Home / Proof Marks / Soviet — Arsenal No. 1 and the numbered depots

Soviet — Arsenal No. 1 and the numbered depots

Soviet and Russian arsenal marks · Postwar period, chiefly 1940s-1960s.
What it looks like
A depot number, often as a fraction such as /1, or a small number in a shape.
Where it is on the gun
Receiver, barrel shank.
Date range
Postwar period, chiefly 1940s-1960s.

What it tells you

What this mark authorises you to say

Identifies the specific depot that overhauled the rifle. Arsenal No. 1, for example, is associated with Balakleya in Ukraine, and a rifle marked as refinished there was rebuilt at a plant that turned out enormous numbers of postwar Mosin-Nagants and SKS carbines. On the collector market this is the mark that separates a genuinely Soviet-refurbished rifle from one whose history is being guessed at.

What it does not tell you

What this mark does NOT say

It does not mean the rifle was made at that depot, and it does not give a date. It also does not tell you how much was replaced: a depot rebuild can range from a re-blue to a complete re-assembly with a new barrel.

Where the sources are uncertain

Depot number to location lists are compiled and translated from Russian research and are not complete. Numbers that appear once in the literature should be treated as tentative.

Sources for this page

Every claim above is attributed. The class of source is shown with each one, because a national proof house and an anonymous forum table are not the same evidence — and on proof marks the difference matters.

Related on this site

Makers whose guns carry marks like this:

Reading marks to identify and date a gun

Proof marks name the test and the era. The serial number, where a maker published a browsable chart, can name the year. The lookup cites the threshold behind every result.

Open the serial number lookup

Other soviet and russian arsenal marks

Mark descriptions observed and verified 2026-10-14. Proof marks are stamped by hand on guns up to a century old; a photographed stamp and a description in a book are not the same evidence. If a mark on your gun does not match anything here, that is a real answer — see the notes on unidentified marks.