Patton pushes on (what if)

[Sarmatian]

Generally yes, I'd say the shape of Red Army in mid 1941 was catastrophic. On top of all organizational issues, shortage of new equipment, lack of quality commanders and all those others things I already spoke about, there were deep institutional flaws that had to be addressed. On the other hand, quality of troops was good enough. Of course German soldiers had the advantage as they were veterans of two major campaigns. Compared to that only a small part of Russian troops was involved in Winter War and during invasion of Poland, combat was rare and was pretty much consisted of units of regimental size.

Troops on the border with Finland were in better shape than those on the border with the Reich. They were more experienced, their defensive positions were better and, equally important, weren't changed in 1941 and they faced relatively small number of Germans. Entire AOK Norway consisted of 70,000 men, that's 9 divisions organized in 3 corps. Basically, everything in the North depended on Finland and that's where I agree with PJ - Finland was never an enthusiastic Axis partner as it became one out of pure necessity.

I don't know much about the specific battle of Tikhvin, sources in English are rare and non-existent in Serbian and I can't speak Russian. Or Finnish for that matter. I do know a few words of Hungarian but I don't think that's enough .

From what I remember about Tikhvin, it was a relatively small scale encounter (compared to what was happening in the south). Russian 4th army was initially pushed back, then it received reinforcements and managed to recapture the town. This was happening as the Battle of Moscow was entering its final stages so naturally not much attention was paid to Tikhvin.

So in general, troops in the north were better than their counterparts in the south, they were facing small German army and reluctant Finnish army. They performed better for that reason in the beginning. Of course in the later periods of the war, Red Army troops in the north were totally outclassed by those in the south. Were the Finns actually committed to the war effort instead of just to reoccupying territories lost in the Winter War, we would have probably seen totally different scenarios in the north.