Every time the topic of Russia and WW2 gets brought up (especially when talking about russian nationalism) I like to bring up the fact and remind everyone that Russia got what it had coming to it in WW2, and should never be seen as "heroes" in any way.. Victims debatable, but not heroes. And that's not even factoring their monstrous mid and post war bullshit. It should never be forgotten (but sadly is in even current efforts in the west to talk about the "truth" of WW2) that they spent the lead up to the war making economic, trade and defense deals with the nazis, sending massive amounts of raw materials to them (allowing for the invasion of western europe) and even tried to become members of the Axis Alliance! (Hitler and the nazis being stupid morons meant it was useless thankfully) To say nothing of the fact that they secretly plotted and planned with the Nazis to carve up a sovereign nation (Poland) and did so! And in a final bit of irony, they actually made one bit of nazi propaganda partially truthful. In that a russian train did in fact cross the German border on the morning of operation barbarossa, but it was merely the latest and last of thousands of such trains bringing Nazi Germany raw materials for their war efforts. (a good bit of which was then used against them lol)
I meant the country, government and leaders did.. sadly the people were just along for the ride. ^