> The leaders of the USSR, like Stalin, enabled the Nazis to invade and kill millions of people (perhaps millions of non-Russians too) by sending them raw materials prior to the attack.
Agreed. However, context matters: the trade immediately helped Nazi Germany's war effort, which in turn allowed them to execute operation Barbarossa. At the same time, the Soviet Union was desperately in need of modernizing their army and they didn't have many allies in a situation to assist them; out of this collaboration with Nazi Germany came the advanced tank designs they later used to beat the Germans. Still, not losing millions of people to the war would have been better.
The Soviets knew they were playing with fire. Hitler never hid his plans for the Soviet Union; it was the sine qua non of Nazi Germany, where most of its "lebensraum" would be acquired. But what else could they do? We are playing armchair diplomats/generals here. Remember the world was wildly different back then; empires still existed and Churchill still wanted a British Empire. Alliances that make no sense now might have made more sense then.
> If that is/had been identified as the mistake, it wouldn't seem so logical to build an empire for protection.
I disagree. The Soviet Union had more enemies, of which Nazi Germany turned out to be the most immediate one. Let's remember the West initially considered letting Germany and the Soviet Union damage each other, and saw Germany as a valuable assert against communism. They even toyed briefly with allying with the remnants of the Wehrmacht to defeat the Soviet Union after WWII! That this was even considered, albeit briefly and by few people, shows the Soviet Union was at least partly right to be paranoid.
Good to know!
> The leaders of the USSR, like Stalin, enabled the Nazis to invade and kill millions of people (perhaps millions of non-Russians too) by sending them raw materials prior to the attack.
Agreed. However, context matters: the trade immediately helped Nazi Germany's war effort, which in turn allowed them to execute operation Barbarossa. At the same time, the Soviet Union was desperately in need of modernizing their army and they didn't have many allies in a situation to assist them; out of this collaboration with Nazi Germany came the advanced tank designs they later used to beat the Germans. Still, not losing millions of people to the war would have been better.
The Soviets knew they were playing with fire. Hitler never hid his plans for the Soviet Union; it was the sine qua non of Nazi Germany, where most of its "lebensraum" would be acquired. But what else could they do? We are playing armchair diplomats/generals here. Remember the world was wildly different back then; empires still existed and Churchill still wanted a British Empire. Alliances that make no sense now might have made more sense then.
> If that is/had been identified as the mistake, it wouldn't seem so logical to build an empire for protection.
I disagree. The Soviet Union had more enemies, of which Nazi Germany turned out to be the most immediate one. Let's remember the West initially considered letting Germany and the Soviet Union damage each other, and saw Germany as a valuable assert against communism. They even toyed briefly with allying with the remnants of the Wehrmacht to defeat the Soviet Union after WWII! That this was even considered, albeit briefly and by few people, shows the Soviet Union was at least partly right to be paranoid.