Makarov Pistol Review - Generic Soviet Bad Guy Gun

I recently had the opportunity to shoot a Makarov pistol when a friend brought a surplus one to the range. I knew next to nothing about them except that these are a pretty notorious bad guy gun in James Bond films. And I used them a lot in the game stalker back in highschool. So to actually get to shoot one was a cool experience. It's a surprisingly shootable pistol.

What I didn't realize until I did some research was how much history the pistol actually has. What's wild is that the Makarov was introduced for active service in the USSR in 1951, having been developed by Nikolay Makarov to replace the old Nagant revolvers and tokarev predecessors. It's been used in every conflict Russia has been involved in since 1951, including in the current day Ukraine / Russia war.

This was a screenshot I found online of some recovered kit from a downed russian aircraft from the current war in ukraine, the pilots apparently are still running the old school makarov as a sidearm.

That let me down a little bit of a rabbit hole, interestingly enough there's sort of a russian gun tube on youtube. They have their own Hikok45. He apparently has a bag of russian saturday night specials. Apparently these things can be shot out to what looks like about 50 yards with surprising accuracy. And russia has its own administrative results. I couldn't understand a word of what this guy was saying but it was, interesting… to say the least. Maybe he's watching spicy joel olsteen videos.

That said the pistol itself is pretty cool. It strips down to only a couple parts. Somehow its even simpler than a glock.

The pistol is Double Action / Single Action, but to be entirely honest the reset is so long on this thing, it might as well be double action only. Where it breaks is a little bit of a surprise. That said, its a shooter.

The Makarov is basic, it has fixed iron sights. It's capacity is limited to 8 rounds. The 9x18mm bullets that it uses are fairly low recoiling, pretty similar to 380 ACP and a little less intense than the standard 9x19mm we usually shoot. Being an all metal frame, it does handle recoil fairly well, although I shot it next to an modern all metal CZ in 9mm and the CZ was a lot easier to shoot.

Being hammer fired. It also has an external safety. The slide release lever is easy to access for right handed shooters. The aesthtics on this thing are just so dang cool, the star on the grip just screams soviet bad guy. I definitely felt like a bond villain. Apparently the caricature isn't that far off from reality.

Probably the hardest thing to get used to was the magazine release. It has a paddle style at the bottom of the pistol, I kept trying to hit where I'd expect it to be on a glock. No idea how the guy in stalker is able to reload the thing so quickly. But to be fair, this real life Russian John Wayne was able to do it one handed, so yeah im just going to stick to Glock.

Honestly though the Makarov is a really cool piece of history. If you get the chance to shoot one at the range, I'd definitely recommend it.