All other factions are more or less universal. They can both in deffensive and offensive game. Look at UK - top defenses, nice infantry, badass tanks. Everything wihtout doctrines, even artillery (no matter that it is garbage). They are 100% universal faction! OKW was pretty same before with TOP tanks in game and dominating infantry, like Ubers. Even poor USF can play in deffensive and offencive. With problems but still.
Not really.
Each faction have different capabilities in offense and defense, USF have barely anything, soviets rely on defensive mines and demos, remaining three are self explanatory.
Soviets stand out, because they are doctrine reliant when it comes to basic infantry scaling, having useful infantry and having useful armor and that is the only major problem, stock equivalents are unusable.
USSR can ONLY in offencive gameplay and they are somehow not the best in that role, while they should be because... they lost entire gamestyle, so it should be compensated with more powerfull offencive. But it is not more powerfull, in some part's it is worst!
And there is nothing wrong with that. Soviets are supposed to be pressing, aggressive faction that forces opponents into specific units, soviets are really bad in reactive play, which defensive playstyles are reliant on.
Only problem with soviets is constant reliance on doctrines and call-ins because stock med armor and stock infantry other then maxims do not deliver at all.
So, let USSR be same universal faction as all others. USSR right now is kinda "white crow" in all factions line.
And its fine like this.
If you want to play more defensively, pick a faction designed for that.
Each army has something unique while missing something that is basic for another army.
The only army which is truly blessed with everything is OKW, but that doesn't mean the whole faction is imbalanced for that reason.