Labor sets out the history of the development of handguns in Russia since the beginning of the 19th century. In the second part of the work, the author sets out the history of the development of automatic weapons and gives detailed information about small arms" characterizing our era. Being mainly a manual in the study of small arms, the work at the same time is intended not only for persons involved in weapons issues, but is also of interest to the command and commanding staff of the Red Army. The author of this work is the oldest pioneer in the field of automatic weapons and has many literary, scientific, technical and design works.