Patrick, not to sound like a know-it-all or anything, but Stalin did not free the serfs. Russian serfs were officially freed in 1861 while Russia was still under control of the Tsarist Empire under Alexander II. And Stalin certainly went after the poor in his purges. Almost every soldier who served overseas in WWII ended up in the Gulag camps, simply because they had seen the West. These are simple soldiers, not powerful military officers or anything like that. He also went after the kulaks who were Russian poor land owning peasants and pretty much wiped their class of the face of Russia. Perhaps this is what you're talking about when you said he free the serfs, but in reality all he did was demonize a slightly more afluant class of peasant and set them against each other. Pretty smart I'd say, but, once again, the guy was a monster.

"Russia's military and technology was just so dominant at the time and every time that the US felt they gained a step in the arms race, we found Russia right there with us."

This is true, but not until after WWII. During the war Russia was painfully behind the rest of the world with a couple notable exceptions (like the T-34). During the war the Allies pumped a lot of technology into the Soviet Union to help them out, which is where a lot of Soviet arms researchers got their start.