The Soviets put the tanks in the center of their advancing force, with combined arms supporting them from all sides. More medium tanks that can be repaired quickly are better than a few heavy tanks that need specialized service facilities. Bypass towns that don't need to be taken instead of stopping to fight the enemy and giving the rest of their force time to regroup. Assume that the enemy has longer range and better guns than you do, but that that advantage will disappear if you get close enough (that doesn't mean run straight at them completely exposed, but it also means don't stop advancing if you can help it). Soviet doctrine gave junior officers a list of hard and fast rules of thumb and discouraged being too creative, based on the assumption that people aren't at their best mentally when under fire.

This was all based on their experiences fighting the Germans in WW2, and while details were updated over time as technology advanced and data came in from places like Korea and Vietnam about what did and didn't work, the general character never changed.