The Mosin Nagant is a five-shot, bolt-action rifle first introduced in 1891. It saw service in World War One and it is estimated that in excess of 37 million examples were produced between the different variants.

It is chambered in the Russian standard 7.62x54R and was the brainchild of Captain Sergei Mosin and Leon Nagant (Russian and Belgian respectively) and is known in Russia as the 3 line rifle (due to the calibre being the equivalent of 3 lines in the Imperial Russian system of measurement. 1 line is 1/10 of an inch or 2.54 mm.

By 1939, the rifle had been further developed in order to speed up production and reduce costs and the Mosin-Nagant 91/30 was the variant used by the Russians at the start of World War Two. Additionally, a carbine version was introduced in 1938, which was designated as the M38.