As context, prior to and during Barbarossa the USSR had the largest army in the world, with more tanks than the rest of the world combined. They had many offensive plans, but no defensive ones. So the main Soviet strategy consisted of their army fighting die-in-place battles while the NKVD stripped the countryside of any available food and tools but leaving the peasants behind. They wanted to leave the burden of feeding them on the German army, which was itself strapped for resources, so they were deliberately starving to death their own civilians for the purpose of demonizing their enemy. And it worked.