Red Army = most effective force !

[Marcello]

Similar situation Mobhack describes was with T-35 heavy tanks already before WW2 - their units were training on T-26's and T-35 was being fired up just for parades.

Apart from the future planned conversion to SPA, looking good on parades was pretty much the only good thing that "thing" was good for.

Thier problems always seemed to be poor build quality

My father's Brezhnev era export Belarus tractor would probably disagree that.Very reliable, rugged and easy to repair.The casting of some components is a sight to behold. Just an anedocte, mind you, but at least a bit more relevant to the matter of quality of soviet mechanics than shotgun shells.

Red Army was impressive force on paper, but situation on the field would be different. Most of the equipment was just cannon fodder,mayority of tanks used were still T-55,T-62.Later after 1986 they had more T-80B but there were Leopards-2, M1A1 and Challys.

As I noted previously timing is critical. Broadly speaking with the T-64 and the T-72 the soviets aquired an half generation lead over NATO, introducing the 125mm gun and composite armor while the west was still using 105mm guns and conventional cast/rolled armor.In its days the T-64A was the best tank in the world, by far.By the time western 3rd generation MBTs came online there were a lot of them in service, even if the bulk was still T-55/T-62.I would note that cannon fodder is a relative term. The Leopard 1 had less armor than a WW2 era Panther and a Leo1 driver I know was pretty explicit in telling me that they harbored no illusions about their fate had they been hit.A T-62 would have killed them just fine.
During the 80's the soviet were stuck playing catch up.