>>/21696/
> USSR army also wasn't really so powerful and strong until late part of war
Powerful is relative. Later Red Army was powerful compared to early Red Army, but early Red Army was very powerful compared to other countries' militaries. It's failure at the start of Barbarossa - I'd like to follow the original track of the thread - wasn't because it was weak, had shitty tanks, inexperienced officer corps or any other usual excuses the post-war propaganda/history writing came up with but because they planned for offense, they prepared for offense, they were deployed for offense, they were equipped for offense, they didn't made any preparation for defense.
In relation to this, the argument that after they invaded Poland they left their entrenched positions and they didn't have any in their new area of deployment is kinda true but since then 1.5-2 years passed, that should have been enough to build new ones in Poland if they prepared to keep those borders and they had no plans to move further west. If they had plans on push more toward west but not in the immediate future (as in the summer of '41) but years later, it would have been also sensible to create fortifications in case of a German confrontation. So yes, they didn't have entrenchments, but they didn't have it because they considered their positions very temporary.