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Starvation? Revolution?
One of the causes of the October Revolution in 1917 was that cities had a large shortage of bread. This was a lesson that the Reds internalized. This is one reason for the Holodomor. The central planning of the 1930s under Joseph Stalin, once again, led to starvation. But Stalin ensured that the center of power had sufficient bread. It’s also the origin of the hard currency-only stores. The Torgsin stores, which have come back. They have different names but have the same function.
In the 1920s, the United States helped. To be exact, what today we would call a Non Governmental organization. It was the American relief Administration, and Russian volunteers were persecuted under Stalinist rule. In the 1930s, most people outside Russia did not know. Close to the center, people had bread.
Volymedia came out with a piece that makes my mind immediately go back to Stalin and his worst foibles. They included show trials of agronomists during the 1930s. These trials killed experts that were needed to run a modern agricultural economy.
The other was the land confiscation from Kulaks, not just in Ukraine but other regions like Dagestan and Kazakhstan. The other was the mass internal deportation of Soviet Citizens to ensure control. The gulag system grew.
This is literally how you destroy your economy and recreate the conditions that will…