During his time in the Soviet Union, Groys participated in the unofficial cultural scenes of Moscow and Leningrad, publishing in 37, Chasy, and other samizdat magazines.

Groys re-evaluated socialist art production, challenging the norms of aesthetics by pushing a thesis based on Walter Benjamin in the very interpretation of politics, claiming that modernism had survived in the "total artwork" (Gesamtkunstwerk) of Stalinism.

[1] This thesis is charged with having pushed a new generation of thinkers into re-evaluating the Socialist aesthetic heritage (among others Miško Šuvaković, Marina Gržinić, and Ana Peraica) recognized as the discourse of post-socialist art.

From 2003 to 2004 he headed the research program Post-Communist Condition[2] in cooperation with Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and the Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany.

His books include Groys has also published Thinking in Loop: Three Videos on Iconoclasm, Ritual and Immortality (DVD, 2008).