The official story is false. They knew what was happening -- they had agents in every village, who amazingly were always well fed. There were regular visits and inspections. Look, both the USSR and China had mass famines in the countryside, and it was for the same reason:
They wanted to rapidly industrialize which meant the creation of a large factory worker class in rapidly growing urban areas. This required a smaller and more productive agrarian class with surplus food being shipped to cities.
But rather than wait and let normal urbanization take its course, they simply transferred populations to the city and confiscated all the food that was needed to feed this class, letting a fraction - about 10% of the rural population - starve to death. The remaining farmers were forced to work harder to make up for their dead colleagues and this was accomplished via intimidation and near-slavery conditions. That is, at the end of the day, what forced agricultural collectivization was all about. It was to make up for the fact that a lot of the farmers would not be given food. And everyone understood what this was about.
It was intentional democide to free up mouths to eat in the cities, in order to achieve rapid industrialization.
