I meant industrialization as a general government direction, not as an official Party policy buzzword: the Soviet state just did not care about the agricultural population except as a potential source of workers for the industry. The droughts and the epidemic still did not stop the grain exports (again, the main source of income for the state before, during, and after the famine, even per the official statistics) or affect the food supply in the cities all that much. The amounts an agricultural worker could legally leave for themselves were below subsistence, for years both before and after the war—steal (“steal”), escape to the city, or die.

The last part is so much bullshit thst it isn’t even really worth considering. (Every sentence in the whole of official Soviet history that includes the word kulak is bullshit.)