HeavyWeaponsGuy
Banned
There were excellent reasons to do all of the above, yes. But before '37 and the purges and the consolidation of power it wasn't on the agenda, and if things went even slightly differently abroad or domestically, maybe they wouldn't have been so in the short term.
In the very long term, yes of course. The Baltic countries were pretty valuable strategically, that much was known since before the 13th c.
Notably the Reds did fight over Finland, and did invade the Caucasus, and so on. But that was in the "exporting revolution" phase and Trotsky was commissar and there was lots of chaos and opportunity. The situation wasn't the same at all until much later (as in the late 30s).
Oh, maybe I misread you earlier, but I agree with basically everything you said, Stalin avoided picking early fights because the idea was to build his own power base, and to industrialize the USSR, that is to say, an inward before an outward focus.