I grant that, if you were unlucky enough to live in a communist police state, you might have a certain prejudice against the official arts of that state. As an outsider, I can find much socialist realism both technically sophisticated and even beautiful. The Nazis had their moments – see the 1936 Olympic opening ceremony – but generally fell short of this level of accomplishment.
Our own descent into totalitarianism, of course, has no compensating high achievement in the arts.
