Welcome to the illustrated virtual guided tour of the Museum of Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of AK-47 assault rifle.
With 327 zoom-enabled high resolution photos, this virtual tour guides you throughout the exhibitions of a museum devoted to the designs and weapons of one of the most famous firearms engineers in history, Mikhail Kalashnikov, and also allows you to explore the story of his life.
The goal of this virtual tour is to present the museum in an interactive and interesting way. By clicking on the sequential images, you're effectively "moving" through the exhibition and occasionally stopping to get a closer look, seeing things on display just as you would if you were walking down the museum's exhibition hall. We make it possible for people to view the museum and its exhibits from their computer - it's virtually like you've been there.
This is the very first guide on the subject - up to the present (JUne 2006), no other catalogue of the museum's collection is available, either in Russian or other languages, in print or in electronic format.
Currently, guided on-site tours to the museum are provided only in Russian - so, if you were to visit Izhevsk, but you don't know Russian, you'd need to bring an interpreter along with you to the museum to understand what the tour guide is saying. The purpose behind this virtual tour is to provide a richly illustrated tour in English, a language that is accessible to many of the world's people who are interested in all things Kalashnikov.
We have devoted significant effort into taking and organizing the photographs and providing commentary. Some photos can stand alone, without additional explanation - generally, these are the close-up views of artifacts.
In terms of content, we didn't venture much beyond the scope of the regular guided tour that can be taken at the museum - the comments we have added are meant either to add context for understanding some of the realities of the Soviet era, or to bring some exciting factual coincidences to your attention.
We welcome your feedback regarding this virtual guide - please help us to improve it! Your input would be very much appreciated.
We'd like to learn all about your experience with our virtual tour: whether or not we should consider a version with pictures of much better quality (hence of considerably larger size), or improve upon the structure of the guide, or add more facts and pictures about the local region, and so on. Please send your comments and inquiries to [email protected].
Now, right this way, come right up to the main entrance of the tour…