Quote:
Originally Posted by Ron Wood
The safety marking is Bulgarian and Russian. It is the word for "FIRE". It is the same word in both languages and being pre-1917 the Cyrillic alphabet was the same in both languages. Further, the Bulgarian Lugers departed from the normal safety marking in that when the marking shows on any other Luger, the Luger is on safe (GESICHERT), but on the Bulgarians (and Russians) when the marking shows the gun is ready to fire.
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Not quite. The exposed ОГЪНЪ does indicate the safety lever position for FIRE in Bulgarian spelling. But the Russian spelling would be ОГОНЬ. These Wikipedia pages explain the roles of the hard and soft signs in Cyrillic alphabets:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_sign
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