カラシニコフ氏は自動小銃ＡＫ４７の設計者で先月２３日、９４歳で亡くなりました。
ＡＫ４７は設計者にちなんで「カラシニコフ」とも呼ばれ、耐久性に優れて扱いやすく安い価格で簡単に製造できることから、旧共産圏や紛争地に拡散し、人権団体からは「世界で最も好んで使われる殺人兵器」と呼ばれています。
１３日付けのロシアの有力紙「イズベスチヤ」の報道によりますと、カラシニコフ氏は去年４月、ロシア正教会のキリル総主教宛に手紙を出し、「私の心の痛みは耐えがたい。私の銃が奪った命が敵のものであっても、私に罪はあるでしょうか」と、悩みを打ち明けていました。
これに対してキリル総主教は、祖国を守るためなら武器の設計者もその武器を使う兵士も支持すると返信したということです。
カラシニコフ氏は２００７年、モスクワで行った会見で、「あらゆる紛争の責任は問題を平和的に解決できない政治家にある。銃は国を守るためのもので、本当は紛争に使ってほしくはない」と複雑な心境を示していました。
'Am I guilty?' AK-47 maker's near-death torment ― RT News
But, apparently, as he was approaching the end of his life doubts lingered in his mind. Kalashnikov, who found faith in his final years, shared the burden in a letter to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was published on Monday by the Izvestia newspaper.
“My soul ache is unbearable and has one irresolvable question: if my rifle took lives, does it mean that I, Mikhail Kalashnikov, aged 93, a peasant woman’s son, an Orthodox Christian in faith, is guilty of those people’s deaths, even if they were enemies?” the leaked letter reads.
Kalashnikov himself, even though he was baptized as a child, spent most of his life as an atheist living in an officially atheist country. It was only at the age of 91 that he felt the call of faith and answered it, he wrote.
The inventor also shared his confusion over why God allows evil to exist in the world, a misfortune that puzzled many minds before him.
“Good and evil coexist side by side, fighting and, worst of all, they resign themselves to each other in the hearts of people - that is what I have come to at the end of this earthly life. It’s similar to the kind of perpetual motion I wanted to invent in my younger years,” he wrote
Patriarch Kirill’s office confirmed that the letter was authentic. It said that the Orthodox Church does not condemn making weapons for the defense of one’s motherland, or using them against aggressors, Izvestia reports.
The church, which was demolished in 1937 and rebuilt in the mid-2000s, is mentioned in the letter as a place of great spiritual importance for the inventor. Kalashnikov wrote that he was glad that he rejected the idea of building a museum dedicated to him in the place where the church was located, because otherwise it might not have been reconstructed.
It’s not uncommon for inventors of instruments of death to take drastic steps in their later years to change their legacy. One of the most famous examples is Alfred Nobel, whose wealth was founded on dynamite. He was disturbed to read his premature obituary published erroneously in a newspaper, which branded him a “merchant of death”. It inspired him to allocate a greater portion of his fortune to establish the Nobel Prizes.
Another famous weapons designer, J. Robert Oppenheimer, was overwhelmed by the destructive power of the nuclear weapons he helped to create under the Manhattan Project. He became a vocal proponent of nuclear nonproliferation, a position which eventually cost him his security clearance and political influence.
