I was really excited for a Soviet focus mod because they're my favorite country to play and have a fascinating (and painful) history in this period. Unfortunately, this is not the mod for me.

In some ways this mod is pretty close to a cheat mod. You get over 600 free resources in five focuses (including huge quantities of the all important tungsten) whether you choose Stalin or Trotsky, dozens of free factories and can even do insane ♥♥♥♥ like core all of Germany, France and Italy + annex them outright if you ditch Stalin for Trotsky early and bumrush Germany. The Trotsky war section is especially bad balance wise. The entire purpose of the Trotsky War tree seems to be to stuff you full of enormous bonuses, then kick off a world conquest run

The more broken industrial stuff (-40% motorized cost and +30% speed?!, 40+ factories from a single focus?!) is hidden behind surrender progress, but many major bonuses (+20% factories in a state, construction speed bonuses of up to ) are available trivially early.

The purely historical route isn't too bad balance wise, but that's because it largely sticks to the Paradox focus tree and so maintains both the egregious balancing mistakes of vanilla and the lack of representation of an authentic Soviet experience. You can still do the modern armor rush and have fleets of T54s ready to fight Germany by the time Barbarossa starts for example. One side effect of this lack of changes is that if you go Trotsky Coup, you'll still end up taking Stalin Constitution. Presumably Trotsky decided Stalin had a few good ideas during the show trial?

I do like the buff and changes to the New Soviet Women focus, as it more accuractely captures the experience of women in the wartime Soviet Union (dear Paradox, Soviet women fought in all branches and in all roles including as tankers and rifle infantry, not just as elite pilots and snipers). The addition of disease and illiteracy spirits is interesting, but ultimately of little importance because you can clear them very early on.

The post war elements for Stalin are an interesting mix of possibilities with a nod to the possibility of post war liberalization, but the historical path lacks any mention of the post-war purges or the intense anti-Semitism and paranoia of that period.

The tech tree hasn't had any changes to unit flavor names that I can spot. The obvious A-32 which should be swapped for one of many other intermediate models is still there, and the KV-2 is still nowhere to be seen.

The tree is extensive and the creators put an impressive amoount of effort and care into designing "plausible" alt history stuff -- plausible in the framework Paradox set up, an alien invasion was more likely than a Trotsky coup in the mid 30s. If you're looking for a fun springboard for an alt history world conquest as the Soviets on max sliders, this mod is a good fit. If you're looking for something that creates a more authentic experience of the Soviet Union in the pre-war and war periods like the excellent mod for Poland, this isn't the mod for you. I hope the modders in future put as much effort into the historical path as they have the ahistorical, and that the entire tree gets a big balance pass. They're clearly talented and hard working, so I'm sure it'd be a truly awesome experience.

I had to post a thread because of character limits in the comments.