Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today in
Uherský Brod in the Czech Republic visiting the CZ factory.
And having an opportunity to pull some of the
really interesting prototype guns out of
their factory archive collection to show to you guys.
Specifically today we're going to take a look at the vz. 82.
This is one of a pair of pistols that have come into the United States in significant numbers.
They are the vz. 82 and the CZ 83.
And they are essentially the exact same pistol in a couple of different calibres.
So the way this all started was in 1975 the Czech State Export Company
was looking for a pistol that it could sell to Western markets for hard currency.
Of course this is during the communist era.
And they wanted something to replace the vz. 50/vz. 70.
That was the earlier .32 ACP calibre Czech small pocket pistol.
And it ... worked fine, but it wasn't a particularly appealing gun
to sell on the export market, no one really wanted it.
And the state wanted something fancy and new to sell.
So they came to CZ of course, being the major weapons design firm in Czechoslovakia.
Now this starts with the commercial export company.
But in 1977 the Czech Ministry of Defence shows up at CZ,
they've heard about this project and they're very interested as well.
And they want it in 9mm Makarov, they need to use that cartridge to appease the Soviets
who have switched ... from the Tokarev pistol to the Makarov pistol.
So the army also needs to switch to 9mm Makarov and get rid of its CZ 52 pistols,
which frankly it intended to get rid of.
... The CZ 52 was supposed to only be a short-term interim pistol.
Anyway, the army's looking for a new pistol, they need it in 9 [Makarov].
The commercial exporters want it in .32 Auto.
And then in 1978 the Czech Ministry of the Interior also shows up
(they represent of course the police, as well as prison guards and other security services),
and they are also interested, and they initially are looking at .32 ACP
because they use the CZ 50 and 70.
They eventually decide, "OK, we'll use it in 9mm Makarov as well."
So CZ develops this pistol, and the first prototypes are actually made in 1979.
And the gun will go into production a couple of years later in a couple of different formats.
So what we're going to look at today is specifically
the vz. 82 in 9mm Makarov for the army and the police.
And I have a couple of prototypes here, so let's start with this very early prototype.
So this is the earliest CZ 82/83 prototype that we have here.
And if we look at the markings, that is the gun's code designation,
or project number at CZ, the ČZ 033. So we'll note that this is proofed.
It has some really nice wooden grips on it.
And it has all of the features that we ... will see on the final production guns.
By the way, we ... also have this marking 32-72 on the pistol.
It is unclear to me exactly what that indicates,
it is not a date because in '72 this project hadn't even been begun.
This is however actually CZ's archival reference number for the gun,
which is why it's also on that sticker.
Anyway, one of the additions that this early prototype has is actually a de-cocker.
So the pistol that the police had previously been using
was the CZ Model 70 here, which has a de-cocker.
So the ... Ministry of the Interior, being used to this,
they requested that the same functionality be made on the 82.
So the early ... prototype versions have a de-cocker.
And let me see if ... yep, there we go.
So this on the production gun is simply a safety,
which is up for safe, and down for fire.
And yeah, so herein lies the problem.
The de-cocking mechanism was really too complicated, and it was unreliable,
and this one no longer works reliably.
Let's see if I can get it to ...
yeah, there's a trick to it now. But you see the problem, it doesn't work reliably.
So the Ministry of the Interior was willing to accept the gun without a de-cocker
so CZ took the de-cocking mechanism out.
Which leads us to a series of guns like this,
which is basically the pre-production versions of what was the final product.
So this gun was proofed in 1982.
There's our proof stamp and date.
And it is serial number 20 of one of the very first trials batches.
Remember that this is essentially one project pistol
that will be manufactured in primarily three different calibres:
7.65 Browning (or .32 Auto), 9mm Short (or .380) and 9mm Makarov.
So we have the same code number, ČZ 033. This one is in .32 Auto.
It's marked "Made in Czechoslovakia" because this is basically a trials run
of what would be a commercial export pistol.
Now, we have the final set of controls here.
Which include a double action trigger,
a manual safety, but no de-cocker.
So the large spur hammer on this pistol is left in place
because that's the only way to de-cock the gun
is to pull the trigger and gently release the hammer.
... Not something that would be considered safe practice today,
but the large serrated spur hammer is there to allow that to be done as safely as possible.
So the manual safety is ambidextrous, left and right.
As is the magazine release here.
And the magazines themselves are 15 rounds in .32 Auto, which this one is.
And 12 rounds for 9mm Makarov and .380.
Moving one step further we have here
an actual, totally standard, production military CZ 82, or vz. 82,
since that is the official military designation of the gun.
It has serial number, military proof mark.
This was accepted by the military in 1989.
It was then commercially re-proofed in 1992.
