>> kalashnikov is a russian cosack, he was born out in the step near kaszikstan. what's he doing out there, right? this doesn't make sense. under the czar, families had been relocated to populate the step, and his father had taken one of these incentives and moved out there and had what you would call in american terms a homestead out there. he was born right at about the time, you know, the revolution was gathering its real domestic momentum, and in the 1930s his family suffered from collectivization. their homestead was taken away, they were moved into the wilderness northward into siberia, and he lived as an exile. essentially a family of nonpeople. he fled that to kaszikstan and was sort of living as a clerk at a rail yard when world war ii broke out. his father had died from being in exile, his family, his brother had been arrested and family was ruined, essentially, by the experience, you know, of stalinist, the stalinist policies. and world war ii, they call it the great patriotic war in russia, reorganized his experience with his government. he joined the