To be fair, toilet paper shortages in planned economies were definitely a thing. My grandmother stockpiled toilet paper way after the fall of communism, I never understood why as a kid. (Her habit would have come handy at the start of the pandemic though...)
Month long toilet paper outages were a reality of life in USSR.
Though, fresh pronts of "Pravda" never were. That "Pravda" was a very versatile material: from toilet paper, to packaging material, to building material as packing for cracks in walls, to an underlayer for wallpaper.