Probably when it went back to CZ for some particular reason as a demonstration piece.
This is a gun that came out of CZ's archive, so they had a reason to bring it back
but I'm not entirely sure what that specific reason was.
At any rate, for normal ones when you find these, say, on the US surplus market,
you'll find this "she", which is the factory designation for Uherský Brod,
and a date, and a crossed sword that is a military proof mark.
And the military guns have no markings on the other side of the slide.
One of the really interesting features of the 82 that separates it from the CZ 83
commercial export pistols is that in 9mm Makarov the vz. 82 uses a polygonally rifled barrel.
So if I shine a light down there, you really can't see any rifling.
And that's because the entire barrel
has been given an oblong shape that rotates down its length.
And this was done because Czech production of 9mm Makarov ammunition was not standard.
So S&B, Sellier & Bellot, the Czech ammunition company and factory,
... this was their first experience with 9mm Makarov.
And they developed their own proprietary version of the cartridge,
which they called the [vz. 82] cartridge to match the pistol.
And what they did was construct the bullet out of sintered iron,
and increase the powder charge and reduce the bullet weight.
So standard 9mm Makarov is a 94 grain bullet travelling at right about 1,000 feet per second.
Really at the height of simple blowback capacity in a pistol like this.
The specific Czech loading, they lightened the bullet down to 73 grains,
and increased the velocity to 1,350 feet per second.
Really a quite interesting cartridge development that is not very well known today.
And because of the characteristics of the sintered iron bullet,
they went with polygonal rifling to reduce the wear that would have happened on traditional rifling.
So in fact, even these earlier prototypes in .32 Auto have traditional standard rifling in them.
And all of the export guns in .32 and .380 did.
However, all the guns made in 9mm Makarov were made with polygonal rifling,
specifically to support that unique Czech cartridge.
Now, that cartridge went out of production, is no longer used.
And it turned out that regular standard 9mm Makarov ammo
runs just fine in the 9mm Makarov CZ 82s.
So that's what's used today, that's what's typical today.
But that is why you will find ... a different style of rifling in the 82s versus the 83s.
Disassembly is really pretty simple here. I'll go ahead and pull the magazine out.
You actually have to take the magazine out before disassembly
because you cannot open the disassembly lever with a magazine in place.
So this has a fixed barrel, so the slide is going to come off the front.
Which means you need a block to hold the slide on during regular operation,
and that block is actually the trigger guard.
So to disassemble it we're just going to pull the trigger guard down like that.
It's pretty stiff, it's got a nice audible snap.
And you can see it's pivoting here,
and ... the bottom bit pivots into the magazine well.
So if there's a magazine in the gun it can't open,
and I can't put the magazine in right now.
Now the next step in disassembly is to pull the slide back, up, and off.
And so in theory, pulling the magazine out has removed all of this ammunition.
Even if you still have a round in the chamber
your first step is actually to pull the slide off the barrel,
so you will pull that loaded cartridge out.
... That's not an ideal situation, but it means that it is pretty unlikely
that you would manage to accidentally shoot yourself while disassembling an 82.
Which can be a problem with various other pistol designs.
So once the slide comes off the front that's pretty much it.
Got a recoil spring around the barrel, the barrel is of course fixed to the frame there.
In the slide we have a firing pin retained by a plate, very much like a Colt design.
Nothing else of particular note there.
And pretty much the same down here. You've got your ambidextrous controls.
Safety. The fire control parts are down inside the grip there.
That's all there is to it.
Ultimately the 82 and 83 would prove to be very successful pistols for CZ.
Total production between 1983 and 1990 for the army was 110,000 guns and change,
and for the police was another 77,500 approximately.
And then on the civilian market, the CZ 83 for export sold another 260,000 guns.
So we are talking just a little shy of a half a million of these pistols.
They were relatively expensive, ended up costing almost as much as a CZ 75,
because they are essentially a miniature version of a proper real service pistol.
If you compare this to what it replaced, the CZ 70,
the CZ 70 is like the epitome of the sort of Soviet communist style,
simplified, fairly unergonomic, pocket pistol.
Where the 82 and the 83 have all of the advanced features you would expect
from say a Western European democracy's pistol.
... They've got ambidextrous controls, they've got nice big ... readable sights,
double-stacked magazine, good handling, it's really a quite high quality, nice pistol.
And so was quite successful in the export market.
Anyway, we'll do a separate video on the CZ 83 in the other calibres,
but I definitely wanted to take advantage of having access
to a couple of these 82 prototypes to show to you guys.
So, a big thanks to CZ for the access.
If you're interested in guns like this, definitely check out the description text below.
I've got links there to CZ's current social media pages
where they share both their current production guns
as well as interesting historical pieces like these.
Thanks for watching.