It fits with a lot, especially the early success of the Wehrmacht in the invasion, and Stalin's apparent refusal to believe in the invasion until it was underway, despite superior intelligence. Regarding Stalin's failure to act on the many warnings he received, the prior events sort of back him up. Hitler ordered the invasion of France nearly a dozen times between the fall of Poland in October 1939 and the actual invasion in June 1940. If someone with top intelligence on Hitler's orders had started issuing warnings right away, people would have become thoroughly sick of listening to them by the time the attack actually came. And they would have been caught by surprise in the invasions of Norway & Denmark, which were largely in response to the western Allies disgustingly cynical plans to "aid" Finland.

The Germans were not stopped by Soviet military resistance in their invasion, which ultimately settled on a drive toward Moscow. They stopped because their men and vehicles were at the end of their rope, badly in need of rest and refitting, especially with the onset of winter. There were also logistical issues peculiar to Russia. Throughout the invasion, the Soviets were ordering continuous attacks on the German forces, and the attack which supposedly stopped them outside Moscow was really just the last assault the Germans smashed before calling off the push to the capital. Much counterfactual speculation hypothesizes that had they jumped off earlier in the spring, the Germans would have had more time and better weather, with fewer of the aforementioned logistical difficulties, and might have succeeded in reaching Moscow earlier (even though that wasn't their objective until they were well into it and realized the Russians were probably not going to be able to stop them). But Stalin would certainly have viewed an invasion of the USSR in terms of the threat to himself, and it's not a stretch to assume that he believed the Germans were not going to invade in 1941.

Hitler's eventual plan to attack the USSR was obvious to anyone who had paid attention to his career, moreso than even the Holocaust. But the optimal start of the campaign season had come and gone, and he was diverted by Mussolini's misadventures in Greece. Considerable mechanized and air units were deployed in the Balkans and Crete, which, even with the light casualties in the former, required maintenance and refitting before they would be available for Russia. Crete took a heavy toll on the paratroops and especially the German air transport (already battered in the operations of 1940), which would have been very important in Russia, given the lack of roads and incompatible rail transport. With the earlier patterns of German activity, and the realities of what they were up to, plus the not-unreasonable guess that they would be going all the way when they did come at Russia, either to Moscow & Leningrad, the political centers, or to the Caucasus by way of Vorozneh, to sieze the oil and agricultural production, Stalin had good reason to think the invasion would not come until early 1942.

With that in mind, the best explanation for his inaction is that he planned to beat Hitler to the punch, and did not want to take any defensive measures because that would delay or hinder his own operations. Soviet incompetence and lack of professional leadership meant that complicating an offensive plan with alternative defensive contingencies was a bad idea. It should be noted that the logistical restrictions did not all apply in the same way to the Soviets as they did to the Germans. The Soviets would be invading into a developed country, with good roads, and have a relatively short distance to go. They were after the political leadership of Germany, rather than its economic resources, most of which Germany imported anyway, such as iron from Sweden & France, or oil from Romania (and Russia), so there was no division of targets, nor did they have to worry about foreign aid reaching Germany, and the Ruhr was considerably close to Russian forward bases in eastern Poland than the Soviet industrial centers were to German airfields in western Poland, or even later, Belarus & Ukraine, and thus more easily bombed. Also, the Russians would not have to contend with geographical obstacles like the Pripet Marsh, that forced the Germans to plan two simultaneous invasions, north and south of it. Thus, Stalin could have planned his campaign in the fall or earlier spring than would be an ideal time to begin a march to Moscow or Maikop from Poland.

A rational assessment of the German situation in early 1941 explains Stalin's refusal to act on the warnings, if it is accepted that he had plans in motion of his own which he was reluctant to disrupt. The ability of the Germans demonstrated often in the course of that war to switch rapidly between defense and offense, to go from advancing to disengaging under fire, from retreat to counter-attack, should not delude any armchair strategists as to the difficulty of such manuevers, or of the Red Army having any real capabilities in that regard. Additionally a favorite tactical doctrine of the Germans in both World Wars was to disrupt offensives by attacks, and that counter-attacking was a better defense. Avoiding blows with temporary local retreats and then catching an advancing enemy off-guard and wrong-footed was considered a superior tactic, as well as less costly than weathering attacks in fortifications, because you retain initiative in the former manner, and are less at the mercy of the enemy's tempo of operations or choice of battlefields. The smashing sucesses in the early days of the invasion suggest this doctrine being played out on a large example. The Soviets created the myth of a strategic retreat, trading space for time, which was plausible, because they did it against Napoleon, but those manuevers were beyond the capability of the Red Army's leadership, as well as outside the tolerances of Stalin. Soviet units cut off through no fault of their own, because the enemy got into their rear by attacking elsewhere, were punished if they managed to fight through the encircling forces to rejoin their lines. This, again, fits with the theory that the Soviets in 1941 were intent to prosecuting an offensive into Germany, and that failure to advance was a deviation from standing orders and plans, rather than the actual of preservation of assets for defense.

As far as the academic side goes, this sort of thing is part and parcel of the state of information especially pertaining to the USSR throughout the Cold War. In addition to Soviet hagiography by sympathetic Western press and academia, there was active propaganda by the Soviets and subversion of Western intellectual institutions, which received a great deal more resources than espionage (admittedly in part, because active subversion required more ongoing support, whereas blackmail sufficed to keep spies in business). Soviet defectors (including possibly Suslov) have detailed how the USSR sought to corrupt the process in Western academia to change how ideas were promulgated and transmitted in our society, the better to undermine any resistance to communist agendas and ideology. A lot of the social unrest in the late 60s, especially on campuses can be traced to such sources. Contrary to popular mythology, these kids were not rebelling against their parents, they were so-called Red-Diaper babies, whose parents and teachers cheered them on. I recall an interview with one defector taped in the 80s I believe, where he said that the damage had already been done and that it would take at least a generation of conscious effort to undo.

At the very best outlook on the media, it is corporately packaged pablum, rendered for consumption by the lowest common denominator, and devoid of meaningful substance. More correctly, it is a self-reinforcing, self-perpetuating industry, formatively influenced by tainted academia, and sustained by a propensity to employ and advance like-minded persons. Fox News and similarly toothless opposition are allowed to exist as a kind of tangible Emmanuel Goldstein. There is way too much interchange of personnel for it to be truly different or opposed to the rest of the corporate media. Academia is pretty much the same way it seems, which is why I have as little to do with either as I can. I never understood even on a surface level why people get all het up and bothered about "fake news" and the rest, since anyone interested in becoming seriously informed as the ability to do so nowadays, with minimal effort. I never took Fox News seriously, either, as on the one level, I didn't need or want anyone telling me what was going on, and on another, saw no more reason to trust it than the Republican Party or any other purportedly mainstream opposition institution to statism or cultural degeneration.

Most of the public issues up for discussion are not even discussing the real issues anyway, blathering about fine points and semantics. No one applies rational thought, merely rationalizations of their own positions, and appeals to emotion. Even people on the "right" side are drawn into this nonsense. I have seen more articles and columns than I care to count recently condemning the violence at Berkley, citing it as the birthplace of the Free Speech movement, which is a bit of a surprise to anyone who has read arguments in favor of free speech and laws protecting speech all written decades and even centuries before anyone worth a moments' historical consideration lived near Berkley. But it makes a nice and superficial talking point, so let's keep going along with the myth of the 60s.

Glantz, the historian cited in the original post, actually did some work pointing out the suspect nature of Soviet or else the overreliance of Western historians on such sources, and yet, still succumbed to the myth promulgated by such methods.