Know Your Guns: History of the East German Makarov

HISTORY OF THE EAST GERMAN MAKAROV

 

When I was hot and heavy into Curio and Relic collecting fifteen or so years back I had several different flavors of Makarov, including a true East German PM (with original DDR markings) a Polish P-64, A Hungarian FEG PA-63 and a very rare Bulgarian PPK clone.

As with all Eastern Block C&R Military pistols, the double action trigger on Mak’s were atrociously bad, somewhere between 15 and 25 pounds. This was a purposeful design however to keep peasant conscripts from shooting their own dicks off.

Other than that, they were a real pleasure to shoot with a caliber I would describe as a “.380 ACP on growth hormones”.