The Makarov pistol or PM (Russian: Пистолет Макарова, Pistolet Makarova, literally Makarov's Pistol) is a Russian semi-automatic pistol. Under the project leadership of Nikolay Fyodorovich Makarov, it became the Soviet Union's standard military and police side armfrom 1951 to 1991.
The Makarov pistol was adopted by the Soviet Union in 1951, following a competition created to replace the obsolete Tokarev TT-33 semi-automatic pistol and Nagant M1895 revolver. Rather than building a pistol to an existing cartridge in the Soviet inventory, Nikolai Makarov took up the German wartime Walther "Ultra" design, fundamentally an enlarged Walther PP, utilizing the 9×18mm Makarovcartridge designed by B.V. Semin in 1946. For simplicity and economy, the Makarov pistol was of straight blowback operation, with the9×18mm Makarov cartridge being the most powerful cartridge it could safely and practically fire. The Luftwaffe had rejected this pistol design some years before because of its poor accuracy. Although the nominal calibre was 9.0 mm, the actual bullet was 9.22 mm in diameter, since caliber in Russia is measured between the grooves and not the lands of the rifling. Being shorter and wider, the 9mm Makarov cartridge is thus incompatible with pistols chambered for 9×19mm Parabellum cartridges and vice-versa.
In 1951, the PM was selected because of its extreme reliability, simplicity, and ease of manufacture over other competing designs. It remained in wide front-line service with Soviet military and police until and beyond the end of the USSR in 1991. Variants of the pistol remain in production in Russia, China, and Bulgaria. In the U.S., surplus Soviet and East German military Makarovs are listed as eligiblecurio and relic items by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, because the countries of manufacture, the USSR and the GDR, no longer exist.[1]
Pistolet Beshumnyy(PB) was based on the Makarov pistol, with the addition of an integral suppressor. It was only used for KGB and other Soviet clandestine organisation.[1]
