The creator of the world's most famous assault rifle knew well its deadly capacity. Still, Mikhail Kalashnikov, who died last month at the age of 94, expressed few regrets about his invention while he was alive.
"The fact that people die because of an AK-47 is not because of the designer, but because of politics," he told The Guardian's Nick Paton Walsh in 2003.
Now, a letter Kalashnikov wrote just months before his death, published Monday by the Russian newspaper Izvestia, reveals that the AK-47's impact weighed heavily on his mind.
"My spiritual pain is unbearable. I keep asking the same insoluble question. If my rifle deprived people of life then can it be that I ... a Christian and an orthodox believer, was to blame for their deaths?" wrote Kalashnikov to Patriarch Kirill, the chief bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, last April.
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