Mosin, Sergei

Born Apr. 2 (14), 1849, in the village of Ramon’, now Ramon’ Raion, Voronezh Oblast; died Jan. 26 (Feb. 8), 1902, in Sestroretsk. Russian small-arms designer; major general (1900).

After graduating from the Mikhail Artillery Academy in 1875, Mosin was sent to the Tula Weapons Plant. In 1887 he designed a rifle with a magazine inthe buttstock. Mosin’s greatest creation was a 7.62-mm magazine rifle, which he designed in 1890 and which was adopted by the Russian Army in 1891 as the .30-caliber magazine rifle, 1891 model. In the same year Mosin was awarded the Mikhail Grand Prize for his outstanding work in artillery. He was chief of the Sestroretsk Weapons Plant from 1894 to 1902. In 1949, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the designer’s birth, the Soviet government adopted a resolution concerning the immortalization of his memory; a monument to Mosin was erected in 1958 in Tula.