Brainiac Five posted:

I think a lot of people are somehow confusing the Red Army with the Catalonian militias, since they're insisting that there was no chain of command, that officers couldn't control their formations, that everything was dictated by the urges of the common soldier. In fact, the language used goes even further and suggests the Red Army was more akin to a hive of ants or bees than to human beings, which is fairly loving fascinating as a way to defend mass rapes of German, Polish, Hungarian, and Soviet citizens. Since the idea of the Red Army as a mindless horde is and was a major component of Nazi propaganda and Cold War anti-Soviet propaganda. I suppose that's a sign of how deeply embedded that propaganda is, that it's resurrected as an apologetic for the Red Army.