It's probably worth noting that centrally-planned corporations receive feedback from the market in the form of sales but the USSR's central planners didn't really have any equivalent.
And if GE, say, messes us on jet engines, well, there's always Rolls-Royce. If the central planners mess up, you don't have an alternative.
Just think of Mig and Sukhoi, for a simple example. Or NPO-Saturn and Tumansky, if you prefer jet-engine manufacturers.
You might want to read up on Khruschev's corn farming plans, Gorbachev's prohibition, Mao's backyard furnaces and many more. Slightly tangent, check on Trofim Lysenko's anti-genetics antics. USSR style socialism explicitly declared ideology over science, engineering and what not. And by ideology they meant whatever The Great Leader says.
There's no reason to believe it wouldn't be viable today.
Consumer goods were in total ruin by the 1970s. People used word "deficit" to refer to anything desirable. And no, it has not been a common word or its usage in Russian before the advances in planned economy.
"Deficit" literally means "lack of something", and hunger is definitely a lack of food.
Food supply problems in the region were only solved by late 30s (if one skips war-related problem of 40s), when painful - like, really painful - communist reforms and modernization settled down.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia...
Sure. Yet, being a Russian myself also familiar with the history, I cannot recall people using that word to describe "hunger". In Russian of 1970s-1980s the word "deficit" was used to refer to the goods not a lack of them, see this example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKWQ2UxXSLY
As for you remarks about RI's economy - I am not sure what you mean. In your own link there is no reference of an economy-related famine. Famines used to be caused by weather and wars all around the world.