This is the first book written in dialogue with the wonderful artist Oskar Rabin and based on conversations with him. His numerous comments and notes were gratefully taken into account by the author. At the same time, the scrupulousness and meticulousness of the author, a professional sociologist, allowed him to verify and clarify many facts previously repeated by almost everyone who wrote about Rabin, as well as to offer a new analysis of a number of storylines that determined the genesis of the second wave of Russian nonconformist art, many representatives who found themselves in exile in the 1970s and 1980s. The book includes numerous archival photographs, as well as reproductions of the artist's works.