I think the soviets already fired a machine gun in space on one
of their early space stations causing lots of damage
to the station with the recoil.
It was a cannon round, fired remotely by the departed crew of an orbital spy station, and it did start having mechanical problems with the next crewing, and was subsequently abandoned.
I'm guessing that the Soviets obtained the advance satellite technology to render a manned spy station an obsolete and unnecessary expense.
The USAF had terminated its own spy station program much earlier with the advent of its next gen satellites.