Early life Kalashnikov was born in the village of
Kurya, of Aleksandra Frolovna Kalashnikova (née Kaverina) and Timofey Aleksandrovich Kalashnikov, who were peasants.
Death After a prolonged illness, Kalashnikov was hospitalized on 17 November 2013, in an Udmurtian medical facility in
Izhevsk, the capital of
Udmurtia and where he lived. He died 23 December 2013, at age 94 from
gastric hemorrhage. In January 2014, a letter that Kalashnikov wrote six months before his death to the leader of the
Russian Orthodox Church,
Patriarch Kirill, was published by the Russian daily newspaper
Izvestia. In the letter, he stated that he was suffering "spiritual pain" about whether he was responsible for the deaths caused by the weapons he created. Translated from the published letter he states, "I keep having the same unsolved question: if my rifle claimed people's lives, then can it be that I... a Christian and an Orthodox believer, was to blame for their deaths?". In 1930, the government labeled Timofey Aleksandrovich a
kulak, confiscated his property, and deported him to Siberia, along with most of the family. The eldest three siblings, daughters Agasha (b. 1905) and Anna and son Victor, were already married by 1930, and remained in Kuriya. After her husband's death in 1930, Aleksandra Frolovna married Efrem Kosach, a widower who had three children of his own. She was an engineer and did much technical drawing work for her husband. They had four children: daughters Nelli (b. 1942), Elena (b. 1948) and Natalya (1953–1983), and a son
Victor (1942–2018). ==Weapon designs==