Soviet Era Model 91/30 Rifle Used in the Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War began in 1936 and raged for several years with the usual ferocity that only a religious war could top!  Germany backed Franco with weapons and manpower; the Soviets backed the Republicans with war material as well. American volunteers went over to help the Republicans as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Ernest Hemmingway put the conflict into words in his book For Whom the Bells Toll.

 

This author obtained a Model 91/30 rifle for the paltry sum of $10.00 in l961. What peaked my interest was the inscription on the side of the receiver; Made in USSR. This was in English letters and not Cyrillic as used by the Soviets/Russians. Why would anyone put this on the side of the receiver? Anyone who knows anything about military firearms would know that this was a Soviet weapon especially with the hammer and sickle embossed on the top of the receiver.

 

A few years back I was talking to a fellow military weapons collector and he told me how he was in Spain looking for firearms in the late 1950s. He met a Major from the Spanish Army in a bar and he mentioned to the Major that he was looking for interesting firearms. The Major said, “If you are interested in firearms, meet me here at 0900 in the morning.” In the morning, they took a ride together to an old castle and on opening the massive door, the building was packed from floor to ceiling with captured weapons from the Spanish Civil War.

 

The amount of weapons located here was beyond George’s financial means and so he contacted Interarmco.  He said there I was in my early 20’s and watched the deal being made. The rifles, mostly 9l/30’s, sold for less than $2.00 each.

 

With this lucky piece of information, I was able to piece the puzzle together. The rifle in my possession was not stamped SA meaning Suomen Armeija and that it was once the property of the Finnish Army. The date on my rifle was 1936 which was the start of the civil war and was made at Izhevsk arsenal in the USSR. A book on the Spanish Civil War that I read some years ago gave the total Russian contribution of rifles to Spain as 500,000.

 

Why was the rifle stamped: MADE IN THE USSR?  A Golden State Arms Corp.  advertisement, from that period, offers these rifles for the sum of $14.95 each. The advertisement is headlined: HUNTERS – CONFISCATED ‘MN’ RUSSIAN RIFLES. It has a disclaimer that says; “Their sale in no way aids any iron curtain country.”

 

This was the McCarthy era and one had better be careful in word and deed if they were not to be branded a Communist sympathizer. To be sure that no one purchased one of these rifles and later found out that it was manufactured, and probably purchased, from the “commies” and additional notation was stamped on the receiver.

 

I have seen several other rifles with this inscription and all were made in 1936. This does not mean that rifles with other dates were not also sold to the Spanish government and used in the civil war. If the rifle does not have the import marks stamped on the rifle circa 1970’s and/or was purchased in the late 1950’s or 1960’s and is not stamped with an SA, it could very well be one of the Spanish rifles. The only other sources would be a GI weapon brought back from the Korean War. It is probably safe to say that not all importers were so politically correct to stamp the rifles “Made in USSR” The advertisement that lists the sale of these rifles also shows Spanish M-1893 Mauser carbines in 7 mm caliber for $19.95. These were most likely some of the weapons mixed in with the Model 91/30 rifles.

 

The provenance of any military weapon is always of prime importance to those in this field of collecting and who have even the slightest interest in history. This is certainly an interesting rifle to have in any collection and gives one the incentive to look for weapons of this type at pawn shops or gun shows.