We blame the Soviet government for famine, but that’s not necessarily the opinion of people living at the time. Famine tended to occur every ~10 years due to natural weather variability so while 1930-1933 was unusually brutal it was just one of a very long string of famine. For example the Russian famine of 1921–1922 killed 5 million from a drought + WWI. Which was preceded by the famine of 1906-1908 which was preceded by the famine of 1901–1902, though these where less significant.

Famine was so common you need extreme outliers like 1601–1603 which killed ~1/3 of the population before they tend to show up in history books.