The small arms of the countries participating in the First World War in the collection of the Research Institute of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics of TSU

The issue of arming of the First World War participants has not been adequately explained in the literature. There are some notes on the update of weapons systems in research, yet weapons are described without exact names, as a rule. The study of the gun collection at the Institute of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics of Tomsk State University specifies knowledge of arms, gives a visible representation of different samples of small arms. The arms collection was formed at Tomsk University in 1945. The basis of it was a part of the trophies of war taken from the Rocket Center of Nazi Germany, disposed in Peenemunde. Now the gun collection includes 79 small arms from 16 countries of the world, including the United States, Russia, Germany, Italy, Japan, etc. This collection was used for student training, for scientific research in the field of ballistics. The collection includes pistols, revolvers, rifles, hand and mounted machine guns. The weapons of the Russian army are most fully represented. There is a Mosin rifle of 1891/1930 in the collection. This version of the rifle was used in the army of Russia and later in the USSR until 1950s. The collection has the main machine gun of the Russian army, the M-1905/1910 Maksim Machine Gun. It was produced by the Tula Arms Plant. Russian officers used the Nagant M1895 Revolver as a personal weapon. The collection has it, too, as well as the rifle of the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. from the USA. It is known that American gun-makers delivered 300 thousand Winchester Model 1895 rifles to the Russian Army. The University collection has a Japanese Arisaka rifle model produced in 1897/1905, a French Lebel Model 1886 rifle, and a British Lee-Enfield 1896 rifle. All of them were used in the Russian Army and were bought abroad. The small arms of Russia's allies in the First World War are well represented in the TSU collection. The French Army used the Lebel Model 1907 rifle and its modification, the Lebel-Berthier rifle. This rifle is presented in the collection of TSU as well. In addition, the French Army used the Chauchat machine rifle, model 1915. The Army of Great Britain used the Ross-Enfield M1914 rifle. Released in a very small number, this rifle is now quite rare. The Lewis gun, or Lewis automatic rifle, model 1915, was made by Savage Arms Co. in the USA and purchased by the British. The arms of Russia's adversaries are represented by samples made in Germany. It is the model 1898 Mauser rifle, the German modification of the Maksim machine gun, the Dreyse heavy machine gun, model 1908/1915. The University collection also has weapons of Austria-Hungary: the Steyr-Mannlicher model 1895 rifles, the Roth-Steyr pistols, better known as the Roth-Krnka M.7, and the Steyr M1912 pistols. The small arms collected in the Institute of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics allows noting the following. The armies of the Entente used weapons of various calibers and systems. Sometimes there were a few different types of weapon systems in one separate country. As for the armies of the Union of the central powers (the Austro-German bloc), they had a more orderly system of weapons.

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