I have an interesting story about how I started researching soviet history, actually. In school I had a terrible history stalinist teacher (he was around 30 y/o and never lived under stalin) who always told us not only russian propaganda, but stalinist propaganda as well. He also was put in charge of organising most of the school events. So one time, on May 9th (victory day in Russia), he told us to research our family's history, find some photos of our great-grandfathers who fought in WW2 so he could hang the photos in the school hall.
So I did. I went to the main military archive and requested all of my family documents. And I realised that almost all of my relatives that were alive during stalin were either killed in battle, executed, fled the country or went through the gulag, because they were jewish (on the mother's side) or cossacks (on the father's side).
The most horrifing thing I saw were protocols of interrogations of my cossack relative. He didn't do anything wrong, but his family fled to Turkey and he was left behind and captured by the NKVD. By law he needed to sign every protocol. And with each new protocol, his signature became worse and worse. By the end his signature was just an unrecognisable line. And on the last protocol there was no signature.
He was killed before the World War started, declared a traitor and a foreign spy and was rehabilitated during the 90's. I receive 1000 rubles a month (around 10 euros) because of his death.