Yes and there are ethnic components that can be seen there as well. For starters, Africans embraced it often times in hopes of getting arms to fight the Boer. China has never thought twice about wiping out peasants and has had civil wars with more deaths than WWII when stacked side by side in the past.
My point is this, you will never completely understand why crimes like the holodomer were perpetrated and why communism is acceptable and fascism completely against societal norms in our academic culture if you have never at least attempted to understand the underlying ethnic motivations.