Must read!--Many stories here-----What were the things Soviets were told about the world outside the Iron Curtain? - Quora

(2) What were the things Soviets were told about the world outside the Iron Curtain? - Quora
Bruce Mode, former Medical Product Support and Development-Answered Aug 14
"In 1976 pilot Viktor Belenko defected from the Soviet Union by stealing a top secret MIG 25P Foxbat and landing it at a Japanese airport.
He announced he wanted to go to the US.
He later said in his debriefings that they had to regularly attend propaganda courses that said US citizens lived in even worse conditions than they did… that they at least had potatoes to eat whereas they were shown American homeless living in the streets as being commonplace and the ‘norm’ in capitalist America.
Belenko said he and his comrades all doubted what they were told.
One obvious contradiction was they were told how the Communist party in America was ‘persecuted’ but they wondered in silence that if America was so repressive then how could they even ‘allow’ a Communist party?
The Soviet Union would never allow any other parties to exist.
When Belenko first came to the US, I believe it was Washington DC, he was being driven from the airport to meet with dignitaries at the capitol.
He said as they drove down the busy and bustling streets he made the car stop on several occasions to check to make sure the buildings were not ‘props’ set up for his benefit like with Hollywood movie sets, as they were told in the propaganda classrooms. 
He couldn’t believe they were not.
He made them stop at several supermarkets too thinking they were props that were actually fakes, as they were also told. 
He said he could not believe what he was seeing.
He was in shock. 
The amount of food and choices available to the average citizen was staggering when compared to what the Soviet citizens had access to. 
It was cognitive dissonance writ large."