Sputnik, The Cold War, and International Shooting

My sister, daughter and I were recently having lunch in Amanda’s Bakery & Bistro (their pie is to die for) in downtown Abilene, Kansas when I took note of an “I like Ike” sign. These are often seen in Abilene as it’s the boyhood home of Dwight D. Eisenhower and home to his presidential library and museum. You have to cross the railroad tracks when heading from downtown to the small, humble home where America’s 34th President was raised. The museum is a must-see for any history buff as it covers not only his life, military and wartime service but also World War II, the Cold War, Space Race and threat of nuclear war.

Eisenhower was president during a difficult, but transformative, time in this nation’s history when the East and West squared off toe-to-toe. The old Colonial powers, like England and France, saw their empires throw off the yoke of oppression and so began to crumble and fall by the wayside. Much of Europe lay in ruins and needed rebuilding. The United States though had entered World War II with a small, poorly equipped peacetime army, but emerged as an atomic superpower, with unrivaled manufacturing capability.

In the East, a familiar old threat once again reared its ugly head, Stalin’s Soviet Union and its vast Red Army. The Soviet Union had long threatened its small independent neighbors. From May to September 16th 1939 the Red Army thrashed Imperial Japan taking land from Manchuria. On September 17th they invaded and annexed a huge part of Poland. Two months later, the Red Army invaded Finland. Next, the Soviets turned their sights on the small independent Baltic States. On June 15th 1940, the Soviets invaded and annexed Lithuania and the following day invaded and annexed Latvia and Estonia. The Presidents of Estonia and Latvia both died as prisoners in Siberia. However, the Red Army wasn’t done yet. On July 28th 1940 they began seizing and annexing Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in Romania.

Soviet aggression came to a temporary halt when Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, driving the Communists from these conquered territories. Soon though, the Germans found themselves facing overwhelming numbers with their backs against the wall. By May 1945, Berlin was a smoking ruin and Eastern Europe was firmly under the Communist’s yoke. Communist puppet states were established in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania. Soon, the Soviets began to look to see who else they might subjugate.

In the “Three Worlds” concept, the First World consisted of those countries aligned with the United States and the Western Bloc. The Second World consisted of those countries aligned with the Soviet Union and their Eastern Bloc. The Third World consisted of the non-aligned countries, which both the East and West desired in their camps. It’s hard for the younger generations today to imagine just how fierce the competition between the Soviet Union and America became. There was a race building atomic and nuclear weapons, a race to space and a race for influence around the globe. These were intended to prove which system was better, Communism or Democracy.

This race between East and West even reached to competitive shooting. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a highly organized and well-supported Soviet team showed up to the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki with their game face on. To put this in perspective, no Russian shooting team had competed in the Olympics in 40 years. The Soviets had virtually never competed there. The last attending team had actually been a mix of Finns (Finland was then part of the Empire) and Russians when it competed in the 1912 games at Stockholm under the old Imperial banner of the Tsar.

Due to this, Western competitors didn’t know what to make of an unknown Soviet marksman named Anatoli Ivanovich Bogdanov as he went toe-to-toe with the best marksmen in the world in the 300-meter Free Rifle event. Here, competitors fired 40 shots prone, 40 shots kneeling and finally 40 shots offhand using iron sights, under a time limit, with 1,200 points possible for a perfect score. Switzerland’s Robert Bürchler was favored to win, but Bogdanov stood side-by-side with him racking up points with each shot until a crowd gathered behind them. The top American competitor posted a score of 1,104. Bürchler shot an impressive 1,121, but it wasn’t good enough to beat Bogdanov who set a World Record with a score of 1,123, taking the Gold medal. Bogdanov’s teammate Lev 
Vainshtein brought home the Bronze for the Soviet Union with a score of 1,109.

German A. Salazar wrote the following in Free Rifle Shooting in the Cold War Years: Sputnik, the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Sierra 168: “Every international contest, most assuredly including international shooting, was a Cold War battleground. In the mid-1950s the Soviet Union entered the world of international shooting and almost immediately became a dominant force in International Shooting Union or Union Internationale de Tir (UIT) 300 Meter Free Rifle competition. The countries which had traditionally won the medals in 300 Meter shooting, Switzerland, Finland and Sweden, remained contenders, but the United States lagged well behind. The U.S. team’s triumphs of the 1920s and 1930s were but a distant memory.

