I think US-ers have a very distorted picture of the Eastern Europe in the Soviet era - something like two policemen following every citizen 24-7. There are three sources of such views. First is Eastern European intellectuals who often fabricated such stories to voice their own grievances for not getting the pubs or gigs they wanted (their variant of the "reverse discrimination" claim by white suburban males here) or to create an aura of their own importance. Second is the US propaganda machine that picked up or more freequently fabricated such stories to disceredit socialism. The third source is the infinitie betit bourgeois naivete of the US public which will swallow raw even the most incredible story as long as it conforms to their simplistic concpet of morality play between good and evil or us versum them.
If memory serves, that was a theme of one of the early Dziga Vertov's films in which a bunch gullible Westerners in the Soviet Russia is "taken for aride" by a bunch of con-men who tell them horror stories, such as a wooden shack as the "remnant" of a university, or people drinking tea from bowls - which the vistors eagerly believe only to learn later that they had been duped.
The fact of the matter is that during 1960s and 1970s everyday life in Eastern Europe was as free as that in in Western Europe or the US, expecially that most people did not have to worry about loosing their jobs. The roots of the "censhorship myths can be traced to economic policies of the Soviet style regime, whose essence was anti-import and import substitution. In practice, this translated into limiting imports to ncessities (such as equipment that could not be obtained domestically), and setting the currency exchange rates at levels that discouraged imports. Western cultural imports were not considered a necessity, so they were not imported by state owned enterprises (that started to change during late 1960s and 1970s). Of course, there were always private imports that could be sold on flea markets or legally operating pawn shops. There was nothing illegal about them. The only catch was the price, which thanks to anti-import currency exchange rate was very high. To give you an illustration: an average pay in Poland during 1970s was about 3,000 zls - a loaf of bread cost about 6 zls, a train ticket across country was about 80 zls, a dmostically produced LP record (classical music or domestic pop artist) was about 60 - 80 zls. An imported LP record, on the other hand, was about 600 - 900 zls. The reason was very simple - such an LP cost about $6 - 9 and the currency exchange rate was about 100:1 (state enterprises could get a different rate if they imported necessities).
So the "counter-culture" in Eastern Europe was driven for the most part by low supply and urban legends of state repression that "explained" it - which drovbe the demand even higher. The local writers and performers quickly discovered that these legends can boost their own popularity, I personally knew a score of unpublished writers or song singers who claimed that theier inability to get a publication or a record was due to "censorship: rather than medirocre quality of their writing or music - which allowed them to bask in a "dissident" glory, perform in student clubs and have a steady following of groupies.
Wojtek