He wondered how a nation with so primitive a transportation system could hope to beat the highly mechanized Germans.

From The Ghost Ships of Archangel by William Geroux.  Page 192.

Soon after the Troubadour docked at Molotovsk, a commissar with four uniformed soldiers came aboard the ship. The commissar spoke in English with Salvesen. He kept pointing to a manifest in his hand. He wanted to know why the tanks were painted white and why the turret guns had been fired. The captain’s explanation did not satisfy him. Salvesen got angry and threatened to drive the tanks into the North Dvina River if the Russians did not want them. The commissar eventually signed the paper. Jim North watched stevedores in prison garb unload the ship. They manhandled the cargo into old, beat-up Model A trucks. The trucks struggled up a hill, pushed along by groups of prisoners, to a rail siding, where the prisoners then transferred the cargo to boxcars. The cabs of the Model A trucks had fireboxes in which wood was burned for fuel. Soviet commissars strutted around inspecting the work, easily recognizable in their green caps. North watched the unloading process in amazement. He wondered how a nation with so primitive a transportation system could hope to beat the highly mechanized Germans.

Here were are eighty years later and Russia's Achille's heel remains its logistics infrastructure combined with corrupt and/or bureaucratic bullying.