Soviet Rifles

"WHAT THE FUCK DOES URA MEAN!"

– Anonymous Wermacht MG42 Gunner, Company of Heroes 2

In the bloodiest conflict in history of the world, even with massive technological and tactical innovation, the humble rifle had a place in its resolution. Despite the popular depictions from old propaganda, the brunt of the fighting wasn't massive tank formations sweeping majestically across the Russian steppes, but poor, freezing infantrymen manning defensive positions, assaulting across no mans land, or dying in droves for a city named after your leader. Russian riflemen in Flames of War are cheap and poorly trained, but come in some of the largest units in the game. Alternatively one can bring hero rifle units, fielding the much smarter and more survivable remnants of veteran soviet rifle units.

In Real Life

The dreaded Moist Nugget, slayer of Fascists

The average Soviet soldier in World War II was armed with a Mosin Nagant bolt action rifle. A time tested design that had been in service for half a century at that point through World War I and two revolutions (and subsequent Civil War) with a few tweaks. It was a bare bones five-shot gun, but was cheap to make, simple to service, robust and reliable and could put a 7.62×54mmR round through a Nazi at ranges up to 800 meters.

The Soviets intended to replace it with the SVT-40 semi-automatic rifle earlier in the 1940s. It was a good rifle, but what held it back was that it was too fragile for the dumbfuck farmers that were using them, and more importantly it cost too much to try and produce during a war in numbers required. Still, more than 1.5 million were made. It was at least on par with the Gewehr 43 (which had systems copied from it), and better than the Gewehr 41, interestingly enough. The Soviets continued to work on the idea of semi-auto rifles and soon after the war introduced the SKS.

The Fedorov Avtomat, a WWI automatic rifle, was also issued in limited numbers early in the war to make up for the lack of infantry-portable automatic weapons, and mostly saw action in the Finnish front where they were used up or destroyed. The Federov was a novel experiment cooked up during the great war and was arguably the first Assault-Rifle, but it had obvious shortcomings. The biggest being using outdated Japanese 6.5mm ammo (Protip: If your rifle needs special ammo that 99% of the army does not use, you're doing ground war wrong), as well as having a 25 bullet magazine that was fed through 5 bullet clips. As a result, it was largely forgotten about outside of Russia and obscure militaria nerds, since it primarily saw service in the Russian Civil war while everyone was trying to kill each other.

Another oddball weapon used by the Red Army in limited numbers was the Winchester 1895. Yes, a goddamn lever-action rifle. In WWII. In Russia. The Russian Empire had procured a large quantity of them in WWI to make up for shortages of Mosin-Nagant rifles, and the Soviets still had some around for the Winter War. Unlike the vast majority of lever-actions, the Model 1895 was adapted to use stripper clips of 7.62x54mmR, to simplify logistical concerns and overall useability.

Companies tended to have 143 men each, commanded by 6 officers if you count the Commissar, all falling under the command of a Captain. These were further broken down into platoons, each commanded by Liuetenant. The Soviets had snipers assigned to the command section of Platoons as opposed to someone being appointed a marksman in individual squads, something emulated by the German Panzergrenadiers. Each Platoon was made up of 4 sections, typically Rifle Sections, which are the equivalent of squads. A normal section had 9 men: A squad leader with PPSH-41, an assistant squad leader with a Mosin, a Machine Gunner with a DP-27 LMG, and 6 grunts, one of which who would be given the dubious honor of helping carry ammo for the Machine gunner.

The Red Army took heavy casualties in the early days of Barbarossa, with large sections of the Red Army being overwhelmed and defeated in detail. Part of this is is because the Vodka drinkers adopted tactics that would use infantry rushes to create a hole in the enemy line, then use tanks to exploit the break and surround any unfortunate Germans that didn't decide to run the moment their lines broke.

In the early phases of the war large numbers of POWs were captured by the nazis and subject to forced labor, starvation, casual brutality and cullings. That said, from 1943 onwards the exchange rate between Red Army and German forces eventually evened out as the Nazis lost the initiative.

This list is limited due to us having dedicated pages for some of these weapons, but these stand out the most.

• The Mosin-Nagant was a dated, but at least reliable rifle that served about on par with the Kar98. Due to the sheer number of the things produced, the Mosin saw service in every conflict post war. It even saw a boom in popularity in the 2010s due to it being cheap, but reliable. Surprisingly enough, Mosins are very popular in America, in part due to being cheap war surplus, but also because they were manufactured in America before the Revolution.

• The PTRD was similar to the Panzerbüchse in many ways, but it was a more modern design that retained service throughout the war. Arguably the second best AT-Rifle of the war after the Type 99, the thing was entirely able to kill Panzer IVs without Schurzen. The PTRS was a limited production run version that could fire semi-auto. Grunts didn't like their "fishing rods", however. As a saying went, "Long barrel - short life". It and the ammo were also quite heavy, but this wasn't unique compared to contemporary AT-Rifles.

• The DP-27/28 was the distant second best LMG in the war. While it did not have the fire rate or general superiority of the MG34, it it was slightly better than the Bren due to having more shots at an almost equivalent caliber. The Pan magazine made it somewhat awkward and were a pain to reload or carry ammo for. However, its slower fire rate meant that it didn't have to worry about the barrel overheating as much. The Finns captured a ton of them during the Winter war and ended up using them to partially replace their own LMGs.

Soviet Forces in Flames of War
Tanks:	T-70 - Valentine - M5/M3 Stuart - M3 Lee - T-34 - KV - Churchill - IS-2 - Captured Tank Platoon - T-28 - BT-7 - KV-2 - T-26
Transports:	M3 Scout Car - Universal Carrier - SdKfz 251
Infantry:	Rifles - Motor Rifles - Penal Company - Storm Group - SMG Company - Engineer Sapper Company
Artillery:	Katyusha - 152mm Artillery - 122mm Artillery - 76mm Artillery - 120mm Mortars - 82mm mortars
Tank Destroyers and Assault Guns:	45mm Anti Tank - 57mm Anti Tank - 76mm Anti Tank - 100mm Anti Tank - SU-76 - SU-85 - SU-100 - SU-122 - SU-152 - ISU-122/ISU-152
Recon:	Scout Platoon - BA-64 Platoon - Armored Reconnaissance Platoon - Reconnaissance Platoon
Aircraft:	Il-2 Sturmovik
Anti-Aircraft:	ZSU M17 - DShK AA MG Platoon
Midwar Monsters:	KV-3 - KV-5 - T-43