@taamvan:
We may want Russians to appear uniform, with nice green tanks and red stars, I recall many descriptions of Russian regular soldiers at a distance as a “dirty, shoeless, without uniforms”. No doubt most soldiers appear this way after a few days in the mud.
from the air they just looked like a mob, but underestimating their toughness and ability was a huge mistake. This from an era where tanks didn’t come with luxuries like…seats…or working exhaust systems…cough…
Yes, the Russians in WWII did indeed practice what could be called “spartan pragmatism” when it came to their tank production, and in a more general sense in various other aspects of their war effort. The manufacturing of the T-34 was poorly finished by western standards, but the Soviets (who on some occasions reputedly drove tanks out of factory buildings and straight into combat) had no time to waste on aesthetic niceties; they took the practical view that tanks are built to fight, and that since tanks don’t necessarily last long in active combat there’s no point in devoting manufacturing work to anything other than functionality. And even the functionality element was something on which the Russians were very bare-bones at first, though they improved as the war went on. I think, for example, that the original T-34 turret was so small that the tank commander had to do double-duty as the gunner, which was very awkward in terms of combat effectiveness.