Putin calls for Stalin-style leap forward to boost defense industry

"We should carry out the same powerful, all-embracing leap forward in modernization of the defense industry as the one carried out in the 1930s," Putin told his Security Council, cited by Reuters.

Putin made renewed industrialization a priority during his third term in the Kremlin which started in May amid the largest protests of his 12-year rule. He conceded that the defense industry, once the heart of the Soviet economy, was in tatters. "Unfortunately, many of our enterprises are technologically stuck in the previous century," Putin said, complaining about poor discipline at plants working on state defense orders.

Putin's top defense industry official Dmitry Rogozin posted on his Facebook page a copy of a 1940 letter from Stalin to gun factory managers and accompanied it with a sarcastic warning: "Such methods of improving discipline also exist".

Stalin's letter to the managers said: "I give you two or three days to launch mass production of machinegun cartridges... If production does not start on time, the government will take over control of the plant and shoot all the rascals there." "Of course, it was a joke," Rogozin told reporters regarding his posting but added that failures would not be tolerated. "Our satellites are falling, our ships are sinking, we had seven space failures in the last 18 months but not a single plant felt the consequences," he said after the council session. "The culprits should come on stage. The country should know them," Rogozin said, cited by Reuters.