Lefties always point out that the meat-grinder than was the German’s Eastern Front was the deciding factor in defeating the Nazi’s in WWII, and hence Stalin’s leadership of the Russkies was the crucial feature; they almost always conveniently forget Stalin’s role in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, without which a war of that scale probably wouldn’t have happened.
The Russians did lose an enormous number of men in resisting HItler - and that’s their own damn fault for giving him the green light to pursue his aggression early on.
Many decades ago I took a political science course taught by a VERY anti-communist professor. Such professors probably don’t even exist today.
Anyway, this professor encouraged us to look at all sides of issues, not just the side we grew up with.
He spent some time discussing the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact. He pointed out that Britain and France inadvertently drove the USSR into that pact. Here’s why. The Soviets should have been invited to the 1938 Munich conference. Hitler wanted the Sudetenland. And the Sudetenland was much closer to the USSR than it was to Britain or France. Stalin should have been invited. Yet Stalin was snubbed.
So Stalin figured that if he didn’t ally with Hitler, he might be next. Hitler would invade the USSR, and the western allies would again do nothing. That turned out to be faulty reasoning on Stalin’s part. But it made sense at the time.
Please note that this professor was not defending Stalin! He was instead trying to get us to understand how Stalin thought. Not a bad approach.