Nikolai Afanasyev

Nikolay Mikhailovich Afanasyev (Russian: Николай Михайлович Афанасьев; 14 November 1916 – 15 March 2009), also known as Nicolai Michaelovich Afanasiev, was a Russian firearms designer.^[1]

Nikolay Afanasyev
Николай Афанасьев
Born	Nikolay Mikhailovich Afanasyev (1916-11-14)14 November 1916 St. Petersburg, Russian Empire
Died	15 March 2009(2009-03-15) (aged 92)
Occupation	Weapons designer

Biography

Nicolai Michaelovitch Afanasiev was born in Russia on 14 November 1916 in St. Petersburg. In 1938 he graduated from a Tekhnikum of the Mechanization of Agriculture.

In 1939 he was drafted to serve in a tank corps in Mongolia, where he started to work on machine gun design. After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, he volunteered for front-line service. He was allowed to be a fighter from September 1941 until the fall of 1942, when he was recalled to work on armaments, initially on improving fuses for 82- and 120-mm mortars.

After 1948 Afanasiev worked at the KBP Instrument Design Bureau.^[1]

He died on 15 March 2009.

Designs

• LAD machine gun – 1942^[2]
• Afanasev A-12.7 – 1950^[1]
• Afanasev Makarov AM-23 – 1953^[1]
• a bullpup design with which he participated in the AKM contest - 1955^[3]
• 2A-14 23 mm autocannon, used in the ZU-23 – 1960 (with P.G. Yakushev)^[1]
• 2A-7 23 mm autocannon, used in the ZSU-23-4 – 1960 (with P.G. Yakushev)^[1]
• TKB-011
• TKB-0136, competed in Project Abakan^[1]
• OTs-02 Kiparis^[1]

Honours and awards

• Hero of Socialist Labour (1986)^[1] – For achievements in the design of aircraft gun armament
• Two Orders of Lenin (1963, 1986)^[1]
• Order of the October Revolution (1977)^[1]
• Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd class (1963)^[1]
• USSR State Prize (1967)^[1]
• Mosin Prize^[1]
• Honoured Inventor of the RSFSR (1968)^[1]