Dan is pretty decent but like he often says, he's not a historian and his eastern front episode was iffy in some places. There's an /r/askhistorians thread on the topic here that covers the topic, with the general idea being that while there were instances of Soviet soldiers forced into battle underequipped, it was more because of the chaotic nature of the early German invasions that threw supply lines into disarray and large groups of soldiers sometimes found themselves surrounded and cut off from supplies. The Soviets were pretty callous toward human life often, but they weren't so stupid as to literally throw unarmed men into gunfire as a standard doctrine.

Also his BPFA series is about WWI, not the Eastern Front.