> And yet a lot of young people somehow think they were good guys.

Reality is really context dependent, and with lots of nuance. Obviously being anti-fascist and helped out taking down the Nazis makes you more of a "good guy" than "bad guy" for that specific moment, but obviously that doesn't mean the USSR or Russia is exclusively the "good guys" always, which goes the same for every country out there.

Where are you finding these young people praising the USSR though? It always seems like a talking point from conservatives on the internet, as I'm never able to find these elusive USSR-praisers in real-life. There is a ton of people ironically saying they love USSR, but surely these are not the people you're talking about?

Russians were allies with nazi Germany at the start of the war. They did not have any problem with nazi Germany when they invaded Poland together. Only later did they hate Germany because the Germans betrayed them. To this day Russians don't have a problem with facism (Russia is facist). They only have a problem with the nazis because they betrayed Russia.

The USSR was one of the most authoritarian regimes in world history. They killed millions of people. They invaded Poland together with the Nazis, which was the start of WWII.

I have no idea what was bad about the fascists that wasn't equally true of the Soviets - the underlying systems of thought and actions were essentially the same. There is no sense in which I can see the Soviets were the "good guys." They were simply allies of convenience, and the net result of the war was that half of Europe was handed over to them and lived under this horrific regime.

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