Russia has a long history of serfdom, an authoritarian regime, young people passionate about change, a huge territory and large population etc. China, about the same, only much larger.
In fact, if anything it's the opposite: most countries failed to ever make the transition (most of the third world for example, Africa, Asia, Latin America).
As for the Western countries that made the same transition:
a) some made it peacefully (those that were in better position to do so, namely: small and manageable, with an established social order from before, no dangerous neighbours and plenty of money rolling in).
b) others had no "starving of millions of people to death" mainly because they got a good deal out of starving millions of OTHER people to death. E.g France, Netherlands, Belgium, UK, financing their industrial age with looting and enslaving their colonies in Africa, Asia, etc.
(And we should not forget the bloody continental European wars and revolutions that got a lot of countries out of agrarian feudalism and aristocracy and into the modern type industrial republic. Millions died in the French Revolution, the Napoleonian wars and the subsequent turmoil than made France into a modern republic, and then there was WWI. The difference is that China, more slow moving, went through a similar situation well in the 20th Century).
A lot of people seem to ascribe to the "cult of personality", but with or without Mao, it would have been done.
That's why it was done almost in parallel in other countries too.
Lots of people have the crazy theory that some guys, maybe because they had too much swag or because people were of lower IQ back then or something, managed to rise from nowhere and get hundrends of millions to follow them, changed their countries etc.
The real story is that the historical currents had formed to move those countries out of their aggrarian past. They had to do something or perish in the modern age, and due to mix of circumstances and need, those kind of figures emerged to deliver that change.
It was a time of huge changes all around -- the colonial struggles, WWI, WWII, communism rising, right wing dictatorships -- those things did not happen all in parallel because some guys managed to dupe billions into following them.