Hello, guys, thanks for welcoming me...
"Krasny Oktiabr" (Red October,
http://koavia.com/e_index.htm) was big Soviet concern (as you already possibly know), situated in Leningrad (St. Petersburg now), that produced throughout its history wide range of machinery (mainly military) - aircraft, helicopter, tank, tractor engines and parts, swashplates, surface-to-air missiles etc. The plant that made D-engines is its consumer branch and situated in backwater town of Borovichi. I can not even find their website in RuNet - only address and phone numbers. See some photos (were found in one russian forum) – made year or more ago, everything looks rather dilapidated. Most likely the plant has long ago gone bankrupt. Or makes some secondary components for parent company. Another non-military subsidiary exists until now - "Krasny Oktiabr - Neva"(someone has mentioned it in this thread), produces tillers utilizing imported engines (Honda, Briggs&Stratton etc.) as powerplant. It was common practice for big military soviet enterprises to have some consumer production.
My doubts concerning quality ensue from knowledge that by 1980-90ies manufacturing and discipline standards had gone pretty slack at least in soviet civil production lines. Circa 1991, being schoolboy, your humble servant got job as apprentice in the enterprise, manufacturing fighter turbofan as main product. Civil branch, where he was employed made high performance tiller engines (output 5 hp, weight over 50 kilograms
). Patriotic youth as he was, he had all possibilities to observe that favorite pastimes of line staff during dinner breaks were drinking (cough drops
) technical grade alcohol and stealing pistons, which abovementioned high-end tiller engine shared with some ubiquitous automotive one.
By the way, turbofan line still exists (under defence ministry protection), tiller line was closed (I suspect Honda Co had a finger in the pie, eliminating dangerous competitor
).