If the soviets hadnt made the pact with the nazis, they wouldnt have been able to wage their war across europe nearly as well, much less Barbarossa (Barbarossa was largely supplied by stockpiled soviet fuel). They would have sputtered out and fallen on their own, because their economy (like Italy and Japan's) were in crisis and only held together by plunder, or tried to invade with far, far less resources from no soviet trade.

If the Soviets haven't made the pact, then they would've run a very real risk of fighting a two front war with Germany and Japan. The Soviets were already at war with Japan when the nonaggression pact was signed between the Soviet Union and Germany. Similarly, the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Japan right before Operation Barbarossa, which once again saved the Soviet Union from fighting a two front war.

I don't think it's a miscalculation at all for the Soviet Union to do everything in its power to prevent the opening of two fronts at the opposite ends of the country.

[–] ComradeRat@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago

The issue is that (again with hindsight), the "expand into the ussr" faction of japanese leadership had already been solidly defeated by 1939 by the "expand in China" and "expand in SEA" factions, so there was no possibility of the border skirmishes expanding to a full second front. And Japan already running into overextension problems and the limits of their production by 41. So again, while I get why the soviets made the choices they did at the time, with hindsight it seems like the wrong choice imo