Western media has constantly portrayed the Soviets as virtually incapable of doing anything but sending unarmed men in waves at German machine guns. We never really hear much about the tactical/strategic side of things.
I'm aware of Soviet strategies, such as deep battle and maskirovka, but what about small scale squad tactics?
Before discussing the tactics, it's important to discuss the organisation and weaponry.
As per Zaloga's Companion to the Red Army, the Soviet platoon had the following compositions in the following years:
1935-1941
HQ
4× Squads
1941-1942
HQ
Mortar Team
4× Squads
It is important that these are simply paper TOEs, and may be a bit ambitious. In reality, the 4th squad did not exist, and there may have been less machine guns than noted, with only 1 or 2 out of 3 or 4 squads having one. There most certainly were less submachine guns than noted.
During the war, the mortar team was removed, and the squad consisted of 9 to 11 men, equipped with rifles (or SMGs, supplies permitting), and having a 2 man crew for the machine gun.
There is most certainly a degree of truth to the fact the Germans emphasized machine guns to a larger extent than the Soviets. The German Heeresdienstvorschift 130-2a (Think of it as an equivalent to the American FM7-10 Rifle Company manual) of 1936 devotes some 73 of its total 192 pages to the fine details of the light machine gun, and the machine gun crew of 4 men was a distinct tactical unit within the squad, whereas such a distinction was never made in the Russian equivalent Боевой устав пехоты красной армии.
It is however key to note that the Russian attitude to machine guns was no different to the American or British one, all of whom saw the squad as a "rifle squad". The Germans simply placed a lot of value in their excellent machine guns.
Supposedly, this less-than-key role of the light machine gun did translate into tactics, with one author, Rottmann, even going so far as to say in his book "Soviet Rifleman 1941-1945" that: "The key difference between Soviet section and platoon tactics and those of the Germans (and Western Allies) was that there was no fire and maneuver or leap-frogging of sections whereby one unit covered those advancing."
Some facets of the Soviet squad tactics in which it was distinctly superior to that of other nations are the widespread use of both sniper rifles and submachine guns. Starting with the latter, the Soviets produced some 6 million PPSh-41s, and some 2 million PPS submachine guns. The arming of entire companies with such devastating close range weapons made a more massed, close range assault viable.
When it comes to the role of the sniper, it is key to note the word has a slightly broader meaning (In some cases more akin to marksman). Whilst the Western sniper is typically a company role, the Soviets would go so far as to embed a sniper in rifle squads post-war.
The Soviets would produce over 500,000 sniper scopes (http://s019.radikal.ru/i611/1303/b4/7eda8ae37767.jpg), whilst the Germans would manage only 70,000 4× power scopes (Quoting from Martens and De Vries, German Sniper Rifles in their Photo Propaganda Series).
During the war, there would be - scopes permitting - 2 snipers to a platoon, and this emphasis on "snipers"/marksmen would be continued with the platoon level Dragunov in 1961.
Perhaps a more interesting point is the so-called танковый десант, which means as much as "tank marine". Instead of producing purpose-built armoured personnel carriers which offered some degree of protection to infantry, the Soviet infantryman simply rode on the back of a tank, a comparatively dangerous affair. It needs no explanation that such an infantryman was more visible.
In conclusion, the Soviet squad doctrine had it's pros and cons, it was to some degree more crude, especially in the case of tank-infantry cooperation, but that is not to say there were no elements in which it was superior to Western doctrines.
