With that recent CIA document barely discovering the SKS many years later...WAY later, like after production was wrapping up and the Chinese were getting set up to make us bazillions more, and the photo I just bought from Russia earlier this year showing cadets marching en masse with spiker SKSs in 1958...it makes me wonder a LOT about what we, and history in general don't know about. Considering it was apparently adopted in 45, why on earth would it take so long...even dragging to 48, much less 49 to get the hell on with production?
We only recently learned about how much their space program covered up....perhaps the CKC-45 killed more Russians than the pox?
It wouldn't surprise me if what we recognize as the first SKSs were actually refurbs from failed attempts from the few years between 45-8/9, possibly causing the huge amount of variations in the 49-50 guns. It's likely there is far less documentation on small arms uncovered since the fall of the USSR vs. 'important' stuff like their space program, which we now know was riddled with crashes, explosions on the pad, political placement and exploitation of cosmonauts, them vanishing from official photos and not to mention...deaths.
Just a thought or ten...