-pull action requires less obvious movement to operate the bolt, in particular no need to raise the hand/arm to rotate the bolt. A good deal of work was done at RSAF Enfield to develop a straight-pull sniping rifle, apparently just for this reason. To use the Ross action was of course "politically unacceptable"

I doubt if the Soviets would consider any rifle for sniping other than the M91/30. They would have to tool up to produce a foreign rifle and why bother when they were happy with the M91/30? They had the tooling, jigs and trained workforce. Look at the simplicity of the bolt compared to the rifles used by other armies. If anything, it could have been modernized to have an internal staggered magazine but that would mean they would have two types of M91 rifles (logistics nightmare). The use of the Ross in Timoshenko's flick was only as a prop as a scoped rifle.

IIRC the CEF turned in most of their small arms before leaving the Continent or the U.K. in 1919. Probably some SMLE's and Rosses were brought back to Canada, but I suspect all the SMLE snipers were returned to U.K. stores from where they had been issued. There is no record of them being in Canada post-WWI, unlike the Ross-Warner & Swasey rifles and scopes which were in store here until WWII (except for WWI losses of course). Most of the sniping rifles used by the C.E.F./Canadian Corps were Rosses fitted with Winchester A5 scopes by Canadian armourers; the scopes being purchased directly and possibly supplied from UK purchases as well. AFAWK, except for some examples in museums, the Rosses with A5 scopes were scrapped after WWI.

The Canadian Dept. of Militia & Defence would have had no part in deciding what the British War Department sent to Russia unless such weapons came from Canadian sources and there is no evidence that any did.

It is unlikely that any Ross sniper rifles accompanied the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force, (sent at British request) and even more unlikely that any such arms were handed over to the White Army. Certainly not the Warner & Swasey rifles as we have precise counts for those.

By 1916 the Canadians replaced the Ross with SMLEs. The exception were the sniper rifles. Snipers were trained or expected to take care of their rifles and could be entrusted with the Ross which remained in limited service as a sniper rifle. As mentioned in an earlier post, upon reflection it is more likely that the Ross sniper rifles were not supplied to the White Russians but used by the Canadians themselves in Siberia. The British War Ministry would have no say on what the Canadians used or could take to Siberia.

Too bad Clive Law crossed the Styx. I'd love to hear his insights.

Well, let's think about this: if the Red Army began to study sniping in the early 1920s, and received training or at least training materials from the Reichswehr, we can be pretty sure they being both thorough and untrusting of "imperialist" states like Weimar Germany, would also do their own research. That research would naturally involve first all the open-source material available, of which H-P's book was the most well-known and detailed, though not the only by any means. So logically they had those books in hand by the mid-20s at the latest. As I mentioned, it's quite possible that materials on sniping were provided to Imperial Russian military missions and attachés during WWI. Touring sniping schools was a popular diversion for senior officers and foreign guests etc. after all. Considerable effort was put into helping the Russian Army before the Bolshevik coup in October 1917; I expect we provided them with all sorts of training and tactical materials and instructional manuals etc. Quite possible that the Bolsheviks acquired those materials after they took over, and by the early 1920s would have had time to start digesting such materials.

While we both agree that there was plenty of exchange between the Reichswehr and the People's and Peasant's Army of the Soviet Union, there is still no evidence that the Reichswher provided sniping instruction. Besides lack of documentation, sniping itself was not taught in the Reichswher for which its own infantry emphasized marksmanship with iron sights. Budget for the Reichswehr was limited so sniping was a low priority. Additionally we see Soviet modernization effort in aviation and armor (and very little in the way of naval development in the '20s) and chemical warfare. The Soviet Union was poor nation and modernization for the Soviets meant more so in bigger equipment. Infantry training certainly improved with German assistance, but would the Germans teach sniping when they weren't teaching it to their own soldats? Unlikely. Last it was Yagoda's NKVD that provided the funds for scoped rifle development and not the Red Army. Yagoda could tell us about NKVD interest in sniping but he himself was executed so he had no memoirs and left only a confession (probably beatened out of him). Those scoped rifles went to the NKVD border guards.

