Smith and Wesson was a major arms supplier to Imperial Russia. The firm sold hand weapons to the tsarist regime in 1871–78. It is possible that Smith and Wesson guns, supplied by the U.S. government, not S & W, were used by Russia during World War II. Of nearly 1 million items in the corporate archive and Mr. Roy Jinks's collection, perhaps 1% relates to Russia/USSR. There are relevant letters and sales contracts. Some correspondence with General Alexander Gorloff, a military attache, concerns sales of revolvers to tsarist security forces.The materials are owned by Mr. Roy Jinks, Product-Manager-Handguns and Historian, whose permission (and the company's) is necessary to use the holdings. Some indication of the contents of the papers may be obtained from John E. Parson's Smith & Wesson (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1957), Roy G. Jinks's History of Smith & Wesson (Los Angeles: Beinfeld Publishing, 1977), and Jinks's three-part article "Smith & Wesson's Model Three" in the Arms Gazette (August 1974 and succeeding issues).
