Norman M. Naimark in his 1995 book The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation 1945 – 1949, expands on the idea that Stalin and the Soviets did not occupy Germany with "specific long-range goals" in mind.
According to Naimark, Soviet occupation was shaped largely by a complex mixture of opportunism, "Bolshevik principle,” and conflict with the West. Most importantly, Moscow wanted to build popular support among ordinary Germans for its policies and those of the German Communists (KPD, after April 1946 the Socialist Unity Party, or SED). More generally, the Soviets wanted to edge out the Americans and the British for hegemony over the entire country, eliminate all traces of Nazism, guarantee the creation of a "democratic" and "antifascist" German state, and collect reparations.
Soviet goals for building popular support was almost immediately undercut by the behavior of Red Army soldiers during the initial period of occupation. Naimark's research supports the estimate made by German historians 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. While Berlin was hardest hit, the problem was endemic in the Soviet zone.
Though aware of the mass rapes, The Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SVAG), KPD/SED leaders, and high-level Soviet officials remained unable or unwilling to do much to stop them. The extent to which Stalin was aware of the situation is unclear, but there is evidence he condoned the practice in general. The implications to Soviet/German relations were always serious, and the result was that so long as Russians ruled in the Eastern zone, there could be no legitimacy for the Communist Party of Germany, which initially might have been counted on to be one of the most promising in Europe.
German women and men in the Eastern Zone were plagued by Soviet depredations throughout the occupation period. The Soviets fundamentally altered the economy of eastern Germany by forcibly redistributing land and expropriating factories and production. Soldiers and occupation officials took an enormous quantity of loot, everything from wristwatches to priceless artwork.
After the failure of the Allies to settle the reparations question, the Soviets went ahead with large-scale removals from the Eastern Zone. Naimark estimates that the Soviets achieved their goal of ten billion dollars in reparations through removals and ongoing (or current) production by 1950. The costs to the German economy were enormous, Moscow's "insatiable" demand for reparations resulted in the loss of perhaps one third of eastern Germany's industrial base.
Another factor critical to occupation history and to the stability of the German Democratic Republic (DDR), was the creation of the extensive secret police apparatus that would become the “Stasi.” At the same time, relations with the East German public were further undermined by the activities of the NKVD/MVD which led an almost completely independent Soviet secret policy operation in the zone rounding up a total of 122,671 suspected Nazis and anti-Soviet elements and depositing them in "special camps" where as many as 43,889 perished.
Naimark concludes that the Soviet occupation of Germany was a failure for the Soviets and a disaster for the Germans. Moscow obtained extensive reparations only at the cost of nearly crippling the East German economy. Heavy-handed Soviet and German Communist tactics in the zone encouraged the Western allies (and Western Germans) to accept Germany's division. Terrorized and often deprived of their livelihoods, Germans in the east came to despise SVAG and the SED.