Interesting discussion, it appears there's pretty strong agreement that Soviets need to be changed heavily in some way. How much though is split about 50-50.Now 6 men are less survivable? It greatly increases the survivability versus Snipers and any kind of explosion, tank and artillery alike. Sovs have two men more dealing damage.
I think one of the problems for the Soviets is the essential fragility of their units, 6 man squads only count vs snipers, the rest of the time, the damage inflicted on each other is roughly equal. This means that if you have squads brought down to one man and retreating, then the damage inflicted on them is greater compared to a German squad brought down to one man.
Sovs can recrew a weapon and you are not brought down to that single man who instantly has to retreat, like the Germans.
6 men on any weapon crew are also annoying. Usually if you catch a German weapon crew off guard, it will go down. I´ve lost count on how many Maxims run through two squads of Grenadiers just to make it out alive. The bitter thing is that throwing away those crew weapons really does punish you.
That´s definitely not a disadvantage. If anything the survivability of Russian infantry is higher than that of the Germans.
4 men squads are usually brought down to that one man faster than 6 men squads - eventually wiping the squad and vet.
Russian infantry is all but fragile.
More survivability isn´t needed. What´s annoying about playing them is the restrictions. There is no non doctrinal omni purpose tank (T-34/76 doesn´t really count). There´s either Shock troopers or AT infantry, not both. This is incredibly restricting and dull.