The most outstanding item among firearms of the Ivanovo Museum of Local History named after Dmitry Burylin is a flintlock pistol, which is believed to have been made by the Tula gunsmith Aleksey Surnin.

The gunsmith’s lifepath is quite distinctive and extraordinary. Aleksey Mikhailovich Surnin came from an old family of gunsmiths. It is thought that he was born in 1767. At the age of 20, he was sent to England to study gunsmithing and learned from one of the leading masters of that time — Henry Nock. Nock noticed the diligent young student from Russia and hired him as an assistant. From 1788 to 1794, Alexey Surnin worked in England, studying in detail the newest weapons and the process of their creation.

The exhibited pistol was most likely made in England. The barrel of the gun features an inscription: “Patent A. Surnin” . It is quite possible that the gunsmith was able to patent a new system of operation or a feature of the flintlock mechanism. Given the fact that Aleksey Surnin died in 1811, it is unlikely that he could have registered a patent in Russia, since the opportunity to do so did not present itself until a special law was passed in 1812. According to the researcher Denis Sergeyevich Dokuchayev, the patent must have been obtained in England.

The Ivanovo Museum has the only known extant flintlock pistol in Russia which was made by the “Lefty from Tula”. The tension between England and Russia in the early 1790s forced Aleksey Surnin to go back to his homeland. In the winter of 1792, he returned to Russia and began supervising the technological process at the Tula Arms Plant.

Surnin’s weapons were treated as works of art, and in 1806, by order of Emperor Alexander I, he was given a prize of 1000 rubles. After a prolonged illness, Aleksey Surnin died in August 1811. The name of the “Lefty from Tula” gradually fell into oblivion. However, back in 1905, the historian and organizer of defense production Sergey Alexandrovich Zybin studied the history of the Tula Arms Plant and saw undeniable coincidences in the lives of real and fictional gunsmiths. In an article published in “Oruzheiny Sbornik” (The Military Almanac), he claimed that while the character of Lefty was undoubtedly inspired by Surnin, it was also based on Yakov Leontyev — an idler and drunkard who came with Surnin to study in England.