On June 1, 1970, Soviet cosmonauts Georgy Beregovoy and Pavel Popovich presented Neil Armstrong with an engraved hunting weapon during his historic goodwill visit to the Soviet Union. While often described in viral historical posts as a “hunting rifle,” it was technically an engraved double-barrel shotgun crafted by noted gunsmiths in Tula.
Armstrong was in the USSR for a 10-day tour following his Apollo 11 mission. He visited the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City on June 1, where he was hosted by Valentina Tereshkova.
During an evening reception, Beregovoy and Popovich presented the 12-gauge, side-by-side shotgun. Beregovoy humorously noted it was a tool for “hunting on Earth, not on the Moon.” The stock was inscribed with Armstrong’s name in Cyrillic script. Despite strict regulations on gifts from foreign governments, the U.S. government permitted Armstrong to keep the firearm.
Though the two nations remained fierce rivals in space technology, their astronauts often shared deep professional admiration. The exchange foreshadowed later cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union, culminating in the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project of 1975, when astronauts and cosmonauts worked together in orbit for the first time.
Neil Armstrong’s 1970 visit to the USSR included a trip to Leningrad and the Baikonur Cosmodrome, where he met Soviet engineers and viewed the spacecraft that had carried Gagarin into orbit in 1961. The exchange was a rare moment of camaraderie during the Cold War. In return, Armstrong presented Soviet Premier Aleksey Kosygin with Moon rock fragments and a Soviet flag that had flown on Apollo 11. The shotgun remained in Armstrong’s private collection until it was auctioned by Heritage Auctions in 2019.
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