Also For Your Eyes Only, in which a Greek drug smuggler, a Cuban hit man, a Belgian hit man, and an East German biathelete are much worse than the Russians.
Skywatcher:
They’re working for the Soviets, so I don’t see how they’re portrayed as worse than them.
On the other hand, both Octopussy and The Living Daylights have as the antagonists rogue Soviet officers (in concert with others) who do their dirty deeds behind the Kremlin’s back because the Soviet government is too reasonable to do such evil things.
I Spy on TV (mid-1960s) which teamed American secret agents with a Russian one versus an international syndicate of bad guys.
Heck, in A VIEW TO A KILL the Soviets decide to award the Order of Lenin to 007, because they’re reasonable enough to grant that he’s earned it.
I think you’re referring to The Man from UNCLE, unless Bill Cosby or Robert Culp was supposed to be Russian.
The Russian on UNCLE was played by David “Ducky” McCallum, who is Scottish IRL.
Has Marya on Hogan’s Heroes been mentioned yet? Granted, she was a “White” Russian, meaning she was probably anti-Soviet (as opposed to simply being from Belarus), but she did oppose the Nazis.
Bob “Elroy Carpenter” Hastings played a downed Russian pilot in one episode of Hogan’s Heroes. There was also Vladimir Minsk, played by Leonid Kinskey (“Sasha” in Casablanca), in the series’ pilot.
White Nights? Russian and American find common ground, and in the end the Soviets do the right thing and everyone is free.
The President’s Analyst, maybe? The President's Analyst (7/9) Movie CLIP - Please, No Russian - I'm Spying! (1967) HD - YouTube
Good one.
The Phone Company is pure evil.
Ah yes, Agent Triple-X. 
Aside from Kriegler, they’re all basically mercenaries. The Soviet they’re working for, General Gogol, is the same reasonable man seen in The Spy Who Loved Me and will be seen in Octopussy
Right, my point is that they’re not MORE evil than the Soviet government, they’re agents of that government (whether permanently employed or on a job-for-hire basis), so their level is basically equal, whether you consider it to be in a good light or not. The villains in Octopussy and The Living Daylights, on the other hand, are clearly being portrayed as more evil than the Soviet government.
The TV series Men Into Space (1959-1960) has a couple episodes with Russian cosmonauts. They’re portrayed as normal people.
The Six Million Dollar Man had an episode where Gary Collins portrayed a Soviet cosmonaut as a good guy. In the “Venus probe” episodes, the Soviet spies were portrayed more as “bureaucrat” than “monster”.
This is completely backward. The movie portrayed the military personal as reasonable and competent (as well as the Soviets by reference as they hadn’t done anything wrong); it was the civilian scientists (especially the Dabney Coleman character) that were insisting the automated systems were infallible and pushed for military escalation. The civilians were also demanding harsh treatment towards the Matthew Broderick character, insisting he had to be a foreign agent since their systems were too perfect to allow a mere kid to hack into them. The military treats him relatively decently, all things considered.
And when Falken returns to NORAD, McKittrick immediately tries to discredit him but General Beringer has none of it and takes Falken’s speech, appealing to Beringer’s humanity, to heart. Beringer couldn’t be happier to stand down, and couldn’t show more anguish when forced to order the bombers back to fail-safe.
“God damn it I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good. Let the boy in there Major.”
The Bob Clampett Loony Toons cartoon Russian Rhapsody had a very positive view of the “Gremlins From the Kremlin”.
One that hasn’t been mentioned that came to me early on was Hopscotch, from 1980, with Walter Matthau playing a US CIA agent working against the Russians, but also on a friendly basis with his opposite number, played by Herbert Lom. Compared with the US Agents chasing him (led by Ned Beatty), the Russian is much more of a gentleman than they.
And my point is that they’re more interested in money rather than ideals. If you recall, Kristatos intended to sell the ATAC to Gogol even though that’s who hired him. Gogol could have let his man shoot at Bond but didn’t.
Not American or a Film (later made into a film, but not a coldwar one though) but Smilie’s KGB nemesis Karla in the La Carre books is a very sympathetic character, not a villain by any means.
In fact the book ends with Smilie being disappointed that he eventually convinces him to defect (by threatening him with knowledge of what he’s done to protect his daughter).
On TV, he was played by Patrick “Jean-Luc Picard” Stewart.
BUMPED
Rewatchng FYEO, as far as I can tell, they are simply trying to do whats best for the USSR, nothing evil per se. Getting hold of enemy equipment is a standard part of statecraft,