I work with a ex-Red Army Sgt who would slap you silley if you called the Makarov a cheap Walther copy. I have my fair share of Maks and I love them, the PPs are too small and too user-unfriendly IMHO, and the Makarov makes up for this in spades. Beautiful it is not but as a personal sidearm, its more than effective.
I also have a couple Tula-Tokarevs, nice guns, great power, but they are a little more finniky and tend not to be as easy to control and operate as the Mak.
You could also call the APS Stetchkin a contemporary sidearm of the AK, a beautiful "full size" take on the Makarov, its one unfortunate drawback is that its safty switch has that "extra notch" that makes it both very rare in the US and very expensive. Having shot a collectors APS in Idaho before though, I'll agree that its a far better weapon than the Mak, bigger, more substantial, more accurate in semi auto, but that extra feature, well, the added zip makes it a killer to get a hold of.
I'd even buy one off the back of a truck if I knew where any of those trucks were, but alas, in this country, its mostly Glocks and Ravens you see there...