Sniping wasn't considered important in the post-war Reichswher and if there was no program, why would they instruct the Soviets? The lack of post-war interest in sniping is evident in the Germans, like the Western Allies, decommissioning of sniper rifles by removing the scopes and scope bases and restoring them to original configurations. The Reichswehr sold the scopes to soldiers and the West to civilians. Some WW I rifles did survive (in both Germany and the West) that were pressed into service in WW II. Hans von Seeckt was more interested in improving the individual quality of the soldier such that it would allow for rapid expansion.

Touring of sniping schools did not happen in the inter-war periods. I don't think anyone operated a sniper school in the interwar era (except in the '30s when the Soviets operated their own training program). Great Depression was a global thing and even the US Army's ammunition budget was halved one year. The Soviets were a pariah nation and no military would cooperate with them. However, as you suggested, it is likely that happened during WW I with the possibility of Tsarist Russian Officers observers being sent to the West.

While I concur that the Soviets could have gotten Hesketh Prichard's book in the '20s, there wasn't much published in the way of Great War sniping literature. McBride's A Rifleman Went to War wasn't published until 1935 so that it could not have been used to write the first manual. It may have been picked up subsequently and studied. I wonder if the Russian Army has a library where sniping literature may be hidden at? The Russian State Library is in St. Petersburg but darn if I'm going there. Like our Library of Congress, it's a very pretty place.

As you may know, Stalin's purges more or less destroyed the officer corps of the Red Army in the late 1930s, so those who oversaw developments in the 1920s and up to the mid 1930s, were mostly dead or imprisoned after 1937. True, some survivors were released from the Gulag to fight, such as Marshal Rokossovsky who emerged minus some finger nails, but I'm not sure how many overall. As far as I can tell, Gen. Morozov/Morozoff may have been a senior officer on the Northern Front in 1942, and he may have been cited in the article because he had something to do with the development of Red Army sniper doctrines, or just because he had an aristocratic sounding name that might have been thought to resonate better in the West.

Concur that the purges harmed the Red Army's professional officer class. What Churchill says still applies to them: a riddle wrapped in an enigma. I'm unsure what role Morozov may have played if any in sniper development. His name doesn't appear on the first manual (1933). In 1942 the Soviets were hanging on by their fingernails and wanted desperately for the British and Americans to open a second front to relieve them. Propaganda was used to buoy morale, encourage the Western Allies and to demoralize the enemy.

H-P's book may have played a notable part in the development of Red Army sniping doctrines, but the Red Army hung by a Lend-Lease thread in 1942 and it was wise to be polite to temporary allies like us. It was never Soviet custom to admit any technical debt to "imperialists", so it's doubtful such an "interview" was ever published in the Russian-language press in the USSR. No one in the West would quibble about that in 1942 either.

Not to say that H-P's book was of no value, but it is a general interest review of the subject after all. As much or more interesting material is found in Eric Parker's biography of H-P, which the Soviet's "friends" in the West had also no doubt purchased on their behalf, along with whatever else was thought potentially useful. One point that suggests some influence is the Red Army doctrine of snipers working in pairs, which AFAIK was never the German practice.

Quite right that the Soviets were loathe to attribute anything useful to the decadent Western capitalist society (how they viewed us). They could have obtained Parker's biography of Hesketh Prichard and their own manual does promote snipers to work in teams. Hesketh-Prichard's book is valuable for the "mindset" it teaches a sniper.

As for the P14 in the movie it appears the scope is a long eye-relief model set forward of the boltway perhaps to address the perpetual problem of loading the magazine with a scope in the way, but looking more closely it is probably just something made up for the movie to contrast with what the hero using. Straps have never worked well as a method of holding scopes onto rifles!

One of the few advantages of the Winchester A5 was that it could be slid forward in the mounts to allow the Ross to be clip loaded.

