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My name is Maxim Ivushkin. I was born in 1978 in Izhevsk, Russia. Izhevsk is one of Russia’s two main production centers for arms. My parents are professional weapon constructors and our family has been weapons fabricators for over 200 years. Part of my ancestry is descended from Cossacks who guarded the Izhevsk weapons plant during its construction at the end of the XVIII century. Other ancestors hail from Tula which is Russia’s other weapon production center; that lineage also covers over 200 years of weapons construction. As you might imagine, my family’s long history and love of weapons has passed on to me. However I didn’t follow in my parents footsteps and become a weapons constructor. I rather prefer practice to theory. Thus I started as a private detective, moving on to become the deputy executive director of a guard agency. I moonlighted as a security agent securing transport of freight and other items which unfortunately I can’t detail here. For seven years I was also involved in designing SWAT accessories for Russian military factories. In 1998 I became a member of the select IPSC Russian department. At that time I had more experience in practical shooting than in sport shooting. In 2001 I received my range officer qualification and began training law enforcement officers. I have had many articles concerning law enforcement published in the Russian version of “Soldier of Fortune”. I have been a student of Russian weapons my entire life and have a large collection of arms and accessories including a large collection of late-Soviet weapons. I also have a substantial collection of Swedish and US arms from the same period and a collection of holsters from the entirety of the XX century, mostly Russian and German. With such a shortage of trustworthy materials devoted to Russian weapons and arming in the Western press, I would be glad to answer any questions concerning our weaponry. As a shooting enthusiast half a continent and a culture away, I think we can help each other learn more about weaponry despite the language that divides us.

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