Most of Russia's land had been held by aristocrats in vast estates worked by serfs, who were only freed in the mid-19th Century. It was fairly easy for the Communists to reassemble estates into communes. In contrast, Eastern Ukraine had been part of Lithuania and later Poland for centuries. Russia only acquired Eastern Ukraine in the Partitions of Poland late in the 18th Century. That history produced a land ownership pattern of small holdings by independent farmers. The farmers were understandably reluctant to let the Communists steal their land and assemble communes. So, what this was really about was using famine to break the will of the Ukrainians to end any opposition to the Communists extending their program of communal farming under tight Party control. And they killed millions doing it.