"There are a lot of very very good Soviet films that just aren't well known because of the Iron Curtain thing, just as Soviet animation was the best in the world but nobody outside the former Eastern Bloc knows about it (for instance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmcp4XNCWRY )..That said there were a lot of crappy Soviet movies too."
Yes and...It goes beyond that; Eisenstein defined 1/2 the art of cinema, with the Germans defining the other half.
And nobody made better war films than the Soviets.
Anyway, I grew up with the stuff and I thought it was great. As for socialist realism.... it was no less degraded than most Hollywood formula movies.
Joanna