The Soviet Army was one of the most forward-thinking and robust militaries in the world, with a strong corps of officers well educated in mobile and deep operations. "Deep Operations" or Deep Battle, the strategy that, once mastered, carried them through to victory after victory from late 1943 onwards, was actually a pre-war brainchild of many of the purged Officers. The idea of the Soviets as some shambling, ill-equipped horde often is a result of propaganda about what was very much a rotten structure, but for far more nuanced reasons than 'poor equipment and drunks.' They were simply not the same army that they were in 1932; and would not return to that level of cohesion and operational skill until 1943/44. That being said, they certainly weren't rounding up hordes of scarcely equipped conscripts and throwing them at the enemy save in the most desperate of situations: certain annihilation. In point of fact, as early as winter 1941, we see the newly formed reserve fronts deploying well equipped, well trained units from the Far East, Siberia and Moscow - and this during a time period when Soviet industry was either being evacuated*, overrun or put under bombardment.
