The economic landscape of the US at the time was the Depression, whereas the USSR economy was chugging along, other than the poor harvest in the Ukraine that year. Walter Duranty of the New York Times visited Ukraine at the time, and said the harvest was not a good one but a lot of reports coming out of the Ukraine were overblown.

The point is, whatever survivor's of thirties tell, thirties were a terrible time, even if they were living in a relatively well off Moscow.

That's the only truth, not that of lunatical historians which have nothing, but digits to look on, and imagining things well knowing that pretty much nothing in official economics documents from USSR' reflected reality.

Stalin, and his industrial proves is another busted for 100th time trope, straight out of original propaganda. A thing glaringly obvious to any Russian citizen who had at some time a surviving relative who went through that time, but not to people who purposefully keep returning to it for search of their worldview validation "alternative facts"