The pistol is cool, the markings... maybe not so much.
They are somewhat anachronistic considering that the pistol was never meant to be sold in the Eastern Bloc but instead for hard currency in the West.
Not to go totally off topic but I've never been able to figure out why - If the Czechoslovak Govt. wanted to sell this successfully overseas- they opted for secret military patents that were unenforceable outside the Warsaw Pact?
It obviously took resources to design, prototype, and build; so it had to have some political approval at a relatively high level. Considering this, the Czechoslovak Govt. seems to have been at cross-purposes with itself.
Was this imposed from outside (jealous Izhevsk in USSR?) or from some rival political clique within the Czechoslovak Communist Party? Or was it just standard operating procedure since it was a military service pistol and they didn't think through? After all the Communist Czechoslovak state was desperate for hard currency as were most Eastern Bloc countries at this time.
I'm guessing that someone high up tried to kill the project softly without openly killing the project. This seems the typical politics within Communist states. I suppose CZ would have no choice but to try to recover some expenses anyway so they had to put it on the market regardless. If the pistol was a dud it wouldn't sell. If the pistol was awesome (which it was) it would be cloned. Either way CZ would not profit.
In spite of others (Communists) best efforts to sandbag or even kill the project it is remarkable that, not only was the thing made, but that CZ (at least CZUB) would survive and prosper after the Cold War. After all, when your design gets cloned it's the originator that usually gets screwed (think IBM - they don't make consumer PCs and laptops anymore).
Does anyone know of any resources (available in English) regarding the development of one of the best and most popular pistols the world has ever seen?
