Big Mak Attack: A Pile of Warsaw Pact Pistols

The early 1990s to about 2015 was a Golden Age of sorts for military surplus firearms, the likes of which we will never see again. The combination of the fall of European communism along with the 50th anniversary of WWII created a situation where millions of guns became qualified as curios and relics, much to the delight of collectors. During this mythical time, one could acquire a pointy garbage rod Mosin-Nagant 91/30 for $100, along with a sealed 440 round tin of ammo. Russian captured K98ks were common, cheap, and sneered at by collectors, unmolested P38s could be had for less than a mortgage payment, and literally piles of former Warsaw Pact pistols were released on the US market at very reasonable prices. The first article I wrote for this blog was about one of them: the Pistolet Makarov, which is still one of my favorite surplus pistols. I like the simplicity, functionality, accuracy, history, and looks of the PM. The 9x18mm Makarov cartridge is cheap to shoot (assuming you reload and cast your own bullets, and you should) and provided you can find your brass, the cases last a long time. The PM has a lot going for it, but it was far from the only handgun chambered in 9x18mm used by the former Eastern Bloc. There were other “makarovs” as well, and only very recently was I able to round out my collection of them. Joining my Bulgarian-made PM, I have acquired a Czechoslovakian Vz.82, Polish P-64, Polish Wanad P-83, and most recently, a Hungarian PA-63. So, how do they stack up against the one and only PM?

The circle is now complete. Clockwise: PM, P-83 Wanad, Vz.82, P-64, PA-63

During the surplus boom, it was not uncommon to hear someone talk about their “Polish Makarov” or “Hungarian Makarov” and see them advertised as such by importers. This of course is incorrect, as any knowledgeable collector can tell you. While the pistols mentioned above are chambered in the 9x18mm cartridge, are straight blowback designs, and feature double/single action triggers, they aren’t Makarov pistols. Nikolay Fyodorovich Makarov did not have anything to do with their design. As we know, Warsaw Pact countries (like NATO) standardized on ammunition requirements, but not necessarily on weaponry. The Soviet Union did not give away the rights to its designs for free (how capitalist of them), and many nations either didn’t want to pay for the licensing or felt they could produce a superior design based on their own specific requirements. The end result is a pile of pistols which share the above similarities, but each has its own unique qualities that make it an interesting specimen for the collector of Cold War relics.

Pictured above: two genuine Makarovs. Note the trigger discipline.

The first pistol on our list is the Polish P-64. The Poles were looking for a replacement for their excellent version of the TT-33 pistol (which was an exact clone of the Soviet Union's model) and they took some cues from the PM on the design. Like the PM, the P-64 is a Walther PP style pistol, but in a PPK sized package. The fit and finish on these guns is excellent, with few tooling marks and well-polished slides with deep bluing. In fact, if you put some nice wood grips on a P-64, it could easily be sold as an upscale commercial carry pistol. On that note: it seems clear that the Poles were looking to make the smallest service pistol they could for their police and military. The grip is rather short as the gun holds only six cartridges in its single stack magazine, so those with ham hands will experience slide bite or a floating pinky, maybe both. The sights are small, with a drift adjustable rear, and despite its size the pistol has a nice heft to it. Takedown and internal operation is like the PM, but instead of a leaf mainspring it has a coil. And let’s talk about that spring: it delivers one of the worst double action trigger pulls I’ve ever felt. And I own an M1895 Nagant. Seriously, the double-action trigger is so heavy that dry-firing this pistol qualifies as physical therapy with most insurance companies.

Thanks Pam. Note the round hammer on the early model P-64. 

So yes, the P-64s pull is as heavy as the Nagant, but mine also has a *wall* that you hit that makes it feel worse. I replaced the mainspring with a lighter one from Wolff Gunsprings. Now the DA pull is only comically heavy instead of uselessly heavy, but reliability is still 100%. Fortunately, the single action trigger is fantastic for a service pistol, perhaps even too light. It has typical military take-up, but breaks under 4 pounds. Combined with the fixed barrel the P-64 is capable of fine accuracy, but be warned: recoil is brisk with full power loads. The early models had a round, commander/ring style hammer, while later examples featured a triangular hammer. The triangular hammer’s profile is such that it is very easy to cock the pistol. This was likely the intent of the hammer style change, as I speculate that thumbing the hammer was the preferred method of firing the first shot since the DA trigger is essentially useless.

My P-64, made in 1977. The "circle 11" stamp was Poland's country code under the Warsaw Pact.

