The Russian state relied upon the state-owned and private factories at Tula, Ishevsk, and Sestroretsk to supply the bulk of its muskets, with the Tula works being the most important production center. For the Revolutionary and early half of the Napoleonic Wars, the muskets produced at these factories were often substandard compared to their contemporaries and slightly heavier. In 1805, the British observer Reginald Heber noted that while the Tula works could produce a large number of muskets, they suffered from poor quality control and were prone to bursting. After Austerlitz and the Polish campaigns exposed some of the shortcomings of Russian muskets, Emperor Alexander I directed that the state factories come up with an improved model. The resulting Model 1808 pattern was based both of the Brown Bess and the French Model 1777 Charleville. The Model 1808 became one of the bedrocks for Russian musketry in the decades after the Napoleonic Wars.

Russian Jägers were armed with the Model 1805 rifle produced by Russian factories. As part of the wider reorganization of the Russian army prior to 1812, the Jägers had to turn in their rifles for Model 1808 muskets, but this process was far from complete by the time of the French invasion.

Despite Alexander I's efforts to modernize the state armament works at Tula and other production centers, Russian industry was unable to produce the number necessary to equip Russian army and militia forces. As such, the state imported some 100000 Brown Bess muskets from Britain and some 32 Russian regiments were armed with the British gun by the time of the French invasion. As the Russians entered into central Europe, some of the Jägers received Baker Rifles in place of their Model 1808s. On a more informal level, it was also not an uncommon practice in the Russian army to reward individuals with foreign weapons or higher-quality Russian ones obtained from private manufacturers.

So as a whole, while Russian gun technology was slightly behind that of its Napoleonic contemporaries, these gaps were not insurmountable and Russian infantry weapons did have some decent qualities. French testing of Russian muskets showed them to be more reliable than theirs. The large state-owned factories allowed for economies of scale, but also made it harder to immediately implement manufacturing innovations or remodel production lines. But as a whole, Russia's arms industry was as capable as its contemporaries.

Sources

Haythornthwaite, Philip J., and Paul Hannon. The Russian Army of the Napoleonic Wars (1) Infantry, 1799-1814. London: Osprey Pub, 1987.

Lieven, D. C. B. Russia against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace. New York: Viking, 2010.

Spring, Laurence. Russian Grenadiers and Infantry: 1799-1815. Oxford: Osprey, 2002.