sst1234, you are wrong to underestimate the availability of cultural goods to everyone. Access to high culture is access to education. Access to education is access to power.
When I arrived to the West, I was completely shocked at the price of theatre tickets, books and entry to museums. Behind the iron curtain, all these things were available at very low prices to everyone. You could purchase a good quality hardcover book for a price of a few standard loaves of bread (bread was a lot better too, btw, than the plastic sponge fed to the masses in the UK and the US).
High culture in the Soviet countries was accessible to everyone. People who worked in standard working class jobs read, went to the theatre, the opera and the museums. It was just normal. I am still shocked at the fact that the vast majority of people in the UK do not have books in their houses. I was also shocked by the low level of education and the lack of knowledge of basic facts among average people in the UK when I arrived here many years ago.
Yes, behind the iron curtain your life would have been very difficult in many ways, but you would not have to watch how the children of rich parents in the next housing estate to you received excellent education in private schools and enjoyed high culture when your own child had to attend a failing state comprehensive and fight extra hard for a chance to go to a good university.
I know that hearing about positive aspects of life under communism just blows the mind of people in the West. But you really need to try to get beyond the capitalist propaganda. 25 years ago, I would have been with you. But after years and years of watching food banks, beggars on every corner of big cities, massive inequality of opportunities for children, erosion of workers' rights, crumbling health service, perpetually late and overcrowded trains, schoolteachers feeding hungry children and environmental degradation, I cannot help but ask serious questions about the merits of capitalism.