As you can imagine the Russians were extremely angry at the Germans for invading the Soviet Union and committing so many massacres. This anger was increased further when the Russians began to see how the average German lived, the Soviets soldiers had been told that they lived in a worker's paradise, but when they saw what the average German lived like it made them even angrier, they wondered why the Germans would invade their country when they already had such a high standard of living. The Soviets wanted to make the German populace suffer the way their families had to suffer under German occupation.
With this in mind it should be easy to understand why so many Russians are unrepentant about the abuses and mass rapes. Its led to much revision by soviet and contemporary Russian historians. For example a Russian author and historian O.A. Rzheshevsky criticized Antonty Beevor (who wrote much about the mass rapes committed by Soviet soldiers) by saying that Beevor was lying and believing Neo-Nazi myths made up about the Soviets. That being said there are some Soviets soldiers who have said they are upset with what they did and that they got caught up in the heat of battle.
A former Soviet army officer was quoted as saying
We were young, strong, and four years without women. So we tried to catch German women and ... Ten men raped one girl. There were not enough women; the entire population run from the Soviet Army. So we had to take young, twelve or thirteen year-old. If she cried, we put something into her mouth. We thought it was fun. Now I can not understand how I did it. A boy from a good family... But that was me
So you can see that there were some Soviets who were sorry for what they did and there are some who are no doubt proud of what they did. I mean it is easy to understand why the rapes occured many Soviet soldiers hadn't seen a woman for quite some time and many of the Soldiers were under the constant influence of alcohol. This along with a desire for revenge was a potent mixture.
Sources:
Antony Beevor: Fall of Berlin
Alexievich, Svetlana: War's Unwomanly Face
In Anthony Beevors book, "The Fall of Berlin 1945," Beevor states that the subject has been so repressed in modern day Russia that Red Army veterans refuse to acknowledge what happened during the invasion of East Prussia and Germany. Soldiers will admit to hearing some stories then dismiss them for being either excessive and an inevitable result of war. One tank commander said " they all lifted their skirts for us." He then boasted that "2 million of our children were born in Germany."
Most soldiers of the Red Army tried to convince themselves that the German women were happy with their fate or accepted that it was their turn to suffer after what the Wehrmacht did to Russia. A Soviet major told a British journalist "our soldiers were so sex starved that they often raped old women of 60,70, or even 80 much to these grandmothers surprise if not delight.
I am also curious as to the experience of the German victims. Was there a widespread infrastructure for them to abort the resultant pregnancies?
Was there ever a stigma surrounding children born ~9 months after the Battle of Berlin, seeing as they might have Russian fathers?
Did that stigma differ in East/West Germany years later?
No one has mentioned this book yet, so I'll throw it in there even though it doesn't answer the view of Soviet soldiers but rather the perspective of German women. It is a diary of a woman journalist who lived in Berlin during the Red Army "liberation" and experienced firsthand the struggle for daily physical and mental survival in the immediate postwar months, with a particular emphasis on sexual violence. A chilling account of the experience of war and occupation for women.
"A Woman in Berlin" by Anonymous, translated by Philip Boehm.
edited for reading clarity
This is not a factual source, but rather a prose poem by a young Soviet artillery officer who witnessed this:
The little daughter’s on the mattress,
Dead. How many have been on it
A platoon, a company perhaps?
A girl’s been turned into a woman,
A woman turned into a corpse.
It's all come down to simple phrases:
Do not forget! Do not forgive!
Blood for blood! A tooth for a tooth!
The poem was Prussian Nights, written by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.
A follow-up question: I'm currently in a modern Germany class, and my professor said that sometimes after these rapes, Soldiers would come back to the women with gifts as if they were dating. They honestly believed they were in relationships, and some women went along in order to have protection/access to resources others may not. Is this true? What reasoning was there for them to think this?
Any idea as to how many Red Army soldiers were executed or otherwise punished for committing such crimes against German civilians? I'd imagine that at least a few must have been put up against the wall as lip service to the laws of war.
Helke Sander's film, Befreier und Befreite, "Liberators take Liberties," addressed this topic and included interviews with both women and soldiers.
There was a special issue of the journal October addressing the topic:
Norman Naimark's book has a whole chapter on rape:
Page 133: "The German women's fear of Russians and the association of Soviet troops with rape and looting became the central German argument against closer ties with the Soviet Union."
Reviewer Steven Remy:
Naimark's research supports the estimate made by German historians Barbara Johr and Helke Sander that Soviet soldiers raped as many as two million German women between the time their counteroffensive reached German territory and well past the formal end of hostilities (see Johr and Sander, eds., Befreier und Befreite, Krieg, Vergewaltigungen, Kinder, Munich: Verlag Antje Kunstmann, 1992). While Berlin was hardest hit, the problem was endemic in the Soviet zone. Though aware of the mass rapes, SVAG officers in Germany, KPD/SED leaders, and high-level Soviet officials remained unable or unwilling to do much to stop them.