Quote Originally Posted by Sarmatian View Post
Except in rare cases, that's a myth, much like "General Winter" which is really just a convenient excuse for losing. In most cases, Russian soldiers were pretty well equipped and had excellent commanders and they were pretty adaptable, too, managing to minimize their weaknesses and maximize their strengths, as evident against Prussian under Frederick the Great, French under Napoleon, Germany in WW2 and so on...

There are exceptions, of course. WW1 is one of them, where Russian army was truly in a pathetic state and had pretty bad commanders, except Brusilov.
During the Winter War of 1940 the Red Army didn't exactly shine either.