Well it's also possible it was more a plate carrier rather than a full armour vest given the description Paul has supplied.
From what I recall, the Soviets used metal plates (titanium, steel, aluminium alloy and even iron) for much of their personal protection as their development of ballistic fibres was not as advanced as the West.
It sounds like the item Paul is describing is something along the lines of the ZhZT-71 vest which was quite basic, in essence it's little more than a vest with titanium plates that required an under-vest for full protection from rifle rounds. The ZhZT-71 was used from 1971 to the early 1990s.
I don't think what Paul is describing was a ZhZT-71 vest but I'm using the ZhZT-71 to illustrate how basic the Soviet body armour was at that time.
There's some decent pictures of the ZhZT-71 towards the end of the images for the under-vest listing on the following site: -
http://depotmilitary.com/index.php?id=942
ZhZT-71
