This is the sort of thing that led to the decline of the Soviet economy, which had been doing very well up until that point. People nowadays usually remember the creaking Soviet economy of the late 1980s, but from the late 1920s to Stalin's death, the Soviet economy grew by leaps and bounds. While the US was in a depression, Russia was building massive steel plants in Magnitogorsk. In fact Russia didn't even have enough manpower to do it, so imported American and European labor, and contracted to American and European firms.<p>The aim was to build up the means of production (capital, in western parlance) to western levels.<p>However when Stalin died, and the revolutionaries of 1905 and 1917 died and faded away, the second generation of Khrushchev's and the like slowed down the infrastructure capital spending and started increasing consumer production and freebies like this. A number of other things happened as well around this time, but all in the same direction - capital spending went lower, sops to the populace started, and a long economic, and then political decline set in. This sop was part of that. Ultimately, the money to keep up the park came out of capital spending, leading to the decline of the USSR on some level.