The connection is that the USSR never managed to produce enough food. After the collapse and famine of collectivisation, mechanisation helped a bit, but never b

The connection is that the USSR never managed to produce enough food. After the collapse and famine of collectivisation, mechanisation helped a bit, but never back to 1917 levels IIRC. From the 1960s there was little more growth, and a growing urban population. The other half of the story is oil, which was more amenable to communist production. And exporting oil let them buy food from the west, for a while. I highly recommend reading Yegor Gaidar on this topic: http://www.aei.org/feature/the-soviet-collapse/ http://www.aei.org/feature/the-soviet-collapse/