Stalin would have approved of the Northern Ireland Executive's programme for government published yesterday. Targets, targets, targets, and yet more targets.
Failure to achieve the Executive's multitude of specified ambitions may not result in expulsion to the North's gulags for David Trimble and Seamus Mallon, but they could be forced to spend more than a wet Sunday in Ballymena if they don't deliver.
The shadow of possible political collapse looms over ordinary Executive work at Stormont, but in the meantime the First and Deputy First Ministers get on with the business of real government.
The notion that their 207page programme for government was akin to shifting the deck chairs as the Titanic headed for the bottom of the ocean was barely countenanced by Mr Trimble and Mr Mallon yesterday.
There were "some difficulties in the background", conceded the Ulster Unionist leader, as ever a master of understatement, but it would be folly to underestimate the importance of their blueprint for how Northern Ireland was to be run.
Mr Mallon was cognisant of the pessimism of a deal being agreed on policing, decommissioning and demilitarisation, but irrespective of what unfolded in the days ahead the programme for government endorsed by the SDLP, the Ulster Unionists, Sinn Fein and the DUP was the "benchmark" for the way forward for Northern Ireland.
"I don't believe there will be a blockage in terms of implementing this programme of government by this administration," he said.
When the draft programme was published last October there were some complaints that the document was long on aspiration but short on specifics. The completed document details 257 proposals across all departments to be achieved over a three-year period that will cost about £360 million sterling to fulfil - and that on top of the normal annual £6 billion business of government.
Now, Mr Trimble and Mr Mallon may not specify how each of these proposals will be implemented. But that's besides the point: they must account for their stewardship, and that of their fellow ministers and civil servants, if they don't meet their targets.
It is peculiar that the purported chief issue preventing Sinn Fein from signing up to the new policing arrangements is the republican conviction that the new Police Service of Northern Ireland will not be properly answerable to the politicians and the public. No problem in relation to accountability in the programme for government.
The "transparency and accountability" element of the programme could hardly be more firmly nailed down. Targets and timeframes on issues such as housing, health, education, urban and rural regeneration, North-South developments and scores of other matters are clearly stated.
Little wonder then that Mr Mallon proudly described the document as "a gambler's manifesto".
Mr Trimble said that unlike Stalin there would be "no rigging of the figures", and that he and Mr Mallon and the rest of the Ministers would have to explain why if particular proposals weren't delivered, and how in future they would be delivered.
Naturally, there are still serious concerns that all the grand plans of the fledging government could end up as a useless beaten docket if the British and Irish governments, Sinn Fein, the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists can't crack the remaining problems.
Perhaps Mr Trimble and Mr Mallon should point their fellow negotiators to a section in the programme for government that could act as a model for resolving the outstanding problems.
"We must each develop a capacity for compromise and respect, seeking to resolve conflict and creating new links and building trust," the programme advises. Anybody listening?