I've just finished reading Anne Applebaum's book on the famine in Ukraine; if impossible targets aren't met, pick some people and say they sabotaged production. The problem isn't the system, and the problem certainly isn't the impossible demands and the purges and the terrified lies from the cadres and the disasters of collectivisation and the self-defeating elimination of the best workers (in Ukraine, owning a few cows and being good at farming could qualify you as a 'kulak' and an enemy of the people, ready for execution or the gulag, so of course the most competent farmers were eliminated early). None of that; the problem is saboteurs. Pick someone, charge him and execute him (or send him to a gulag).
No-one was safe from Stalin's vengeance, except apparently General Tito of Yugoslavia who survived many of his assassination attempts and allegedly returned the favour successfully.
The practical problems that might arise here were eventually elegantly solved by placing entire design bureaus and research institutes directly in the gulag system.
"Under the leadership of Markizova big sabotage was conducted in the livestock building, in which the cattle were exposed to cold-related diseases and deaths. The waste of young animals amounted to 40 000 heads…"
http://z-news.xyz/get-that-lousy-said-stalin-the-story-about...