Stalin was paranoid about the Communist Party, the Red Army and the Soviet People even before you start worrying about foreigners. In that kind of climate you only do things when your extremely confident your going to win since any failure risks your position, your life and arguably the Soviet state, depending on whether you think Stalin had any loyalty to that. I think some of the attempts to "cut out" if you will Stalin from the Communist ideal does bely that he saw himself as the vanguard of a Communist movement and foremost defender of Lenin's legacy. He didn't see himself as merely a trumped up party boss who had somehow got above middle brutality.
Obviously you can make mistakes, the Winter War for one, but arguably a belief the Finns would capitulate wasn't unreasonable, the Baltic states had done so after all, and certainly it was difficult to imagine they would defend themselves so well and the Red Army would perform so badly.
So Stalin would be happy to gobble up Poland, so long as Germany was so weak they couldn't simply storm across the frontier to fight the Red Army, backed by British and French capital and other forces. The anti-Bolshevik crusade might look a bit silly given OTL, but its not that hard to imagine, certainly if Stalin were to rather inexplicably try it in the late 30's before western attitudes on Hitler had begun to sour. I don't think the German government would ever appear that weak unless it was wracked by civil war. Hostile Soviet actions would almost surely act to solidify a rightist German Government. With that in mind a Soviet invasion of Europe seems unlikely.
Obviously you can make mistakes, the Winter War for one, but arguably a belief the Finns would capitulate wasn't unreasonable, the Baltic states had done so after all, and certainly it was difficult to imagine they would defend themselves so well and the Red Army would perform so badly.
So Stalin would be happy to gobble up Poland, so long as Germany was so weak they couldn't simply storm across the frontier to fight the Red Army, backed by British and French capital and other forces. The anti-Bolshevik crusade might look a bit silly given OTL, but its not that hard to imagine, certainly if Stalin were to rather inexplicably try it in the late 30's before western attitudes on Hitler had begun to sour. I don't think the German government would ever appear that weak unless it was wracked by civil war. Hostile Soviet actions would almost surely act to solidify a rightist German Government. With that in mind a Soviet invasion of Europe seems unlikely.