Let us compare the T34 1941 to the 1941 Panzer 4
T34 front hull armor- 50 mm Panzer 4 front armor= 50mm.
T34 gun- 76 mm tank gun M1940 F-34, penetration 50mm
Panzer IV gun (1941 model) 7.5 cm Pak 40 penetration 108 mm
Speed- T34- 33 mph
Pkw IV= 26 mph.
Now yeah the 1941 Pkw 4 replaced the earlier model with slightly lighter armor and a lesser gun.
The 400 1940 T34 with an inferior gun did face the Pkw IV with an inferior gun, true.
So which tank was better?
The first Pz. IVs went into active service in 1939 with a short-barreled gun and were extremely successful until confronted by Soviet T-34 tanks in late 1941. To cope with this threat, the Pz. IV was given thicker armour and refitted with a long-barreled, high-velocity gun that could better penetrate the T-34’s armour. The improved Pz. IV could engage the T-34 on nearly equal terms and was superior to the U.S. Sherman tank in many respects.
So, the T34 was about the same as the Pkw IV in stats, guns (the late 1941 P4 gun was much much better, but the earlier P4 gun was not as good) armor, with a nice advantage in speed. However, in now way shape or form did it “hopelessly outclass” the PkW IV.
But the T34 replaced the T-26 with crappy 15mm riveted armor and a sad 45mm. A crappy tank. However note the Red army had over 10000 of those (plus another 4000 BT similar crappy light tanks) but only about 4000 T34s by the end of 1941.
Oh and when you earlier said the Japaneses had paper mache tanks at Khalkhin Gol, they were facing those t26s- wiki- During the Battle of Lake Khasan in July 1938 and the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in 1939, an undeclared border war with Japan on the frontier with occupied Manchuria, the Soviets deployed numerous tanks against the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA). Although the IJA Type 95 Ha-Go light tanks had diesel engines,[17][page needed] the Red Army’s T-26 and BT tanks used petrol engines which, while common in tank designs of the time, often burst into flames when hit by IJA tank-killer teams[18] using Molotov cocktails. Poor-quality welds in the Soviet armour plates left small gaps between them, and flaming petrol from the Molotov cocktails easily seeped into the fighting and engine compartment; portions of the armour plating that had been assembled with rivets also proved to be vulnerable.[19] The Soviet tanks were also easily destroyed by the Japanese Type 95 tank’s 37 mm gunfire, despite the low velocity of that gun,[20] or “at any other slightest provocation”.[21] The use of riveted armour led to a problem whereby the impact of enemy shells, even if they failed to disable the tank or kill the crew on their own, would cause the rivets to break off and become projectiles inside the tank. In other words, those “paper mache” Imperial Japanese tanks were quite a bit superior to the Soviet tanks at that time.
Certainly the early T34 had an edge over the early Pkw 4, but the early Pkw4 was mostly fighting crappy T26 light tanks.