I agree that P14 used in the movie was a real prop gun. That band/strap on the stock doesn't exist on the normal P-14. Also the range knob is canted, suggesting that the scope is offset. IMO, it was Mikhail-Mouse installation built by a prop maker. For props, they would have been better off making wood mounting blocks and gluing it onto the receiver but the Soviet viewer is unlikely to have known enough back then to discern the difference.

We need a foreign scope expert to ID that scope or at least verify that a long eye relief scope of that type was available in 1931. I bet it wasn't a long eye relief scope though and if it was, it was the prototype to Jeff Cooper's Scout Rifle concept.

I also suspect that the movie may have been released to the West (for propaganda purposes). I read one memoir where the soldier said he saw a movie and critiqued the sniper bringing a friend with him.

Are you a member of The Company of Military Historians and if so inclined to join, I'd be happy to sponsor such a well read person.

[Surpmil]

The forum’s response coding has reached its limit now, so I’ll just put my previous in italics, your replies in normal font, and my lastest responses in bold.

It seems pretty clear that these rifles represent experimentation that was going on. By 1931 had the Soviets not settled on using the Mosin-Nagant as their sniping rifle? I'm not a student of the M-N, but IIRC the first PE/PEM scopes we see are dated 1931? So perhaps by the time the movie was made, these Ross and P14 models were no longer under consideration and effectively just experimental "left-overs" which could be used without divulging any secrets.

As in my previous, we don't know exactly why they were using Rosses (and P14s), but we can hypothesize. One other reason the Ross is suitable for sniping is that the straight-pull action requires less obvious movement to operate the bolt, in particular no need to raise the hand/arm to rotate the bolt. A good deal of work was done at RSAF Enfield to develop a straight-pull sniping rifle, apparently just for this reason. To use the Ross action was of course "politically unacceptable"

I doubt if the Soviets would consider any rifle for sniping other than the M91/30. They would have to tool up to produce a foreign rifle and why bother when they were happy with the M91/30? They had the tooling, jigs and trained workforce. Look at the simplicity of the bolt compared to the rifles used by other armies. If anything, it could have been modernized to have an internal staggered magazine but that would mean they would have two types of M91 rifles (logistics nightmare). The use of the Ross in Timoshenko's flick was only as a prop as a scoped rifle.

Yes, ostensibly it would not seem wise to use a rifle for which they had no domestic supply of parts etc. On the other hand, we don’t know how many Rosses or P14s they had! It may have been tens of thousands. We don’t know a lot about where many of the Ross Mk.III rifles went after WWI; that is those that were in British service. Many went to India, but apparently not all.

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 Germany, 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!

IIRC the CEF turned in most of their small arms before leaving the Continent or the U.K. in 1919. Probably some SMLE's and Rosses were brought back to Canadaicon, but I suspect all the SMLE snipers were returned to U.K. stores from where they had been issued. There is no record of them being in Canada post-WWI, unlike the Ross-Warner & Swasey rifles and scopes which were in store here until WWII (except for WWI losses of course). Most of the sniping rifles used by the C.E.F./Canadian Corps were Rosses fitted with Winchester A5 scopes by Canadian armourers; the scopes being purchased directly and possibly supplied from UK purchases as well. AFAWK, except for some examples in museums, the Rosses with A5 scopes were scrapped after WWI.

The Canadian Dept. of Militia & Defence would have had no part in deciding what the British War Department sent to Russia unless such weapons came from Canadian sources and there is no evidence that any did.

It is unlikely that any Ross sniper rifles accompanied the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force, (sent at British request) and even more unlikely that any such arms were handed over to the White Army. Certainly not the Warner & Swasey rifles as we have precise counts for those.

By 1916 the Canadians replaced the Ross with SMLEs. The exception were the sniper rifles. Snipers were trained or expected to take care of their rifles and could be entrusted with the Ross which remained in limited service as a sniper rifle. As mentioned in an earlier post, upon reflection it is more likely that the Ross sniper rifles were not supplied to the White Russians but used by the Canadians themselves in Siberia. The British War Ministry would have no say on what the Canadians used or could take to Siberia.

