Yea the shorter the barrel the more of the accelerant gets burned outside of the barrel (which essentially wastes that potential energy) and since it escapes as it ignites it does not add to the recoil. It had one heck of a fireball yea. The mosin nagant has an over all length of 4-5 FEET (tho 1/3 almost is the shoulderstock) so cutting the barrel down to 10 inches eliminates a LOT of recoil; also makes the round slower and with out better ballistically treated and rifled firing system; also makes it less accurate. (The competition pistol i fired had everything you could think of to compensate for acc loss though)