Neither do I.
3-4 power was par for the course for contemporary sniper rifles tho, the USMC with their 8-power Unertl were pretty much the outlier.
Anyways, if you own one, you'll know the actual problems with the rifle are more in ergonomics with the difficulty of getting a proper consistent cheekweld and the trigger, plus, the glass quality is so poor with such limited transmission that in low light it becomes useless fast. With that being said, I still like it, and as a wartime mass produced solution it was certainly still superior to at least the German Kar98 with the Zf41...
3-4 power is more then good enough for a combat sniper of that period, As the 30.06, 7.62x54mmR, .303, 7.92x57mm Have a effective range of about 1000 yd. I would imagine a PTRS could reach out to 2k with a proper setup and a very skilled shooter.
And yes the Mosin has some ergo problems, The scope sits high, the action sucks to cycle as it is tough
to close and you really gotta muscle it, You also can't use stripper clips on the PU, and you run into the
issue of possible rim locking.
The trigger is as you said also terrible, Very spongy long travel time and high trigger weight.
My other 2 Mosins i switched out to a timmney trigger, Best damn thing ive done to those rifles.
The 91/30's strength is the damn thing will ALWAYS fire, and is a very very accurate rifle,
And it fires a very good middle of the road cartage.
The zf41 was used in sniper setups for Germany.. when it was a scout scope in reality :/
Anyways why was this brought up in the first place? :/
Soviet sniper preforms fine.