History of the SKS

The SKS was to designed and produced as a service firearm that would have a limited lifespan between 2 rifles but utilized a reliable operating mechanism design. This rifle was a less radical 'just in case' for the AK-47's experimental design.
Initially fielded in early 1945 against the Germans, the SKS was not adopted officially by the Soviet Army till 1949 and was produced by the Tula Armory until 1955. The quality of the early Soviet carbines was quite high as compared to some later manufacturers.
Almost as soon as the SKS was brought into service, it was made obsolete for Soviet purposes by the new AK-47 by Kalashnikov. Advantages over the SKS were the selective-fire option, a rifle that was lighter, had more magazine capacity, not to mention that it was less labor-intensive to manufacture. The next few years saw the SKS carbines acting in non-infantry and ceremonial roles until about 1990. The SKS rifle and its many copies still can be found today in use by various third-world militias and insurgent groups as well as in civilian use especially in Canada and the US.

The SKS remains popular and is also used by several African, Asian, and Middle Eastern armies, as well as guerrillas in Bosnia, Somalia and throughout Africa and Southeast Asia.
One major reason that the design became so prolific is that during the Cold War the Soviet Union shared design and production details with its allies. This shared information resulted in SKS rifles being manufactured by the Soviet Union, China, Yugoslavia, Albania, North Korea, Vietnam, and East Germany, Romania and Poland and with several variations.

SKS Serial Numbers Serial Number Lookup and dating an SKS Rifle

The first thing that needs to be done is to examine the Rifle for and Asian or Cyrillic markings, in an effort to identify the county of origin. Please know that some rifles do not have any markings, but many Russian, Chinese and Korean models do.