Too bad Clive Law crossed the Styx. I'd love to hear his insights.
R.I.P.

Well, let's think about this: if the Red Army began to study sniping in the early 1920s, and received training or at least training materials from the Reichswehr, we can be pretty sure they being both thorough and untrusting of "imperialist" states like Weimar Germany, would also do their own research. That research would naturally involve first all the open-source material available, of which H-P's book was the most well-known and detailed, though not the only by any means. So logically they had those books in hand by the mid-20s at the latest. As I mentioned, it's quite possible that materials on sniping were provided to Imperial Russian military missions and attachés during WWI. Touring sniping schools was a popular diversion for senior officers and foreign guests etc. after all. Considerable effort was put into helping the Russian Army before the Bolshevik coup in October 1917; I expect we provided them with all sorts of training and tactical materials and instructional manuals etc. Quite possible that the Bolsheviks acquired those materials after they took over, and by the early 1920s would have had time to start digesting such materials.

While we both agree that there was plenty of exchange between the Reichswehr and the People's and Peasant's Army of the Soviet Union, there is still no evidence that the Reichswher provided sniping instruction. Besides lack of documentation, sniping itself was not taught in the Reichswher for which its own infantry emphasized marksmanship with iron sights. Budget for the Reichswehr was limited so sniping was a low priority. Additionally we see Soviet modernization effort in aviation and armor (and very little in the way of naval development in the '20s) and chemical warfare. The Soviet Union was poor nation and modernization for the Soviets meant more so in bigger equipment. Infantry training certainly improved with German assistance, but would the Germans teach sniping when they weren't teaching it to their own soldats? Unlikely. Last it was Yagoda's NKVD that provided the funds for scoped rifle development and not the Red Army. Yagoda could tell us about NKVD interest in sniping but he himself was executed so he had no memoirs and left only a confession (probably beatened out of him). Those scoped rifles went to the NKVD border guards.

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.

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 French 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.

Sniping wasn't considered important in the post-war Reichswher and if there was no program, why would they instruct the Soviets? The lack of post-war interest in sniping is evident in the Germans, like the Western Allies, decommissioning of sniper rifles by removing the scopes and scope bases and restoring them to original configurations. The Reichswehr sold the scopes to soldiers and the West to civilians. Some WW I rifles did survive (in both Germany and the West) that were pressed into service in WW II. Hans von Seeckt was more interested in improving the individual quality of the soldier such that it would allow for rapid expansion.

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 see such things again...

Touring of sniping schools did not happen in the inter-war periods. I don't think anyone operated a sniper school in the interwar era (except in the '30s when the Soviets operated their own training program). Great Depression was a global thing and even the US Army's ammunition budget was halved one year. The Soviets were a pariah nation and no military would cooperate with them. However, as you suggested, it is likely that happened during WW I with the possibility of Tsarist Russian Officers observers being sent to the West.

I’m not making any reference there to the inter-war period; the schools were long gone as most were in France, though there were some in the USA and Britain, but highly unlikely that any survived the massive demob and force reductions in the UK. As we know from subsequent histories, most of the innovative minds left the services in the interwar period and the usual mental rut-runners made haste to put things back as they were before the war. There are books written about these people and the harm they do. “Memoirs of an Unconventional Soldier”, and “On the Psychology of Military Incompetence” for example.

While I concur that the Soviets could have gotten Hesketh Prichard's book in the '20s, there wasn't much published in the way of Great War sniping literature. McBride's A Rifleman Went to War wasn't published until 1935 so that it could not have been used to write the first manual. It may have been picked up subsequently and studied. I wonder if the Russian Army has a library where sniping literature may be hidden at? The Russian State Library is in St. Petersburg but darn if I'm going there. Like our Library of Congress, it's a very pretty place.

