All those fancy pictures of Soviet soldiers leaping from advancing T-34s - was this behaviour approved by those in high command?
Additional question: I'm aware of tank riding in other theatres as well, but as I recall, both German and American infantrymen dismounted far away from combat. Did Soviet soldiers actually ride tanks into battle like armoured personnel carriers, or were these pictures merely deliberate propaganda?
I am away from my bookshelf right now so I'll have to double-check on the doctrinal status of tank desant at the outbreak of the war. I do know, however, that the 1942 infantry manual provides instructions for the employment of desantniki at the company level - how to distribute machine gunners and submachine gunners, things like that. The 1944 update of the manual also contains similar instructions, but updated to reflect greater emphasis on the desantniki's role in city fighting. The 1942 manual is hosted here, in Russian. So, yes, tank desant was a formal tactic at least in the second and third periods of the war. I will have to get back to you on whether this was a formalization of an ad-hoc practice from the initial period of the war. The PU1936 regulations specify cavalry as the primary land desant arm, but that's more at the operational/strategic level so I'm not sure if it carries over to tank desant.