A group of artists that lived on Sretensky Boulevard became loosely associated by their like-minded ideas in the late 1960s. Primarily identified as Kabakov, Eduard Steinberg, Erik Bulatov, Viktor Pivovarov and Vladimir Yankilevsky, the group also included Oleg Vassiliev, Ülo Sooster and others with the same pre-occupation. The artist's studios were also used as venues to show and exchange ideas about unofficial art. The majority of visual artists who became part of the 'Sretensky Boulevard Group' worked officially as book illustrators and graphic designers. They were in strong contrast to a group called the 'Lianozovo Group' artists, a loose group around Oscar Rabin, who were primarily abstractionists. This group in particular was often harassed and in some cases imprisoned or exiled. It is apparent that Kabakov and his associates were conformist as a survival strategy, a tactic which began at the art academies. Kabakov reports that during school and throughout his early career he did everything expected of him and, on the surface, accepted the Soviet reality.