The “MARS” pistols made in Czechoslovakia began with the “Slavia” line, designed by one Antonin Vilímec in 1920 or 1921. Those were basically simple copies of the vest-pocket Browning pistols, and were made until 1935. […]
Among the nations of the Warsaw Pact, only Czechoslovakia designed and produced its own infantry assault rifle – everyone else used the Kalashnikov. The Czech vz.58 is often mistaken for an AK because it has […]
The last batch of Mauser K98k rifles made by Brno after World War Two was a run in 1950 for East German border guards. These rifles have receivers marked “tgf 1950” in a style just […]
After World War Two, the Czech economy was in serious need of money to recover from the ravages of war. The arms factory at Brno was not bound by the same restrictions as German manufacturers, […]
Having gained independence after World War One, Czechoslovakia looked to standardize and improve its armaments. Václav Holek went to work for the Zbrojovka Praga factory in Prague in 1918, and they introduced the Model 1919 […]
Czechoslovakia adopted the 7.62x45mm cartridge after World War Two, introducing both a vz.52 rifle and vz.52 light machine gun using the round. It was about 200 fps faster than the Soviet standard 7.62x39mm. It was […]
Development of the CZ-2000 began in the 1970s as a replacement for the vz.58 rifle. The project was named “Lada”, and was essentially an improved AK-74 rifle chambered for the 5.45x39mm cartridge. The new rifle […]
Recently, we have been looking at a selection of books on Cold War eastern bloc pistols – and James D. Brown’s “Cold War Pistols of Czechoslovakia” is the best of them. While its scope is […]
This pistol is up for auction at RIA on June 23. Introduced in 1997, the CZ-97B is a .45ACP caliber addition to CZ’s line of globally popular handguns. However, the 97 has some substantial mechanical […]
Since I had the opportunity to do some shooting with both a Yugoslav PKM and a Czech vz.59 general-purpose machine gun, I thought it would be interesting to compare them side by side. Which is […]
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