80 years ago, on December 21, 1940, the legendary PPSh submachine gun was adopted by the Red Army

 The Shpagin PPSh-41 submachine gun can be considered one of the main symbols of the Victory over Nazi Germany. Less than five months have passed since the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, as the serial production of the PPSh-41 submachine gun began. This submachine gun became the most famous Soviet submachine gun of the Second World War.

PPSh-41 with a drum magazine

PPSh-41 with a box magazine

The PPSh-41 is a Soviet submachine gun designed by Georgy Shpagin as a cheap, reliable, and simplified alternative to the PPD-40. A common Russian nickname for the weapon is "papasha", meaning "daddy", and it was sometimes called the "burp gun" because of its high fire rate. The PPSh is a magazine-fed selective fire submachine gun using an open bolt, blowback action. Made largely of stamped steel, it can be loaded with either a box or drum magazine and fires the 7.62×25mm Tokarev pistol round.

Wehrmacht Feldwebel Wilhelm Traub armed with a PPSH-41 scanning the view of Stalingrad in the middle of a ruined town in autumn 1942

Soviet War Memorial in the Treptower Park in Berlin.

The PPSh saw extensive combat use during World War II and the Korean War, and it is common for monuments in Eastern Bloc countries celebrating the actions of the Red Army to have a PPSh-41. It was one of the major infantry weapons of the Soviet Armed Forces during World War II, with about six million PPSh-41s manufactured in this period.