Feels tacky to self-quote, but ...
... since we're discussing this anyway, I feel like I should elaborate.
Yes, the Soviet Union is being portrayed in an antagonistic manner and the Russians are "the baddies", but it's done so in a way that completely aligns with my experiences. Regardless of the regime of the moment (so I also feel no need to differentiate between Soviet and Russian here), Russia is pretty consistently a fairly antagonistic place, both to foreigners and its own inhabitants. Even when you have interactions with fundamentally decent people, the paranoid and ruthlessly powerful state security apparatus, be it the Soviet KGB or the modern FSB, as well as the relentless brainwashing of the masses, poisons everything. The methods we've seen used are fairly true to real-world methods used by the KGB/FSB.
So this really isn't "the Russians" being stand-in villains because you need villains. It's IMO a pretty informed portrayal of how a "partnership" with Russia might play out.
I'm actually - legitimately - interested in those issues. For me, the portrayal of Russians feels a lot more in line with my own real-life experiences (I'm a linguist working with minority languages of Russia, and while it was still possible spend a substantial amount of time there) than is normal in American television - it for once actually feels like a show that's done some research and has some people familiar with Russia in the writing room.
... since we're discussing this anyway, I feel like I should elaborate.
Yes, the Soviet Union is being portrayed in an antagonistic manner and the Russians are "the baddies", but it's done so in a way that completely aligns with my experiences. Regardless of the regime of the moment (so I also feel no need to differentiate between Soviet and Russian here), Russia is pretty consistently a fairly antagonistic place, both to foreigners and its own inhabitants. Even when you have interactions with fundamentally decent people, the paranoid and ruthlessly powerful state security apparatus, be it the Soviet KGB or the modern FSB, as well as the relentless brainwashing of the masses, poisons everything. The methods we've seen used are fairly true to real-world methods used by the KGB/FSB.
So this really isn't "the Russians" being stand-in villains because you need villains. It's IMO a pretty informed portrayal of how a "partnership" with Russia might play out.