. . . the earlier accounts were gross exaggerations by Khruschev, they just got repeated enough to become accepted history in the west until the fall of the USSR and scholars. But by then, so too many historians (particularly "pop" ones) still repeat it. . .
That’s the challenge of it!

We have to suss our what history is based on pretty okay sources, and which isn’t, and no question that we should should embrace this challenge. And I strongly suspect both you and I are in agreement on this last point. Now, on some specifics, sure, we probably disagree. For example, that in the first immediate hours of the Nazi attack, Stalin ordered Soviet military units not to fight back hoping upon hope that it was all a mistake and the action of rogue Nazi commanders, and that Hitler would correct this error and pull them back. And obviously, that didn’t happen.
I do think it’s important to run down Stalin.
But . . . I think we can do so honestly. In fact, it’s more effective to do so honestly and to take the tact, maybe it’s not quite as bad as it looks (because frankly, it looks terrible!). Like Heinrich Himmler of the Nazis, we can run him down as a failed chicken farmer. And then we can say, okay, maybe it’s the case that he was a marginal chicken farmer, as if that is any better. Both are effective.