As you may know, Stalin's purges more or less destroyed the officer corps of the Red Army in the late 1930s, so those who oversaw developments in the 1920s and up to the mid 1930s, were mostly dead or imprisoned after 1937. True, some survivors were released from the Gulag to fight, such as Marshal Rokossovsky who emerged minus some finger nails, but I'm not sure how many overall. As far as I can tell, Gen. Morozov/Morozoff may have been a senior officer on the Northern Front in 1942, and he may have been cited in the article because he had something to do with the development of Red Army sniper doctrines, or just because he had an aristocratic sounding name that might have been thought to resonate better in the West.

Concur that the purges harmed the Red Army's professional officer class. What Churchill says still applies to them: a riddle wrapped in an enigma. I'm unsure what role Morozov may have played if any in sniper development. His name doesn't appear on the first manual (1933). In 1942 the Soviets were hanging on by their fingernails and wanted desperately for the British and Americans to open a second front to relieve them. Propaganda was used to buoy morale, encourage the Western Allies and to demoralize the enemy.

Yes, that was my point there. A Morozov may have played some part as a relatively junior officer in Red Army sniping developments, but without access to their archives we’ll never know.

As for Churchill’s comment, it reflects two things, an incapacity or lack of interest in understanding the history and psychology of the country and their reflexive secrecy. And perhaps also a certain inconsistency in policy seeing as it was always largely at the arbitrary whim of a more or less absolute ruler and could therefore change abruptly and dramatically in ways that appeared "mysterious" to the outsider.

H-P's book may have played a notable part in the development of Red Army sniping doctrines, but the Red Army hung by a Lend-Lease thread in 1942 and it was wise to be polite to temporary allies like us. It was never Soviet custom to admit any technical debt to "imperialists", so it's doubtful such an "interview" was ever published in the Russian-language press in the USSR. No one in the West would quibble about that in 1942 either.

Not to say that H-P's book was of no value, but it is a general interest review of the subject after all. As much or more interesting material is found in Eric Parker's biography of H-P, which the Soviet's "friends" in the West had also no doubt purchased on their behalf, along with whatever else was thought potentially useful. One point that suggests some influence is the Red Army doctrine of snipers working in pairs, which AFAIK was never the German practice.

Quite right that the Soviets were loathe to attribute anything useful to the decadent Western capitalist society (how they viewed us). They could have obtained Parker's biography of Hesketh Prichard and their own manual does promote snipers to work in teams. Hesketh-Prichard's book is valuable for the "mindset" it teaches a sniper.

As for the P14 in the movie it appears the scope is a long eye-relief model set forward of the boltway perhaps to address the perpetual problem of loading the magazine with a scope in the way, but looking more closely it is probably just something made up for the movie to contrast with what the hero using. Straps have never worked well as a method of holding scopes onto rifles!

One of the few advantages of the Winchester A5 was that it could be slid forward in the mounts to allow the Ross to be clip loaded.

I agree that P14 used in the movie was a real prop gun. That band/strap on the stock doesn't exist on the normal P-14. Also the range knob is canted, suggesting that the scope is offset. IMO, it was Mikhail-Mouse installation built by a prop maker. For props, they would have been better off making wood mounting blocks and gluing it onto the receiver but the Soviet viewer is unlikely to have known enough back then to discern the difference.

We need a foreign scope expert to ID that scope or at least verify that a long eye relief scope of that type was available in 1931. I bet it wasn't a long eye relief scope though and if it was, it was the prototype to Jeff Cooper's Scout Rifle concept.

As it’s only a movie, the actor doesn’t even need to be able to see through it, much less get a proper field of view.

I also suspect that the movie may have been released to the West (for propaganda purposes). I read one memoir where the soldier said he saw a movie and critiqued the sniper bringing a friend with him.

Was it released in the West and if so when? Doesn’t seem like the sort of thing likely to have been in the theatres here.

Are you a member of The Company of Military Historians and if so inclined to join, I'd be happy to sponsor such a well read person.

No, but thanks for the offer. Will look into that idea.

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.