@Orleander: sorry, but the fate of Stalin's own people or the Ukraine famines has precious little to do with whether he planned to invade Germany or Western Europe. Yes, the man was a callous butcher and more than a little mad towards the end, but you need to look at the question dispassionately. Here in the West, we had decades of propaganda that the Soviet empire, because it was so "evil", was going to invade the West. It was and is a non sequitur[1].

As far as I can see, Stalin and his successors were rather cautious in foreign policy - ruthlessly exerting dominance over neighbouring areas that they perceived as their zone of influence - unfortunately including the Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states. But Stalin and his successors were too shrewd to venture on the kind of risky adventurist aggression of Hitler.

I may be wrong, not having read "Icebreaker", but nothing in the synopsis you helpfully provided seems terribly convincing to me. Most of the stuff on military technology sounds like Russia was just preparing to fight fire with fire (dive bombers, paras, robust tanks etc) and although there was a disastrous false start, she actually did pull that off after 1942.

[1]Actually, you might take it the opposite way - look at the way Stalin slowly established power domestically, rather like a nasty kid methodically pulling legs of an insect, and ask yourself whether such a person would plan to attack a frighteningly powerful neighbour only a year after they had seemingly effortlessly smashed the combined might of two Great Powers in a few weeks...