That simply is not true, Russia had initial early success in WW1 but was decimated by several embarrassing defeats to the Germans and Austrians. Their two "finest" hours were primarily successful due to the weather and an enemy spread too thin no some drastic shift in military strategy: Stalingrad, Napoleon. The only reason they weren't overrun by the Germans had nothing to do with some strategical shift, it was because the Germans were spread too thin and had to pause due to the weather. This gave the Russians time to rearm and resupply something the Germans couldn't really do due to the toll the war had already taken on them. Napoleon's army had no winter clothes and supply lines were stretched too thin. The Russian Army hasn't won a stand alone war since Napoleon and that was severely weather aided. If you look at one of the great battles of WW2 in Kursk, it wasn't a shift in military tactics. The Russians got ahold of the German plan and were able to build massive anti-tank defenses. They simply overwhelmed the Germans with hundreds of tanks but still nearly lost the battle. For the most part, the Russian military is highly overrated historically. People forget they had just lost a war against the Japanese at the turn of the 20th century and were largely humiliated during WW1 ceding massive areas of land to the Central Powers. Had the US not kept them on life support during WW2, they would have likely lost it as well.
