The whole part about the opera being empty most of the time was interesting. The article does mention that it would often be full due to foreign dignitaries and workers, but if the opera remained empty so often, why did it survive after independence? That part is a little vague.
I am no expert in music, but the conflict between "modernised" music and traditional music might be overplayed by the article. I don't see why improving the level of music theory or professionalisation of singers and so on conflicts with Tajik tradition. Wouldn't a richer music theory be able to replicate the simpler folk music? Or are there fundamental incompatibilities?
the emphasis on the development of ‘high’ culture, even at its height in the 1930s, sat uneasily with a veneration of everything ‘folk’, while the need to define a sharp break with the past often gave way to a reverence of ‘classical’ cultural production
This whole part here is the most interesting to me. I think it any future socialist society will have to treat the topic of culture very carefully. Almost certainly it will have to develop multiple cultural centers and promote as many varied forms as is possible.
There would be conflict between these completing cultural forms, as there was in the case explored by the article. But I think that's a good thing. It will cause new ideas to be generated and explored.