Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
taking a look at a Russian contract,
World War One era, Model of 1911 pistol.
The Russians during World War One were in pretty desperate
need of arms pretty much through the whole war.
And they, along with kind of every other belligerent country,
certainly on the Entente side of the war, looked to the United States for
small arms ... manufacturing assistance.
Perhaps the best known of the Russian contracts was for
1895 pattern Winchester lever action rifles, which are very cool.
And they ordered hundreds of thousands of those.
Like that is the biggest single purchaser of
Winchester 1895 rifles was the Russian military contract.
But their needs didn't end with just rifles, they also needed handguns.
And the Russian government, using J.P. Morgan as a purchasing agent,
bought some 51,000 Colt 1911 pistols between February of 1916 and January of 1917.
Of course 1917 things would start to get, well, problematic with the Russian revolution.
And the pistol contracts had kind of ended by that point anyway.
But there are a lot of Russian contract pistols out there.
And some of them are marked and can be easily recognised, and some of them aren't.
This is one of the ones that isn't so easily recognised.
So let's take a closer look at it,
and I'll show you how you can figure out if one of these is in fact Russian.
The first shipments of these pistols were in February of 1916,
and those shipments would continue through the beginning of 1917.
Again, total of about 51,000 of them.
You will find them with serial numbers
between 21,000 and 89,000, and all of these will have a "C" prefix to the serial number.
That indicates that this is a commercial contract gun.
And a standard, as it says, Government Model .45 ACP.
These did use the American cartridge, that was fine,
Russia manufactured or procured .45 calibre ammunition for them.
And of course not all of the guns in that serial number range,
21,000 to 89,000, not all of those are Russian contract.
It's just that the Russian contract came out of that period.
As with its other contracts, Colt didn't make any attempt to send consecutive numbered guns.
They didn't run a special serial number range for the Russians.
... Every time they got paid for a batch they would pull that many guns off the shelf,
basically at random, from what was in stock and ship them out.
So the only way for a relatively low serial number one like this to confirm its identity,
is to actually send off to Colt for a Colt historical letter documenting the gun's origins.
And for the Russian contract ones that will say, very clearly,
that based on Colt records they were shipped to the government of Russia.
And this pistol has just such a letter with it.
So we know that this one was shipped on March 31st 1916 off to Russia.
Now there are some that can be identified.
After about serial number 50,000, or C 50,000,
Colt would start including a little line of engraving here in Cyrillic
that said, it was abbreviated, but it said "English Contract" or "English Make" right there.
This pistol doesn't have that because it's below about 50,000.
But the later contract ones do, so these are both recognised authentic variations of the gun.
And you can see here what that engraving actually looks like.
It's nice to have the guns that do have the engraving
because they are at least easily recognised, unlike these.
Which, much like the French contract and some of the British contract guns,
you can only authenticate by serial number.
There are no other special markings, the Russians didn't put any proof marks on,
didn't do anything else to these guns except use them, and use them very heavily.
You can see the pretty heavy finish wear on this example.
Oh, I should also point out: the original magazines
that would have been supplied with these are the early two-tone style.
The top half was hardened, the bottom half wasn't.
And the original mags will have a lanyard ring on them like this.
You would think that with 51,000 of these manufactured
it wouldn't be that hard to find one.
Like there's a lot of stuff out there that was made in that kind of quantity
100 years ago that we can still find pretty easily.
But that is not the case with the Russian contract 1911s.
The problem is these went through a lot of very turbulent periods of history.
Of course they all went through World War One.
They then went through the Russian Revolution, the Russian Civil War.
Some of them were given to other countries, like China, at various times.
Some of them remained in storage, and they would get used again in World War Two.
And just for what it's worth, the Russians did get a bunch of Colt 1911A1 pistols
through Lend Lease in World War Two, not just Colts, but M1911A1s.
Those, of course, are distinct from the World War One version.
But ... very few of them have trickled back into the United States.
So it's pretty cool to get a chance to take a look at this one.
It is, like most of the ones that we find here today, in pretty rough shape.
But that's because of what these all actually went through.
So, I think this is a cool addition to some of the other international contracts
that Colt made for 1911s, including the British and the French.
If you want to put together a total multinational collection of Colt contract pistols,
this is an essential element, and a fairly difficult one to find.
Hopefully you enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.