Labor and work quotas in the USSR is a huge topic. I'll focus on food production, because that's what you've specified here. And I'll be focusing on the early years of the USSR (1920s and 1930s).

After the founding of the Soviet Union, the government was divided into different commissariats. Food production was controlled by the People's Commissariat of Nutrition (Narkompit). Although the eventual goal was a centralized food production and distribution structure, in the early years of Soviet history (through most of the 1920s), localized production and distribution were far more common. As a result, many people bought food at local small stores (lavkas). These stores were too small and localized to have a quota system like the one you described. They were essentially neighborhood shops, producing and selling based on a schedule that suited the handful of people who operated it and the neighborhood in which it operated. Although the Soviet government worked to regulate these shops, the process was often messy, with different branches of state and local agencies applying different taxes and regulations, showing the lack of any sort of central process run by Narkompit. [For example, GARF/State Archive of the Russian Fed., F. R4041, op. 4, d. 21.] These debates over local production could be absolutely ridiculous – in one case where an unemployed woman was selling milk (from context, likely her own breastmilk), local housing officials debated whether she should be considered a merchant or unemployed, as how this should affect what housing she had access to. (As far as I can see, they decided she not a merchant, which was good for her, because that would have drastically raised her rent rates. [Magazine "Zhilishchnoe tovarishchestvo, 1925.10.11, No. 38, "Zhilishchnye dela v sude – molokom torgovala"]) But the takeaway from the 1920s is that, by and large, the system operated based on local conditions and needs, so there wouldn't have been any quota system to abuse as you describe.

But by the late 1920s/early 1930s, a few key features had shifted, as we enter the period called Stalinism. Most importantly was collectivization, the massive (and often brutal) campaigns that moved peasants into collective farms. It was much easier for state agencies to collect grain from these farms, so the state began to play more of a direct role in food production. [For a classic work on collectivization, see L. Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin (1996) or S. Fitzpatrick, Stalin's Peasants (1999)] Around this time, there was also a shift in the treatment of labor discipline. (See: L. Siegelbaum, Labor Discipline, http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1939-2/labor-discipline/) Laws passed in 1931 and 1932 made absenteeism a crime, and workers who missed even a single shift could be stripped of pay, housing, and could even face imprisonment. Although these laws were not widely enforced until 1940, they certainly would not have contributed to an environment where doing the bare minimum would be seen as a safe option. Throughout the 1930s, Soviet working culture was molded around the ideal of the shockworker (udarnik), a figure who reveled in exceeding his/her quota, which was the antithesis of what you described. Beginning in 1940, the laws about labor absenteeism became even more strict due to the incredible wartime pressures, and being habitually late (let alone clumping together shifts) could lead to imprisonment.

For these variety of reasons, I find it very hard to believe there would be a system like the one you describe in the pre-WWII Soviet Union. But that is only part of Soviet history. After the end of Stalinism (1953), although the state remained largely in charge of managing food production, the rigid application of labor discipline laws becomes associated with the excesses of Stalinism and had been largely dismantled. By the 1970s and 80s, corruption and bureaucratism were deeply rooted, resulting in campaigns against them as a part of the perestroika and glasnost' era. It's possible the lingering focus on quotas from the 1930s, mixed with the malaise and corruption of the 1980s, led to a scenario like the one you've described. I'd be curious to hear a late Soviet historian's take on the question.

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