The late grandfather of the knucklehead kid I raised fought as an infantryman under Konev from the Ukraine clear through the Battle of Berlin and somehow survived (can you imagine?), but never talked about it. I've tried to find reliable memoirs of Red Army troops in WWII, but everything I've turned up is bunk.
A great if horrifying read are Issac Babel's diaries of the Russian Civil War, easily as ghastly as the Thirty Years War, just as ignorantly brutal and predatory of civilian populations. Interesting to contrast them with his Red Cavalry stories which were the propaganda version of what he was privately recording more truthfully.
