Reading about the arbitrary nature of the NKVD and even how bosses were allowed to treat their employees in a Soviet state...
Why in the name of the odd Gods would any person see that as a remotely desirable form of government?
Because once you believe in collectivism/Communism, you can justify almost anything as long as it's being done for the "greater good". Along with the (former) aristocracy, the intelligentsia, the bourgeois etc., which needed to be "brought down", the peasantry needed to be "brought up", but since there was no clear way to do so, and were an embarrassment to Soviet superiority, it was best to just try and eliminate them through intentional famine, starvation, and the gulag/Siberian system.
Also, there was certainly plenty of not-great stuff that happened under the Tsars too in regards to the lives of the peasantry. (and the fact that there
still was an honest-to-God peasantry in the 20th century, something we associate more with Asia, Africa, and South America etc. So some of it was just cultural continuation of what always went on there, but was just thrown into high gear by Communism.
The Cossacks being used as an allied source of Tsarist troops (which got them a great deal of autonomy) sweeping into a village on a raid that wasn't loyal, or conversely, when they were sometimes fighting the Tsars for independence, sweeping into a loyal village etc. Then all the nastiness of the red vs. white Russians etc. then the full on revolution. Then Stalin...
Overall, the region was just a much rougher place than Western Europe, which by the 19th century was providing some sort of social order and stability for the "little people", at least between wars. So I think some of the cultural attitude was one of resignation that we (how to put this delicately) uh... don't always associate with Caucasian/Western Civ starting around the 19th century.
So the people of the countryside and small villages were always seen as disposable from an elitist/Tsarist/Aristocratic viewpoint, and the advent of Communism didn't really change that.