Classic Cold War Carry: Modernizing the Makarov for the 21st Century

Affordable, reliable, and with an excellent balance of size for both concealing and shooting, there was a time when the Makarov was quite a popular CCW pistol in America. That said, today, concealed carry guns have gotten a lot better and cheaper while Makarovs have only grown more rare and correspondingly more expensive. For most people, carrying a Mak no longer makes sense, but fun gun projects don’t have to be logical.

Accepted into Soviet service in 1951, the Makarov is obviously lacking in several departments by modern standards, so here we set out to see what it would take to bring the Cold War classic a bit closer to a 21st-century carry gun.

SHORTCOMINGS

The design ethos behind military service pistols and concealed carry pistols are very different. As far as the Makarov goes, it was only the Soviet’s desire for a lighter, handier (and probably cheaper) sidearm that happened to result in a gun that was small enough to easily conceal. Besides its size, acceptable levels of reliability, and inherently good mechanical accuracy, the Mak doesn’t have much going for it. 

Its iron sights are tiny and a challenge to build a fast sight picture with, its magazine only holds eight rounds, and the 9x18mm Makarov cartridge it fires leaves a lot to be desired. Thankfully, all of these shortcomings can be addressed with some modification.

COTTAGE “GUNDUSTRY” SAVES THE DAY

When trying to upgrade a Makarov you quickly learn there are a lack of companies willing to work on them. Most of the major outfits that offer custom slide-milling/adapter-plate work aren’t too keen on doing something so unorthodox and experimental.

The first lesson for upgrading vintage guns is that you’re going to have to research. A lot. The search for a company willing to do slide-milling work on a Makarov led to 2C/X Nihilo, a small company willing to do truly custom work. As a bonus, the company had already mounted a red-dot sight to a couple of Makarovs and a CZ 82, so no reinventing of the wheel was necessary.

Tu Nguyen is the man behind the shop. He’s a Vietnamese immigrant who owns a small engineering firm that mostly does design and prototyping for the biotech industry. And he also loves guns. Since he already had all the fancy machinery, he decided to start doing custom gunsmithing jobs out the back of his shop, too. For those who enjoy unconventional projects like mounting red dots to 74-year-old pistols, it makes Nguyen a very good guy to know.

To avoid molesting this Makarov’s original slide, we sent him a spare to work on instead. Thankfully, Makarov slides are universally interchangeable regardless of their country of origin or chambering. The spare slide Nguyen cut up was from a Russian-made commercial Baikal .380 ACP model, but it interfaced perfectly with the frame of a Bulgarian military surplus model in 9×18 Mak.

Nguyen essentially removed some material from the rear of the slide, fabricated a custom adapter plate for the dot, and then put it all together. Sounds easy enough, but a job like this requires a lot of know-how and machinery. The red dot seamlessly integrates into the slide, so much so it looks as if that’s how it rolled off the line at Izhmash.

A NEW PERSPECTIVE

The results of Nguyen’s work at the range were as impressive as the aesthetics. The red dot was zeroed and now produces consistent, tight groups wherever the dot points. At the time of writing, the Mak has now an excess of 600 rounds put through it without losing zero. 

The red dot is a Crimson Trace RAD Micro Pro, and it has built-in rear iron sights. They’d likely work fine on most conventional and contemporary optics-ready pistols, but unfortunately, they’re too high to co-witness the Makarov’s front sight. It’s not Crimson Trace’s fault, but it’s one downside to custom setups such as this. 

Either way, the addition of a red dot proved to be the most significant upgrade to the Mak’s shootability. If there’s one modification you can make to a Makarov to immediately raise its potential as a self-defense gun, this is it.

UPPING CAPACITY

With the new optic installed, the next order of business was to improve the pistol’s capacity. When it comes to the Makarov, this requires a new gun purchase.

There’s a lesser-known Makarov variant called the PMM (translated: Modernized Makarov Pistol) that was developed at the tail end of the USSR. 

