Leiderman argues that the artist developed his absurdist collective gift-giving performances in response to the post-Soviet disappearance of the cultural organizations that had underpinned cultural production in the USSR. In place of this centralized support network, artists now faced a volatile and fluid global art market in which the only available communities were those created by artists themselves. B.U.Kashkin’s project, the author argues, accordingly relocates artistic practice from the production of either artworks or concepts to the creation of social formations, socially-positive activity, and performances that are closer to social work than to traditional art or even 1990s-era actionism.