Penals should be just cheaper, while some of their AI should be locked behind free upgrade.
Because while they are very powerfull, overall presence on the field suffers badly in 1v1, while in teamgames, they perform much better, since teammate can carry you a bit early and in retern you provide almost rolf-stomp inf.
Point is being, I would rather see them with 2 mosins\3 SVTs while cost being droped to 270\280 MP, with T3 providing free additional SVTs for all non-PTRS squads. Maybe even grenades for non-PTRS squads aswell.
But honestly there are a lot of possabilities how to make soviet tech better. Like molies and AT should be one upgrade. Cons 7-men grade should be for sure spleet up between T3 and T4. With T3 unlocking upgrade and providing 7 men, T4 upping this grade and providing buffs or vise versa.
Honestly a lot of soviet changes, sometimes feels like they were made as a bandage, without looking at whole faction and rather looking at specific lacklaster units and patching them instead of how faction works.
So you want much weaker SVT conscripts for much higher cost and arriving later?
How is that going to help with anything?
You would butcher units only strength and they would get literally nothing in return, because you are still completely incapable of fielding more of them in the early game, so what you're basically saying is killing the unit.