How true. Bought a Mosin M44 yesterday at my local shop and had a bear of a time putting it back together after the ritual de-cosmolining. Whenever I couldn't make something fit, I tried harder and harder until eventually I was whacking it with a framing hammer wrapped in duct tape. It worked.
Today, I took it out to the range for the first time. Holy hell! I was using 148gr Hungarian FMJ and 182gr Polish FMJ and those suckers HURT! By around the sixtieth round I was cowering in fear of the recoil of this 7.62 monster. My groups at 100 yards looked like they had been thrown by hand. I need to work on that. The best was the muzzle flash and the dust being sucked off the range table. Drew a crowd on several occasions.
As for the bolt handle sticking, yeah, it's annoying, but besides making sure it's good and lubed, there's not much you can do about it.
Not as easy to shoot as an SKS, not as accurate as a modern bolt action (Rem 700, Win 70) but at least half the price of admission and with ammo costing 20% to 80% less than the others, this rifle is great to have in the collection. I'll probably use it to obliterate obsolete appliances and to let my non-gun owning friends shoot when they claim that there is no reason anyone should buy a gun that fires something as small as a .22