The same thing happened when the Soviet government forced the country from an agrarian economy to an industrialized one.
A lot of people have drawn inferences that it may have been the government, their leadership and application of ideology rather then the shift from agrarian economy.
seems to me that taking farmers away from their land will make people starve.
similar to how in the american south in the 20th century, sharecroppers were forced to work on commodity farms and didn't grow food. instead, they imported processed corn from the midwest that gave them pellagra. thanks in part to market forces of the midwest corn trade.
In Soviet case, the primary reason why people starved is because they have deliberately took away most of the food from the peasants to feed the cities. The cities didn't starve; the countryside did, which in turn prompted millions of peasants to move to the cities (and become industrial workers, which was the whole point).
A lot of people have drawn inferences that it may have been the government, their leadership and application of ideology rather then the shift from agrarian economy.