While UIT matches included many events, the 300 Meter Free Rifle was without question the premier discipline and victory at 300 meters trumped all. As Sputnik whizzed overhead in 1957, everyone in the U.S. became keenly aware of the Soviet threat and the blow to national prestige. International shooting was one of many venues in which the East-West drama played out, accelerating the urgency and pace of development in training methods and equipment during that time period.”

While the Soviet Union strongly supported marksmanship training during the pre-war years, success in competition took on an entirely new meaning in the post-war years. They quickly became a dominant powerhouse in International competition in the 1950s. This was by design and part of a larger chess game taking place between East and West.

One of America’s top shooters of this period, Arthur C. Jackson, who would soon be working covertly for the CIA, had this to say about competing in 1954 at the 36th World Shooting Championships:

“Perhaps the most interesting if disturbing feature of the whole match was the performance of the well-trained and well-equipped Russian team. From the first practice sessions it became evident that this team was deadly serious and prepared to win. The team was composed of 50-odd men, 35 of whom were shooters, the rest being ‘team officials, interpreters, and coaches.’ Their team performance was sparked by the showing of perhaps the finest rifleman in the world, Anatoli Bogdanov, a short blond husky 28 year old shooter. Bogdanov won four rifle matches, three with new World’s Records; 50 meter kneeling, 50 meter three-position aggregate and 300 meter three-position aggregate.”

The Soviets took the Gold and Silver medals while Finland won the Bronze. US competitors came in 16–34th with Art Jackson leading the pack. So, how did the Soviets come from out of nowhere to rough handle the top countries in the sport? Jackson noted that the Soviet team was, “a fully government funded professional operation emphasizing continuous training. Soviet equipment was selected by team staff after rigorous testing. By contrast, U.S. shooters were individual enthusiasts with little opportunity to train together and share techniques and their equipment was based on individual preference more than on a systematic process of evaluation.”

As an example, Jackson shot a Winchester Model 70 target rifle which had been fitted with a Douglas match grade barrel. The barreled action was dropped into a home-made free rifle stock. The piece was chambered in .30-’06 and he fed it from a carefully guarded supply of pre-war Frankford Arsenal Match ammunition. This was from a hand-picked lot noted for its accuracy which had served him well in previous matches. Basically, it was a competitive combination in previous years suddenly outclassed by new Soviet rifles and ammunition.

It may come as a shock to some readers, but the 7.62mm bolt-action competition rifle wielded so effectively by Bogdanov at the 1952 Olympics was designed by Yevgeny Fedorovich Dragunov, of SVD-63 sniper rifle fame. The Soviet Union had been invited to attend the 1948 Olympic Games in London but declined. Still recovering from World War II, and consolidating their hold on Eastern Europe, left the Soviet Union ill prepared to attend. In 1948, Soviet marksmen didn’t even have a suitable 300 meter rifle to compete with.

If Stalin was going to send a team to the Olympics they had better bring home Gold medals. Not only that, but they would win those Gold medals with Soviet designed and built match rifles. So, an urgent request went out around the Soviet Union for the country’s best gunsmiths and armorers to design suitable match rifles. Using the experience gained from his recent work on bolt-action sniper rifles, Dragunov began work on what would become the S-49 Spartacus competition rifle.

The heart of the rifle was a modified Mosin action forged in Izhevsk in 1948. To add rigidity to the design, it was a single-shot with a solid bottom in place of the opening normally milled for the magazine. To this was added a carefully hand-made barrel selected for its uniformity and accuracy with a 1 turn in 12.6-inch rifling twist. This was a medium heavy profile with a carefully cut crown. The barreled action was dropped into a competition stock carefully carved from a hand-selected wood blank. The bolt was carefully fitted and polished and the trigger was designed to give a crisp break. Testing revealed the addition of a barrel band noticeably reduced group size.

