17.12.2020

WHERE DO THE TRACES OF BREZHNEV COLLECTION LEAD?

On the December 17, at the Kalashnikov Museum and Exhibition Complex of Small Arms the exhibition “Following the traces of the “Brezhnev collection” was opened. For the first time, the general public is able to see a unique hunting arsenal of top party leaders.
In the late 1980s, State Repository for Precious Metals of the USSR received a large collection of hunting weapons that belonged to the country’s top Soviet and party leaders. With the Dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the collection was divided and transferred for storage to the arms plants of Tula, Kovrov and Izhevsk.
The Izhevsk Mechanical Plant received 46 rare hunting rifles at that time. Many of them belonged to Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev personally, so the entire collection received the unofficial name “Brezhnev collection”.
For eighteen years Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev held the highest party post and led our country. Memories and legends about his passion for hunting are widely known. The general secretary turned active recreation with a gun in hands into an instrument of diplomacy. Gustav Husak, Erich Honecker and Josip Broz Tito, Finnish President Urho Kekkonen and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger participated in such negotiations with pleasure.
These famous guns are a must see! Each of them represents a particular chapter in the history of the country and the world! Rare hunting rifle from Liege of the early 20th century and Finnish carbines of the period of “detente”. A tee shotgun from Germany made in 1933 and a double-barreled shotgun from the GDR made in 1972.

The new exhibition will be held in our museum until February 7, 2021.