And the majority of those were still superior to BTs in terms of effective firepower, and armor, as well as huge advantage in “soft” characteristics (optics, radio, crew size, etc). Then we have to add in the non operative state of much of the Soviet tank park…but that is all off topic.
The point is the USSR did not maintain a valuable armored deterrent against the Japanese. What was there before 1941, stayed, but nothing modern was delivered.
The point was that the Soviets chose to keep their armour in the Pacific in key period in 1941-42 when tank strength in Europe was often less than 20 machines per brigade.
And BTs and T-26s were quite a decent deterrent to the Japanese whose tanks were generally far worse and who lacked decent AT.
Anywhere up to a third of a Panzer Divisions available tanks were Panzer IIs in June 1941 (armed only with 20mm gun and with very poor armour). There still many 37mm armed, underarmoured Panzer IIIs and some divisions had only Panzer 35(t) and Panzer 38(t)s in place of Panzer IIIs – both were quite obsolete by this time.
Furthermore German Panzers were generally no good for Russian conditions due to narrow tracks (dealing with mud in autumn/early winter) and lack of resistance to extreme cold.
This led to poor servicability in German armour – many divisions had very few or no tanks functioning by January 1942 (e.g. 6th Panzer was knicknamed 6th Panzer of Foot because it had no tanks and not many vehicles left).
In this environment, BTs and T-26s would be extremely useful.
Even where Soviets used T-34s and KV-1s en masse in 1941, they were let down by poor tactics, poor tactics and strategy.
And yes poor operative state, poor maintenance/logistics infrastructure and lack of mobilisation orders had a massive impact.
Also remember that the Germans did extremely well in 1940 when their average tank was the completely undergunned Panzer II.
And the French did really well with their SOMUA’s in 1940 despite having a competely inefficient one man turret. German tank crews were ordered to avoid SOMUA’s in Belgium.
But in the end a few hundred SOMUA’s in 3 divisions that got diverted to Belgium won’t help much when has strategic initiative, innovative tacitcs and strategy and knows where to apply the right amount of pressure (in this case a diversionary attack in Belgium with amain strike on Sedan where average French armour was penny packeted obsolete R.35, FT-17s and some Hotchkiss tanks and average infantry division was poorly equipped and poorly trained reserve units who in some cases ran away at the rumour of tank attacks).
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