I Am Still a Living Soldier

At eighteen, a platoon commander of a special unit, after being wounded, lost his sight. Our friends—Komsomol comrades, older comrades, our Soviet public—didn’t leave him in trouble; they helped him find his place in life, work, study, create. His character also played a role: inquisitiveness, inexhaustible diligence, and an incredibly rich imagination. And something unprecedented happened: a blind person became a designer of small arms.

Throughout the Great Patriotic War he worked in arsenals, at training grounds, and at defense plants, contributing to the improvement of weapons that went to the front. That’s why you could say that he also fought alongside those who smashed the enemy on the battlefield. That’s why his book is being released in the series “Front-Line Men Tell.”

And later, the blind designer created the famous sports pistol that made his creator’s name known throughout the world.

All of this is what the honored inventor of the RSFSR, Mikhail Vladimirovich Margolin, told in his memoirs.