The sacrifice and courage of Soviet soldiers in the face of Nazi aggression is profound and worthy of admiration, yes.

Should be noted that Stalin was a Hitler-enabler and early ally, or at least subtle collaborator, leading up to the onset of the war. The western democracies should have done a better job of building a coalition with Stalin in the thirties, but failed, hoping appeasement and hand-wringing would do the trick instead.

Soviet soldiers also invaded Finland around that time and were complete assholes there, even if they did get their asses handed to them by a numerically-inferior, but fierce fighting source. It's sad that most of the slaughter was inflicted upon Ukrainian conscripts who probably didn't actually give a shit about annexing Finland.