While the Poles were fielding their P-64, the Hungarians worked on their own design. The famed Fegyver-és Gépgyártó Részvénytársaság (FEG), Hungary’s state-run arms manufacturing company, also took heavy cues from the Walther PP series of pistols when working on their new pistol. At first look, the neophyte might even mistake a PA-63 for a PP, though the internal parts do not interchange. One major difference is that the PA-63 features an aluminum alloy frame, which was relatively rare at the time. The Walther P1, which equipped the Bundeswehr had a similar frame, but to my knowledge no other capitalist or communist country fielded any pistols like this in the 1960s. As a cost-cutting measure, the PA-63’s frame was not anodized and was left “in the white”. This again was unusual for a service pistol, but the resulting two-tone exterior is visually striking. I have seen multiple examples of the PA-63 and some had polished blue slides, while others featured a matte finish. Mine has a polished blue slide and is quite pretty. Keep your silicone-impregnated cloth handy, because it picks up fingerprints easily.

It's okay to stare. This is a beautiful pistol.

Since the frame wasn’t anodized, the aluminum can discolor over time, resulting in a yellowish to brownish tinge on some pistols (mine had a yellow tinge and I cleaned it up some, it's still not perfect). There is some debate as to the actual metallurgy of the PA-63 frame, with reports of (very) small amounts of titanium being used in the alloy to add strength. I don't know the truth, but anything is possible, I guess. Since the exact composition of the frames is unknown, the long-term durability is therefore a question. One could argue this is always a question with aluminum alloy frame pistols, but it seems unlikely that a collector would put enough rounds through a PA-63 to cause a failure, especially since the light weight of the frame combined with the relative snappiness of the 9x18mm cartridge makes this gun, like the P-64, somewhat unpleasant to shoot. Unfortunately, this pistol also has an overly heavy mainspring, so the double action trigger does not lend itself to accuracy. Again, Wolff Springs makes reduced power mainsprings for it, but I found going below a 13 lb. spring resulted in multiple failures to fire on my pistol with anything but Federal primers. The 13 lb. spring does clean up the double-action some, but probably isn't worth the reliability risk, especially if you conceal carry the gun (you shouldn't, there are better choices for less money). As you may notice, the left grip does have a thumb rest which you may like if you are right-handed and you choose to fire the pistol one-handed like folks did in the BC years (BC=Before Cooper).

Note the color difference between the magazine (top) and frame on my pistol

So as 1965 closed out, the 9x18mm cartridge was seeing decent adoption in the Warsaw Pact, a good 20

years after it debuted. East Germany and Bulgaria had of course joined the 9x18mm club and produced the PM under license, but Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania, and Czechoslovakia stuck with their 7.62x25mm pistols. I can understand this. The TT-33 and Vz.52 were good service pistols, they hadn’t been around all that long, there were vast stocks of ammunition on hand, and as we’ve discussed…pistols don’t win wars. As the 1980s dawned, along with glasnost and perestroika, the Czechoslovakians took another look at the 9x18 cartridge and the different pistols that used it, and said (in typical Czech fashion) “we can do better”.  And once again, they were right.

Arguably the pinnacle of Warsaw Pact 9x18mm pistols: the Czechoslovakian Vz.82

What Česká zbrojovka Uherský Brod (CZ) produced was a modern, Western-style compact pistol that in my opinion is objectively the best of the 9x18mm bunch. At first look, there’s not much to distinguish it from the other pistols we've discussed. Yes, the new Vz.82 was designed with a straight blowback mechanism (no roller delay like the Vz.52) and a fixed barrel, and old-fashioned all-steel construction. However, it also featured a double column magazine that held 12 rounds, an ambidextrous frame-mounted safety that allowed the option to carry “cocked and locked” as well as traditional DA/SA fire, and a chrome-lined polygonal barrel. The above features hadn’t been seen before in an Eastern Bloc service pistol, and for 1982 were somewhat "new" in parts of the West: recall that the United States was still using the 1911A1 as its standard issue sidearm at the time. The polygonal barrel has thrown many a neophyte (or Fudd) for a loop, with declarations of "the commies forgot to rifle this thing!" or "the da-gum barrel is shot out!". They didn't, and it isn't. That said, if you do own a Vz.82 (or most GLOCKs, for that matter), it's generally agreed that you should avoid shooting traditional cast lead bullets with these barrels, as excessive leading has been reported. I do shoot powder-coated cast bullets through mine (Lee) as well as the excellent Berry's Bullets 95 grain .364 projectile. Both have fine accuracy with zero leading or safety issues in my gun.

Unlike some of its contemporaries, the Vz.82 also had larger, combat style sights, a traditional frame mounted button magazine release, and a double-action trigger that was actually useable. The double column magazine provided a welcome boost in firepower over the Hungarian and Polish guns. The Vz.82 was finished in a black enamel paint which was a far cry from Cerakote, but it did the job for the most part. There is debate about the black paint formula on pistols over the years, with claims of varying degrees of quality and therefore durability. Many surplus examples show extensive chipping and flaking of the finish. My particular pistol was made in 1986 and has one of the nicest finishes I've seen on a Vz.82, so it was either lightly used or was sprayed with a more durable paint than others. I paid $450 for it in 2023, with four magazines, a holster, mag pouch, and lanyard. I consider that a good deal. 

