Hmmm. Big question. Let me try to give a high-level answer. Unfortunately I don’t have many of my sources to hand (seriously, why don't I get a PDF when I buy a book?) so the below is relatively light on statistics. That may not be a bad thing.

Let's tackle the obvious issue first: Some 5.5-8.5m famine deaths occurred in the USSR from 1927-36. There is a large amount of literature on where responsibility for these deaths lies... and very little agreement. I’m not going to go into detail on these debates except to note that I tend to agree with those who place collectivisation as one (and only one) of the factors leading to famine. It’s also worth stressing that the move to collective farms was part of a broader (botched) programme of agricultural reforms, which was in turn part of a frenzied industrialisation drive.

But, whatever about the details, almost everyone agrees that collectivisation played a role in the famines. No one would deny that the coerced movement of peasants into collective farms (typically kolkhoz) was poorly handled. It was rushed, uncertain and carried out with almost no proper planning. The result was an immense shock to the agricultural system just when it could least afford it. A large part of what follows deals with how this shock, which I would argue brought the Soviet economy to the brink of collapse, affected the rural and urban worlds.

Rural Population

Collectivisation should be understood first and foremost as an attempt to extort as much grain as possible from the peasantry at as low a cost to the state as possible. This meant that peasants took the brunt of the pain. The collectivisation years saw the destruction of the old peasant commune (obshchina) and the corralling (through tax incentives, administrative pressure and occasional force) of peasant producers into collective farms. So before we go anywhere else, you’re talking about a sea-change to the peasant’s way of life. I go into a bit of detail on what a collective farm looked like here.

The most dramatic cases of course were those where the peasant’s life ended. As I note, there were up to 8.5m famine deaths over this period, predominately affecting the agricultural ‘producer regions’. The Ukraine gets most of the attention but there were also over a million deaths in both Kazakhstan and the Volga area. The former was particularly devastating: collectivisation in Kazakhstan was an attempt to settle a previously nomadic society, with the result that the local agricultural economy effectively crashed with horrific consequences. Livestock numbers also plummeted everywhere as, whether responding to economic pressure or rumour, peasants slaughtered their animals en masse. Livestock levels didn’t recover until the 1950s. The loss of draught animals like horse and ox only compounded harvest difficulties, with tractor production failing laughably to make up the difference. Again, I’m not going into detail on the causes of these famines but collectivisation was certainly part of it.

So a peasant in the 1930s would probably have lost his strips on land on the commune, his livestock and the right to market grain as an individual producer. In exchange he got a small private plot on the collective farm and a new management structure to live under.

Urban Population

Outside of those direct famine victims, the collapse in agricultural production ushered in a period of extreme hardship for Soviet citizens. (Again: in the context of an already harsh industrialisation drive.) The shortage of food was as acute throughout the country and supplies collapsed and retail prices rocketed. Rationing was reintroduced in 1928-29 (to 1934-35) and there was sharp discontent at the meagre ‘starvation rations’ issued to the urban populations. Consumption and nutrition fell across the board, with meat and dairy intake dropping sharply. There were grades to the rationing system though: privileged industrial workers (eg metal workers) fared better than non-priority sectors (eg textile workers) and the elite did not go hungry. Generally though, whether peasant or worker, these were extremely lean years.

Post-Famine

It took the Soviet Union some time to recover from the shock of collectivisation. The structure of the collective farm had largely been settled by 1934 (after a few policy zig-zags) and grain production had probably reached its 1928 levels by the late 1930s. (Depending of what statistics you use.) The amount of marketed grain reaching the cities had certainly increased, therefore meeting a key goal of collectivisation. Historians differ on whether this was offset by the investment from industry needed to achieve this but, despite another famine in 1936-37, there was a general rise in living standards (which remained below 1928 levels). Migration to urban areas also increased in the late 1930s, fuelling the continued transition from a predominately rural agricultural society to an urban industrial one.

So hardship was the norm across these regions (and the USSR as a whole) throughout the 1930s. The mass starvation of 1932-33 needs to be put in the context of years of increasing hunger and the overall Stalinist industrialisation drive. Conditions did improve in the later 1930s but by then the peasant’s world had fundamentally changed.

Sources

I’m a big fan of RW Davies Industrialisation of Soviet Russia series. It’s a fantastic piece of scholarship… but I recognise that not everyone loves diving into incredibly dense reconstructions and analysis of Soviet economic policy. So let me just point out that Volume 5 (The Years of hunger) is, in my view, the definitive work on the famines. This is where the 5.5 million lower boundary comes from. Volumes 1 and 2 in the same series are also particularly relevant.

For more general reading, Davies also edited The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union (which gave me the 8.5m figure). Alec Nove’s Economic History of the USSR is probably the best introduction to, well, the economic history of the USSR. Stephen Wheatcroft has also done plenty of work in this area; I was particularly referring to his calorie intake studies (Soviet Statistics of Nutrition and Mortality in Times of Famine) above.

In terms of the social impact of collectivisation (and Stalinism more broadly), I’d recommend Moshe Lewin’s The Making of the Soviet System and Shelia Fitzpatrick’s Everyday Stalinism. See also Jeffrey Rossman's Worker Resistance under Stalin for a case study of urban revolt sparked by ration shortages.