Projects of automatic weapons designed by B.E. Sosinsky in Russia in the early 20th century.

Annotation The subject of study in this article is the period at the beginning of the development of manual automatic weapons in Russia (the turn of the 19th–20th centuries). The overall supervision of such works on new weapons was carried out by the Main Artillery Administration (GAU), albeit in a rather general manner, which meant that the level of sophistication of the created models depended on the talent of the inventor. This article analyzes a project that demonstrates a high degree of originality and expressiveness of engineering thought, as well as a considerable potential of domestic inventor-weapons designers. The focus is on the projects of a modified automatic rifle and a machine rifle developed by engineer B.E. Sosinski. This project was considered by the Russian military authorities in the 1900s. It is an undeniable fact that B.E. Sosinski was a skilled and talented engineer who had a deep understanding of and passion for weaponry and possessed significant potential as a weapon designer. However, these traits of his personality were not adequately utilized due to the peculiarities of the weaponry era in Russia. The following research methods were used in this material: historical-scientific analysis of specialized research literature, comparative-historical method, and processing of archival data. In conclusion, it is necessary to characterize Sosinski's machine gun project from the perspective of contemporary knowledge about automatic small arms. Despite the existing shortcomings, as of the date of submission (1906), it was one of the most thought-out and adequately looking proposals. In terms of the quality of technical solutions incorporated into the project, it surpassed by two orders of magnitude the primitive automatic weapon projects being developed at the same time by other Russian inventor-weapons designers. This consideration allows us to put forward the thesis that at the beginning of the 20th century, there were talented inventors in Russia with significant creative potential who, with proper organization of the design process and refinement of weaponry, were capable of creating modern samples.