Stark symbols of the blockage in Soviet artistic life were the scandalous bulldozer exhibits in Moscow in 1974. “Dissident” artists who refused to accept official Soviet artistic organizations and aesthetics, set their work out for open public viewing in Moscow’s Izmailovsky Park. Although much of the work seems, in retrospect, to have been mildly innovative, ham-handed cultural bureaucrats, upset that nobody asked their permission, chased away artists, viewers, and some of the paintings by driving through a couple bulldozer.