Commercial variants were imported into the U.S. for a few years in the ’90s as the Baikal IJ70-18AH, and the gun’s most distinguishing feature is a 12-round double-stack magazine. Compared to the original Makarov’s eight-round mag, this is a substantial improvement. The PMM is otherwise virtually identical to a standard PM besides its slightly wider frame to accommodate the new magazine.

Uniquely, because the double-stack mags taper down to single-stack at the top, the guns can actually use standard single-stack eight-round mags as well. This is most likely due to the Soviets wanting to simplify manufacturing, and by designing the magazine this way, the only new components required were the mag itself and the thicker frame to accommodate it. This means that the slides could remain fundamentally unchanged between variants. 

One other small but notable difference between a normal PM and an IJ70-18AH is the frame material. Standard Makarovs have forged frames, while the double-stack versions have cast frames. The result is that even with the red-dot installed, the Baikal IJ70-18AH weighs 1.2 ounces less than the standard version (24.4 ounces versus 23.2 ounces). It’s not much of a difference, but lighter is definitely better than heavier, so it still counts as an upgrade. 

For anyone interested in picking up their own double-Stackarov, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that the guns themselves are pretty easy to find for sale for about $500, not that much more than what normal Maks go for these days. The bad news is that the same can’t be said about the double-stack magazines. 

The 12-round mags are rarer than the guns themselves, and the pistols are usually sold without one. If you manage to find any for sale, be prepared to pay over $100 per magazine. You can find aftermarket 10-round ProMag mags for less, but these are unfortunately garbage and should be avoided.

This project was partly set in motion due to luck, as one of our editors found two original double-stack Mak mags in a bargain bin at a gun show. With the mags in hand, the only logical next move was to buy the pistol to go with them. Then, the last step required to equip the double-stack model with a red dot was to swap the slides. 

FINAL TOUCHES

Besides modifying the gun itself, a carry setup isn’t complete without a good holster and proper ammo. 

While the Mak isn’t nearly as popular for carry as it once was, you might be pleasantly surprised to learn that there are Kydex holsters available for them from multiple manufacturers. The best of the bunch is probably from Vedder, and the company offers a few different IWB and OWB models that fit the Mak, but the one featured in this article is a Vedder LightTuck IWB. 

It fits both the standard Makarov and double-Stackarov like a glove, solidly locking them in place and facilitating a good draw just as you’d expect with any modern pistol and Kydex holster setup. 

As for ammunition, while 9x18mm may not be as powerful as 9x19mm, it does pack a bigger punch than .380 ACP. The availability of good self-defense ammo is far more limited for 9×18 Mak than it is for .380, but that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. Namely, that’s thanks to Hornady continuing to offer the caliber in its Critical Defense line — a 95-grain 9x18mm FTX bullet traveling at around 1,000 fps shouldn’t be underestimated. Thirteen rounds of that stuff on tap definitely won’t leave you feeling undergunned. 

LOOSE ROUNDS

Let’s be clear: The point of this project wasn’t to convince anyone that they should start carrying a Makarov, even a double-stack one with a dot sight. Nor was it to convince you to start butchering any other historical pistols you have lying around in an attempt to modernize them.

The point was that it’s fun, and it’s technically viable. 

Even if you already have a Makarov lying around, it would probably be cheaper in the end to just buy a new optics-ready pistol than to try and drag yours kicking and screaming into the 21st century. But for those with a taste for this sort of thing, you definitely can do it, and the final product will come out more practical and shootable than most would expect. 

In the case of this modernized Makarov, the result is a sleek, easy-to-carry, red-dot-equipped pistol loaded with 12+1 rounds of Hornady Critical Defense, all tucked neatly into a Kydex IWB holster. It’s not a Glock, but it can still do its job just fine.

The rising tide of technology is bringing the firearms industry along with it, allowing companies like 2C to offer some incredibly niche services. No matter how odd your idea for a gun project may be, it never hurts to hit some Google searches and ask around. You might just end up with your very own cool abomination like this.