>> The issue with small farms is that they can keep their owners affluent but incapable of producing enough output to feed the entire population of the country. This is the cause of repeated famines in Russian Empire and the continuing pattern in early USSR (1920s-1930s), and it is the combining of small plots that eliminated famines in the 1930s.<<
What Stalinist apologist are you getting your information from? Farm collectivization caused unbelievably horrible famines in the 1930s! Meanwhile, exactly the OPPOSITE of what you say: Family food plots take up only 3% of the farm acreage, but 40% of the food production. That means that they are TWENTY times more productive than collective farms.
https://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Europe/Russia-AGRICULTURE.html
No need to get upset, simply look at the facts.
The famines were a permanent phenomenon in Russia for decades (if not centuries), despite private ownership of land, and they stopped after 1930s.
Here is one ref, on the 1891-1892 famine:
http://people.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1994-5/Lilly.htm
there were many more.
If you can explain this by any factor other than (yes, very brutal) Stalin’s collectivization, please do.