The units already had main kinds of rifle and artillery arms (see above). The lack of 50% of organic means of transport mentioned by Vladimirsky was not a threat, either. The truth is that the "staff numbers" specified in Stalin's preparation plans for the Great War were huge. So, a howitzer regiment (36 howitzers) of a Red Army rifle regiment was to have 73 tractors, 90 trucks and 3 passenger cars according to the troop list of April, 1941. The fact that the number of tractors exceeds the number of guns does not prove the excessive weight of artillery systems. A 122-mm howitzer weighed about 2.5 tons, a 152-mm howitzer – 4.2 tons, and any of them could easily be towed by a single tractor.
Division howitzers were to be towed with tractors produced by the Stalingrad and Chelyabinsk factories (STZ-3, STZ-5, S-60, S-65). This was exactly the means of transport that could move along Russian country roads under rain and snow. Tractors could tow guns across rugged terrain as fast as 10-15 kph, which was quite enough for a rifle (infantry) division, where artillery was just not to fall behind soldiers walking on foot. Anyway, the enemy could not even dream of 72 crawler tractors in an artillery regiment. The only artillery regiment of a Wehrmacht rifle division had all its artillery systems (including 150-mm howitzers) towed by horses.
If fact, the Kiev military district had 2389 howitzers in its ranks by the start of war (1277 122-mm howitzers and 1112 152-mm howitzers) (29, p. 97). Let us note in parentheses that one only required 2016 howitzers to completely staff all the divisions in the district by the troop list (32 rifle, 16 tank, 8 motorized divisions). And the number of operable tractors in the district artillery (without the tractors in the ranks of motorized units) was 2239 (152, p. 83). One can easily see that the motor traction power almost matched the number of the vehicles to be towed. Besides, there district artillery units also had 161 specialized tractors ("ComIntern", "Voroshilovets", "Communar") to tow heavy guns.
A detached antitank battalion of a Red Army tank division was to have 24 motorcars and 21 tractors for 18 45-mm guns by the troop list (27 tractors for 18 guns in an antitank battalion of a motorized division). The tractor to be used was an armored fully-tracked "Comsomolets" based on assemblies and components from a T-38 light tank, armed with a socket-mounted machine gun and generally matching a German Pz-I tankette by its combat capabilities (which was always put by all Soviet historians to the "tanks" category). By July 1941 there were 7780 of such "Comsomolets" produced, with 6700 of them sent to the troops (148). Troops of Kiev special military districts had 1088 operable "Comsomolets" units on the list, which makes 27 tractors per each antitank battalion on the average. To say in a word, rumors of "a disastrous lack of motor traction power" in the Red Army's artillery are grossly exaggerated.
Situation with the mobilization readiness in mechanized corps was much worse. That's quite understandable. First of all, a mechcorps requires a great number of mechanisms by its definition, among them motorcars and tractors (crawler tractors), most of which were to work for the national economy till the day when the mobilization would be publicly announced. Second, Stalin's gigantomania being the reason for a simultaneous build-up of 29 mechcorps with a thousand tanks in each exceeded the actual capabilities of the country's economy.
Having admitted all these, let us not be hasty in our conclusions and get to studying concrete facts specified in the monograph by Vladimirsky:
"The 22nd, 9th and 19th mechanized corps were being built since April, 1941 on the base of former tank brigades, and they were still under preparation by the start of war… Having relatively much manpower (9 thousand men in a tank division and 10.2 thousand men in a motorized division which was 80 and 90% of the wartime staff respectively), mechanized formations were understaffed in senior officers and sergeancy (40-50 percent)... Units were severely understaffed in tank and tank unit commanders, tank drivers and other technicians…"
However, one should remember what were these mechcorps Vladimirsky tells about. According to the pre-war plans of the Soviet armored forces command, the 19th Mechcorps did not even belong to the nineteen "operational mechcorps" and was built up with a lower establishment, while the 22ndand the 9th Mechcorps were to be completely prepared only in 1942. The lack of the nominal number of tank commanders and drivers was "compensated" with the lack of the nominal number of tanks. So, the 22nd Mechcorps had 712 tanks (69%), the 9th Mechcorps had 316 tanks (31%) and the 19thMechcorps had 453 tanks (44%).