Bulldozer Exhibition

It was organised by three underground artists, Oscar Rabin, Youri Jarkikh (Jarki) and Alexander Gleser.

The organizer Oscar Rabin told in an interview in London in 2010: "The exhibition was prepared as a political act against the oppressive regime, rather than an artistic event.

They marshalled a large group of attackers that included three bulldozers, water cannons, dump trucks and hundreds of off-duty policemen.

Officially, the group was supposed to be "gardeners" expanding the urban forest, who reacted in spontaneous outrage to the offense against their proletarian sensibilities.

Rabin later recounted the horror of seeing art crushed and artists arrested: "It was very frightening … The bulldozer was a symbol of an authoritarian regime just like the Soviet tanks in Prague."

[1] After the event was widely publicized in the Western media, embarrassed authorities were forced to allow a similar open air exhibition in the Izmailovo urban forest two weeks later on 29 September 1974.