After rigorous testing, in 1949 Yevgeny Dragunov’s rifle was selected to represent the Soviet Union. This provided the rifle team with enough time to begin practicing for the 1952 Olympics - it was the first long range competition rifle developed in the Soviet Union. Along with the rifle, high quality 7.62x54mmR match ammunition was specially crafted. Basically, the Soviet firearms and ammunition industry was organized and placed in support of their competitive shooters to prove their Communist system was superior to the West.

Beating the Soviets would be no simple task. They had put their best people in their firearms and ammunition industries to work. Izhevsk was home to huge small arms manufacturing facilities and firearm design bureaus while Novosibirsk had a sprawling ammunition factory. How would individual American marksmen compete against a nation state? They couldn’t, so there needed to be another solution. The question facing President Dwight D. Eisenhower was, “What organization had the manpower, skills and resources to take on the Soviet Union in head-to-head international competition?”

President Eisenhower’s answer was a logical one, the United States Army. Having spent his life serving his country, including two world wars, in the army, he had faith in its capabilities. If anyone was capable of beating the Soviet juggernaut it was the U.S. Army. So, the United States Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU) was established on 1 March, 1956 at the direction of President Dwight D. Eisenhower to raise the standards of marksmanship throughout the U.S. Army. In reality, their task was to put an end to the Soviet’s winning streak on the international stage, and to bring Gold home for the Red, White and Blue.

To successfully compete with the Soviet’s well-organized shooting program, the best marksman would need to be found, the best gunsmiths would need to be put to work, and the bar would need to be raised on match grade ammunition and firearms. One small example of what was required can be seen in just the bullet fired from .30 caliber match rifles. The U.S. Army’s 173-grain FMJ Match bullet, with its nine-degree boattail and gilding metal jacket, had performed very well at the 1925 National Matches. However, US industry could do better. So, Sierra Bullets was approached about developing a new projectile with the consistency and accuracy to beat anything the Soviets produced.

The engineers at Sierra responded by developing a .30 caliber 168-grain HPBT match bullet they called the MatchKing. Manufactured opposite of a traditional FMJ, the core was inserted from the nose and the all-important base was closed. This design would become legendary for its accuracy, and a favorite of American marksmen. Today, though, few realize it was originally developed for 300 meter competition, and to beat the Soviets.

Anatoli Bogdanov won 10 Gold medals and three Bronze medals in International competition for the Soviet Union in just four years. However, there would be no clean-sweeps by the Soviets at the 1960 Summer Olympics. The Soviets would take the most medals, seven total including two Gold, but the United States suddenly app-eared, taking one Gold and one Silver. The race was on.

The USAMU quickly established itself as a world power in shooting, leading the U.S. to six Olympic Gold Medals and 59 individual and team championships between 1962 and 1978 in international competition to go with hundreds of major service rifle and service pistol championships during that time. The Soviet dominance of international shooting suddenly came to an end. Since 1956, USAMU competitors have won hundreds of individual and team national titles, more than 40 world championships and 22 Olympic medals.

Despite fierce competition, the AMU has excelled to the point where they normally provide one-half to three-quarters of the members of the U.S. Olympic Shooting Team. To support their competitive shooters, the AMU has their own version of the “Skunk Works.” In this secretive weapons shop, highly skilled gunsmiths, unhampered by bureaucracy, constantly strive to squeeze ever more accuracy from the rifles, pistols and shotguns they build.

Over the years, I have visited both the Russian city of Izhevsk and the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit at Fort Benning. I have talked to Russian designers, shot on their range, and wandered the Izhmash museum looking at all manner of successful competition guns and the medals they won. I have also toured the AMU’s Skunk Works and competed at the U.S. Army’s Small Arms Championship hosted by the AMU.

While some may not realize it, Russia today remains as aggressive towards it neighbors as the old Soviet Union. This can be seen in their invasion of Transnistria in Moldova, invasion of Chechnya, their invasion of Georgia, a host of smaller border conflicts, and the invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. They flood the West with political propaganda; threaten Finland, Poland, and the Baltic states all while playing the victim. There is a reason so many Eastern Europeans loath Russia. Some things never change, so study your history. President Dwight D. Eisenhower recognized the threat posed by the Soviet Union and in time the United States rose to the challenge. Hopefully, the common American blue collar worker will be able to sort through the propaganda and see Russia as the threat they are. 

---