Many of the small marks found on Russian and Soviet Mosin Nagant rifles are simply characters in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. While the meaning is often unknown, this list should be useful in identifying them as such and discussing them with fellow collectors. Poland, Hungary, and Romania use the Latin alphabet. By cross referencing this list it is sometimes possible to distinguish between Eastern European and Soviet parts such as bolt bodies by the presence of a unique character. For example, a bolt body with a “BC” prefix could be Soviet or Eastern European, but a “BD” prefix could only be Eastern European because there is no “D” in the Cyrillic alphabet. Of course any prefix containing a Cyrillic character is Soviet.