In TIK's YouTube series on the Courland Pocket, he described how by late war WW2, the average Soviet infantry division was considerably smaller than that of German infantry divisions. He made it clear that this wasn't a comparison of understrength units, but a change to the table of organization for the typical Soviet infantry division. TIK argued that this was because the Soviets were suffering severe manpower shortages by 1945.

However, I don't really see how this makes any sense. Yes, the Soviets were suffering manpower shortages, but how does decreasing the size of divisions fix that? You would still need the same number of troops to cover a certain length of the front line or to attack an enemy formation. If anything, this would seem to worsen the manpower problem, as you would need more divisions to cover the same front and more officers to staff those division HQs.

Is there something to this I'm missing?