The earliest known example of the Soviet Union’s development of a universal or general-purpose machine gun concept is the Degtyarev prototype in 1941. This was a tumultuous time for the Soviet Union as the war unfolded. As the conflict escalated, requirements shifted, and attention was diverted to other priorities. The Soviet Union needed a nudge to revisit this concept, which came in the form of the German MG34 and MG42 machine guns and the German military doctrine surrounding universal machine guns during the war.