As far as i know, its not a myth, it did happen, but its very overblown by western propaganda. The “era of stagnation” pales in comparison to the mildest capitalist crisis. Noone starved in the USSR during this era, the only problem was shortage of luxury consumer goods imported from the west (cars, western clothes, high quality chocolate, travelling to the west and so on). This was mostly due to low USD reserves due to falling oil prices (the USSRs biggest USD source) and also the huge resources spent aiding COMECON and in the Afghanistan War. This coupled with western propaganda, corruption that made the few western products available disappear into the black market and the party essentially denying the problem existed and refusing to address it, made people angry and distrustful of the old establishment, allowing a populist bastard like Gorbachev to rise to power, basically promising “we do market reforms and youll have infinite Adidas shoes”. So yeah it did exist, but as the video shows it was a minor crisis. Honestly young soviets were naive and dumb. Unlike their parents, they had never known real hunger and misery, so this minor crisis together with western propaganda about “how great” the west was made them angry. Its a lesson about the dangers of not having the party listen to the people. However, its NOT a lesson about “socialist economics failing” as western propaganda claims.