Indeed! Well, the Soviets have been particularly paranoid since the end of WW2 for suffering from another surprise attack, not that it took much to make Stalin and the Soviet leadership paranoid, but it was kinda pushed up to 11 after WW2. It's a bit difficult to understand this I guess, but for many Russians and east Europeans in general WW2 is still deeply present in their consciousness. So everything in the west became fascist and they always feared a new Invasion could simply hit the Soviets unprepared like it did in 1941 and the west would interpret their extensive military as preperation for a premtive attack and pure agression. Seriously it almost lead to a nuclear war when the NATO started their training with Able Archer in the 1980s, the largest NATO manouver up to this point. So yeah, they had a very agressive strategy when it came to the idea on how the motherland should be protected. On the other side though, a lot of it was just hype really. It is true that the Soviets had a huge army and outnumbered at the very least Europe forces on a massive scale at least on land based troops, particularly in the numbers of tanks and air defence which was even larger when you take the Warsaw Pakt in to account. But they paid a high price for it. In other words, the logistics and training. For example, Soviet armor had for the most part an auto-loader lowering the crew to 4, where as many western tanks had an aditional crew member for it. It lowered not only the survivability of the tanks, since the amunition and fuse had to be stored in one place, it also meant their vehicles have been really cramped due to the low profile. You hit something on a Soviet tank, and it would almost always be a vital hit. A tank for it self is not really known for beeing comfortable, but this was even worse with Soviet tanks. It was estimated if the Soviets ever decided for a pre-emtive strike, nothing would have stoped them really and they could have reached the French border or even Paris in a short time, however they most probably couldn't hold the Territories they conquered, a lot of their equipment would brake down, long supply lines forcing them to retreat and so on. And once the americans troops arrived it would be a slow but steady push back till they reached the Russian border. It also made it apparent where the Soviets really lacked the numbers and equipment, most notably in navall units, air support and their nuclear arsenal which was smaller compared to the west and it took like 2 decades before they catched up with their missile programms.
But, since most of the major nations had nuclear weapons nothing of that mattered as regardless which side would attack first, the loosing side would always fall back on nuclear weapons - most probably, thus rendering any kind of strategy, tactic or idea moot.
