@Hobbes:
I’ve looked into this strat before on the Europe forum under the USSR Invasion thread and tried it. The main difference to yours is that G bought an IC for Romania on G1 and 10 armor for it on G2, allowing to move 18 inf, 5 art and 13 armor to Belarus on G3.
One issue about your strat is that, since it is Global Russia’s income goes from 28 to 37, it may just give her enough offensive power to crush the Belarus stack on R3 if it builds 2 rounds of only artillery/tanks.
But assuming Russia was more shy on its purchases or that Italy has taken Belarus first then the optimal Russian move is to abandon Novgorod, keep 1 infantry on Smolensk/Bryansk and mass everything on Russia. That way the Italian can opener movement is prevented and I doubt that Germany will be able to move its stack to Smolensk/Bryansk on G4 if the Russians keep adding artillery. And even if it moves a G5 attack on Moscow most likely will be unachievable, even with the additional planes, since Germany hasn’t built any land units and Russia should be sitting upon a lot of infantry.
I forgot to mention that I do not invade the Soviet Union until G5 in most games and occasionally on G4. Japan is giving them enough to worry about in Global. Also I do not go for Moscow, I make priorities and stick to them. Hitler could not decide which objective was the most important, pick one and throw everything at and then move on to objective 2 but do not go for more than one at once. I hit Leningrad, allowing me to hold the north and get another bonus. From there the forces continually push in without putting themselves in danger while a new offensive is beginning in the south from my Romanian Major. Buy cheap units, Russia is buying cheap units and you are not going to counter them by spending on expensive things like tanks. I beat them by buying infantry and artillery and simply having more of them. Granted I also have a larger tank force but I add very little to it as the remaining money goes into Luftwaffe and U-boats to keep the other allies honest.