I visited Cuba while Fidel was still in charge (2002) and I can vouch for the authenticity of this guy's astonishment.
It's real.
The stores there are so empty, there is almost nothing to buy anywhere, except on a black market with "illegal" US dollars.
Cuba is not a one-off, either.
I spent months (1997) in East German, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union and they were almost as bad (not quite).
This might be news to some, but socialism just doesn't work in practice.
I know, I know, that wasn't the "real" socialism.
"The grand sweep of socialistic rhetoric – promising to correct all the world’s wrongs – has a powerful appeal to the young and the idealistic, who have yet to see how often such promises lead to stagnation or oppression."
Thomas Sowell