It's more complicated than that. The Soviets did an enormous amount of small arms research and development during the war. But the end of the war they had entire assault companies where every soldier had a PPsH sub machine gun with one 70 round drum and a bunch of 35 round mags. So that's a hundred guys with zippy little magazine fed submachine guns that can put out an incredible amount of small caliber firepower. Meanwhile the German infantry they were facing still had Kar98 rifles with 5 round magazines that fed from stripper clips.
From what I understand in the urban warfare of late WWII it there were a lot of one-sided massacres where Soviet troops with modern weapons just annihilated German troops with their antiquated rifles.
They also had adopted a 10 round detachable box mag rifle by 1938(updated in 1940 to the SVT-40) that was intended for general infantry use, it was just impossible to replace Mosin Nagant production lines with SVT production lines in time.
Similarly the PPSh-41 was technically supplanted by the PPS-43, but it was more practical to keep all current PPSh-41 production lines open, because the PPS-43 was simplified enough for production that factories and workshops that could not have produced the PPSh could instead produce the PPS-43 with no problems.
Also just remembered they had mass produced rifle suppressors paired with subsonic ammunition, which the Germans couldnt rival because they had no rubber to spare.
Obsolete by WW2? Who says it? Last time I checked the USSR humilliated the nazis with Mosin-Nagant as their frontline rifle...
It's more complicated than that. The Soviets did an enormous amount of small arms research and development during the war. But the end of the war they had entire assault companies where every soldier had a PPsH sub machine gun with one 70 round drum and a bunch of 35 round mags. So that's a hundred guys with zippy little magazine fed submachine guns that can put out an incredible amount of small caliber firepower. Meanwhile the German infantry they were facing still had Kar98 rifles with 5 round magazines that fed from stripper clips.
From what I understand in the urban warfare of late WWII it there were a lot of one-sided massacres where Soviet troops with modern weapons just annihilated German troops with their antiquated rifles.
They also had adopted a 10 round detachable box mag rifle by 1938(updated in 1940 to the SVT-40) that was intended for general infantry use, it was just impossible to replace Mosin Nagant production lines with SVT production lines in time.
Similarly the PPSh-41 was technically supplanted by the PPS-43, but it was more practical to keep all current PPSh-41 production lines open, because the PPS-43 was simplified enough for production that factories and workshops that could not have produced the PPSh could instead produce the PPS-43 with no problems.
Also just remembered they had mass produced rifle suppressors paired with subsonic ammunition, which the Germans couldnt rival because they had no rubber to spare.