As a matter of interest, the Russians had two main arsenals that made rifles during WWII. One was the Tula Arsenal, and the other was called "Izjhvest", as closely as I can come to transliterating the sound using the Roman, rather than the Cyrillic alphabet. (The Roman alphabet doesn't have a symbol for the equivalent sound of the Russian sound-it's like the "g" sound in the last syllable of the word "garage". At least one of these, Tula,was established under Czar Peter the Great in 1715 or so, and has been making Russian service small arms for nearly 300 years.The other one was established about 1805 or so. NEITHER OF THESE, the main Russian small-arms factories, IS BEHIND THE URALS, AND NONE WERE EVER STAFFED BY GULAG PRISONERS!

The M91 Mosin-Nagant was designed by a Russian Army captain (Mosin), and the well-known at that time Belgian gun designer Nagant. Although this rifle is a little "strange" in design (look at the overly complicated magazine arrangement!!), if made with quality materials and workmanship, it is a good equivalent to all the other service rifles in use by the world's armies in that era, at the early introduction of smokeless powder.In fact, it is a lot better than some of its' contemporaries, such as the Mannlicher Carcano junk in Italy and the Lebel of France. Most of us are spoiled by having the M98 mauser and its near copy, the M1903 Springfield, to compare to the M/N! Of course, the M/N's made during the stresses of wartime are pretty sad examples of a firearm, especially the WWII versions....... IF you can find a M/N made by New England Westinghouse, Remington or Winchester back during WWI, you'd really have something!

Another fact is that the M/N cannot be easily (if at all) converted to use any other cartridge case, so it doesn't get much gunsmithing! That makes it less interesting to guys like us!

http://www.answers.com/topic/tula-arsenal

http://www.nrapublications.org/archives/russiabonus.asp