The Tsar’s military and police typically bought locally made rifles and carbines during their long history. Handguns, however, prior to about 1926, were not really a Russian thing. In the 1860s the Russians bought a series of Colt and Remington revolvers in small numbers until Smith and Wesson won big with a contract of more than 100,000 “Russian” model .44 break tops in the 1870s.These gave hard service until smokeless powder became the rage and a the Nagant brothers (a pair of Belgains) convinced the Russian army to adopt one of their gas-sealed revolver designs as the Model 1895 Nagant, made under license in the Motherland for the next fifty years after early production switched from Liege, Belgium.
The Nagant took care of the Russian military, but the gendarme wanted a bit more firepower over the downright anemic 7.62X38mmR (roughly about a .32HR) and, with no Russian pistols to choose from, went shopping in Europe for other hoglegs.
In the early 1900s they bought no less than 12,000 FN Model 1903’s in 9mm Browning Long (I did a pretty in-depth write up of that gun in 2013 for Guns.com), and a smaller number of C96 Mauser pistols. They also picked up about 1,000 Lugers.
The DWM Model 1906 “Russian” contract Lugers are among the rarest of Lugers out there. Chambered in 9mm Parabellum, they have Cyrillic script on the frame and a pair of cross Mosin-Nagant M91 rifles over the breech.
Rarely seen outside the occasional Army museum in Old Russia, Rock Island just auctioned one off earlier this month (serial number 567) at just over $46,000 even though it was valued at almost twice that amount.
The Luger did not end the Russian love affair with foreign handguns. During WWI, the Tsar’s contracting agents bought every gun they could get their hands on– to include a number of commercial Colt 1911s while the Soviet Cheka/NKVD/KGB continued to buy Walther pistols throughout the 1920s and 30s. Soviet Russian Major-General Vasili Blokhin, a brute of a man that holds the ignoble distinction of being the most prolific executioner in history, carried a suitcase full of Walther Model 2 .25 ACP pistols with him to carry out his ghastly deeds that included the personal execution of about 7,000 Polish prisoners of war during the Katyn massacre in spring 1940