This is one of the nicest Vz.82 pistols I've ever seen, and with four mags I couldn't say no.

Czechoslovakia issued the new pistol to both military and police forces and produced it for about six years. In another very capitalist move for a communist country, they also developed a Vz.83 model, which was intended for export. These guns were identical to the Vz.82 except for a squared off trigger guard, a nicer blued finish (in many examples), and they could be had in .32 ACP and .380 ACP as well as 9x18mm, with the .32 ACP guns having 15 round magazines. Fifteen rounds of .32 ACP in a semi-auto pistol makes me chuckle a little bit, as the select-fire Vz.61 Skorpion only came with 10 round and 20 round magazines, but it sounds like a really fun gun to shoot. Of note: the Vz.82/83 doesn’t have a de-cocker, so be careful lowering the hammer if you choose to carry one in the chamber but want to use the DA/SA method of firing. The preferred method is to firmly grasp the hammer with the thumb and forefinger of the non-firing hand and squeeze the trigger with the muzzle pointed in a safe direction, while allowing the hammer to lower. It will stop about 6mm from the firing pin, and you're good to go to holster and then fire that first round double action from there.

So that was that. Everybody who wanted a 9x18 service pistol had one by around 1983. But there was one more pistol yet to come. Around the same time that the Vz.82 was being developed, the Poles decided that they wanted a new pistol. As it turned out, the P-64 was expensive to produce and machine, too difficult to shoot with its small frame, sights, and double action trigger, and it held only 6 rounds of ammunition. The pistol they came up with to replace the P-64 is the P-83 “Wanad”. The Wanad doesn’t look like anything special at first glance, and as far functionality goes, it isn’t. But from an engineering and manufacturing standpoint, it’s something to admire. The pistol is unique in that it was comprised primarily of steel stampings which are welded together. Indeed, the entire frame is stamped steel, along with some of the small parts such as the de-cocker and ejector, which is just an extension of the frame. The slide, while not a stamping, isn’t milled from a solid block of steel either. Instead, a thick, flat piece of steel was formed into a U-shape, and the barrel bushing and bolt were then welded into place. This isn’t readily apparent at first, but upon closer inspection, you can see the seams where things are joined together. It's not bad workmanship at all, but it is noticeable. 

One can see the seam of the P-83 barrel bushing quite clearly here

These design decisions saved valuable machining time and raw material, which is important for any manufactured good, but particularly so for weapons of war, a lesson that was well-learned by the Soviets in WWII. In fact, I like to think of the P-83 as the PPS-43, or perhaps even the AKM of pistols. Like the AKM, it was a durable, well-constructed firearm that neither looked nor felt cheap. The welds are very well done, the stampings are solid, and while not finished quite as nicely as the P-64, the bluing is still attractive. While the new pistol didn’t excel in any area over the PM, it was never intended to do that. Its purpose was to address all the shortcomings of the P-64: be cheaper to produce, easier to shoot accurately, and hold more ammunition. It fully succeeded in those areas. I really have to take my hat off to the men who engineered and manufactured it. Like its counterparts in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the P-83 was issued to the police and military and would be the last 9x18mm service pistol Poland would produce prior to the fall of communism. Fin.

Top: P-64, bottom is P-83. I find the P-83 to be the superior pistol.

So, back to my original question: how do they all stack up against the PM? Well, I came up with a completely subjective scoring system and plugged my completely subjective scores into it. Each category has a maximum of 5 points. This is how the pistols fared:

Feel free to disagree. This is America, and you are entitled to your erroneous opinion.

According to my chart, the Vz.82 wins. Objectively, it should, and I recognize this. However, if you asked me which was my favorite, for my money the PM is the best of the five. It's just the most fun to shoot. The trigger is great, the sights are good, it's a simple, reliable, and effective design, and if you aren't left-handed there's nothing missing in the ergonomics department. And frankly, it's just a great-looking, well-finished pistol. I may place too high of an importance on how guns look, but I appreciate well-finished guns that are blued with wood grips in a world of flat-black coatings and polymer. And only two of these pistols are worthy in my eyes to wear grips from Mr. Denis Marschal of MarschalGrips, who does fantastic work that is well worth the price and the current 8 week order turnaround (plus shipping time) to the United States. His red shellac grips (in wattle) have adorned my PM almost as long as I've owned it, and soon after I bought my P-64 I ordered a set of black stained shellacked grips for it as well. To be fair, the P-83 is almost as well-finished as the P-64, but its stamped nature is a bit more utilitarian, and therefore it seems correct to me to leave it with its issued plastic grips. As far as collectability goes: yes. Collect them all. These pistols are pieces of history, they will never be made again, and in 20 years people will be saying "man, I wish I'd bought 3 of each when they were $200 a piece". Some are already saying that. The Golden Age of Surplus Firearms is gone, but if you're willing to spend a little time searching and a little more money than you would have in 2008, you too can still collect a small pile of "Makarovs". For now.

The original is still the best, in my humble opinion.