Herb:
In continued pursuit of this tedious topic
, I have never disagreed with the notion that the safety marking is indeed
Bulgarian, it is, but I know for a fact that the marking is also discernible by Russian speakers of any era, both as to pronunciation and meaning (FIRE).
So the controversy to be resolved is the extractor marking. According to Guiliano’s university professor, "On Luger sellers pretending to be Russian, the ones with the two crossed rifles, there is written, respectively, ЗАРЯДЪ (extractor / ejector) and ОГЪНЪ FIRE (security). They are both Bulgarian words and I never get tired of explaining to those unfamiliar with Russian or Bulgarian ...". She is
absolutely correct, but that is only half of the story. The extractor marking is
first and foremost Russian (I can’t emphasize that enough!) which also happens to be the same in Bulgarian in the nominative case, a fact which was confirmed on Jan Still’s forum by Val Berman, a native Russian speaker. So to state that the extractor marking “couldn’t possibly be Russian” is fallacious, and the attribution of the language is far from “moot”.
I am growing weary of the constant insistence that the guns cannot be anything else than Bulgarian. This is hogwash. They
might be Bulgarian, but the only thing truly Bulgarian is the safety marking which, regardless of pseudo national pride that Germans never made a mistake, was most likely an erroneous application by DWM. There is absolutely no marking on the guns, other than the safety, that even hints at Bulgarian. All of the Bulgarian Lugers (Models 1900, 1906 and 1908) carried one or more Bulgarian national emblems…why would such a distinctive indication of Bulgarian property be abandoned for the crossed-rifle Lugers? And with respect to the extractor marking, why would a perfectly logical Bulgarian inscription for “loaded” be replaced by an ambiguous marking meaning “a charge”?
Lastly, the other assertion that keeps rearing its ugly head is the notion that these guns were a “government contract”. That is another absurdity…there is nothing whatsoever that indicates that the government, Bulgarian or Russian, had anything to do with the acquisition of these Lugers. If any “contract” existed, it would have been with a commercial retailer or a civilian equipment supplier to the military. The most damning blow to the government contract farce and the most conclusive argument for Russian
commercial sale is: "Accordingly, he wrote on July 10, 1907 that, “his pistols were in hot demand and were being made for Russian officers”. Russian officers were required to
purchase their own side arms which automatically makes the Lugers commercial, not government, weapons.
I wish this would put this topic to bed…but it won’t…so I am going to bed
Good night
Ron