Stalin let millions of people starve not only out of his incompetence but out of not wanting to admit it was even happening because it would give him a bad image

I’m sorry but this is an absurd way of interpreting history. No state is ever entirely in the hands of a socially insecure egotist. A state is how whichever class is ruling exercises its power.

In the case of the U.S.S.R., Moscow distributed millions of tons of food from reserves when the famine was officially confirmed.