h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Stalin was an evil dictator - true.
There were members of the soviet that were very agressive and expansionist - yes.
The USSR lost it's devotion to true Marxism - yes.
But the USA made the perception of the USSR and communism as pure evil to make people unite against it.
Also, the US made the cuban missile crisis - the USSR never generated a Turkish or Italian missile crisis.

"Nearly took Greece..." 15,000 children died in the anti Communist bombing of Northern Greece by Britain and the USA. Not something we can take any credit from. As I said, the CPUSA asked for funding and didn't get it. Stalin refused to back a communist revolution during the Spanish Civil War because he didn't want to upset the Western powers- and a hell of a lot of POUM (anarchist/Trotskyist militia) volunteers were executed in support of this policy. (Troksky was exiled specifically because he supported a policy of one world revolution). Still a very raw wound on the left.
Sure the USSR took Eastern Europe. They lost 27 million citizens during WWII. They wanted a buffer zone of compliant states so an invasion from the West could never happen again. There's never been any evidence that they planned to extend this to Western Europe. The Soviet Archives have been open for 10 years . Where's the invasion plan? It ain't there. I'm the first to admit that the USSR did some brutal and horrible things but look at our side-
25,000 people killed by US backed Contras in Nicaragua,
100,000 people killed in Honduras by US trained and funded security forces in 1984,
500,000 killed by a Western supported coup in Indonesia,
and so on. (As regards basic history books, try "Turning the Tide" by Noam Chomsky. All these figures supported by Human Rights Watch reports.)
We also trained the Islamic fundamentalists who became the Taliban, on the grounds that they were good, freedom loving Anti-Soviets. So we really don't have the right to point the finger here.

The Soviet Union funded revolutions the world over. Who can deny it?
The Soviet archives haven't produced a Western Europe invasion plan? To be honest I find it hard to believe. Have the military archives been made public? It is simply unbelievable that the Soviet Union didn't have at least contingency plans to invade. It is the function of the military to prepare for the next war. If they didn't at least work out invasion plans against their stated enemies then the Soviet military command would be hugely remiss in their duties.

"The Soviet Union funded revolutions the world over" - yes but so did the USA, so thats not much of a point. I actually do doubt that the USSR had invasion plans - more likley they're war plans were more along the lines of the US's - open up with a full nuclear arsenal.

erm... that wasnt NATO's Plan

Whatever. both 'sides' in the cold war (who did a lot of damage to counries caught in the middle) had plans to wipe out the other with nukes. Although it's worth noting that at the time of the cuban missile crisis, the US had amajor strategic advantage...