[Edit: the economic challenges were in part] from the inefficiency of having full employment. I know this isn't the USSR, but there is a fascinating Netflix documentary called A Perfect Crime about the assassination of Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, a West German politician who oversaw the Treuhand agency. The Treuhand was responsible for converting over 8,500 state-owned companies in the former East Germany into private businesses. Most of it focuses on his death, obviously. But I found the economic aspect truly informative. Thousands of people lost their jobs because they produced inferior products too slowly to compete outside East Germany - and there wasn't enough economic power in the East alone to support it (there are one off examples of companies that bucked this trend, but they are the exception). Not any one individual's fault - but it demonstrates the challenges of the system - and a good use case for informing our own economic designs.