Shashka is a war weapon, in the category of the bladed weapons but it’s not classified as a sabre. It blade is long, slightly curved and it’s sharpened only in one side. The point of the blade is sharpened in both the sides. It’s best known as Cossack’s cavalry sabre /Shashka), born in Russia in the 1881.
A good knight using his light shashka has to be fast and have solid fencing skills, as with this sabre, it’s not important the strength of the hit as the normal heavy traditional weapons.
At the beginning of the WW1, the 1881 shashka were used by all the Russian cavalry units.
After the October Revolution in 1917, the same model of shashka begun the regular sabre of the soviet army, excluding the cossack and caucasic units, where the lighter and smaller traditional shashka was kept as main weapon. For the higher military ranks has been designed a different shashka called “dragon shashka”.
In the 1927 the soviet army adopted as official the traditional model of shashka, similar or slightly different from the 1881 model. In the 1940 the shashka begun part of the general’s weapons (substituted in the 1949 by a dagger). Since the 1968, the shashka is an honor weapon, to difference the ranks of the army, but it’s also used for the parades and the army ceremonies.
