Several of my professors, who were otherwise quite anticommunist, had personal experience with the Soviet Union's subsidizing of the arts, and praised it quite highly. One, who grew up in socialist Hungary, said that during the 60s and 70s you could to a concert with world-class artists for the equivalent of just a few US dollars. And audiences (he said) tended to be quite musically literate, because recordings of Soviet and even some western artists were cheap and everywhere -- not luxury items in any sense.

Another professor fondly recalled being in Prague during the 70s, and how you could go into almost any church or concert hall and hear very fine performance of often quite obscure early music. He went back years later after "democracy" was "restored," and found that the concerts were still there -- but it was all hack performances of the same two or three pieces that tourists like to hear.