MOSCOW—In the midst of a vibrant, expansive contemporary art scene, a peculiar exhibition has arisen in this city, reminding us that the Soviet past is not that far away. “Seventy-Five Years of the Moscow Union of Artists” celebrates an organization that once distributed work, money, and privileges to an army of loyal artists, in effect controlling Soviet Russia’s artistic output, but today, though it still owns state-built studios and exhibition halls, has little influence on the contemporary art world or cultural policy.

The show takes place in the immense second floor of the Central House of Artists. The space’s story is a good indication of how much the art world here has changed in the past 20 years: The building, erected by the MUA in 1979 to display work by its members, is now run by Expo-Park, a company best known for running Russia’s largest commercial art fair, Art Moscow. New and old coexist in Russia in curious ways.

The current show, financed by the MUA, is ironically the second MUA 75th anniversary show in the past three months. In November, a smaller exhibition, this one sponsored by the city of Moscow, took place at the Manege, an exhibition hall near the Kremlin, which also once belonged to MUA (and is now managed by the city council). Although the organization is nearing its 76th birthday, both shows have the same title—a legacy of the Soviet obsession with exhibitions containing some kind of number, celebrating a birthday or anniversary.

The MUA was created by the Stalin government on April 24, 1932. It was originally part of a larger organization called the Union of Artists of the USSR and was essential to Stalin’s policy of outlawing avant-garde art in favor of a new, official style, Socialist Realism, which drew on the work of Ilya Repin and the Wanderers group, who were active in the 1870s. From 1932 on, Soviet art was stuck somewhere between propaganda and secular worship, and the most successful MUA artists depicted party leaders and historical scenes from the Revolution. Although things loosened after Stalin’s death, with artists able to express their admiration for the modernism of Cezanne and Matisse, the everyday heroics of the various professions remained their primary subject matter. Still, the nonconformist artists, who were popular in the Western art world but virtually neglected in their own country, also aspired to be members of MUA, and by 1976, when official art took yet another liberal turn, most had succeeded in joining the organization. The advantages of membership were clear: By the 1970s, the MUA had become so rich that it was able to transform artists into a privileged class. Studios were provided free of charge. Materials were sold at a substantial discount. A painter could work for two months on various government commissions and live off the payment for the rest of the year.

But government reforms in the 1990s brought an end to the MUA’s prosperity. Yeltsin’s economic liberalization left little funding for state-sponsored art, and the rise of an informal art scene focusing on contemporary life made MUA work look extremely old-fashioned. These days MUA officials bemoan the end of Soviet times and tell stories of financial ruin and rampant private-business attacks on their government-supplied property. And though the arts have become more government-oriented under Putin, the old ways are not coming back. Russia was represented at the Venice Biennale by the neo-baroque high-definition videos of AES+F, work consistent with the nation’s goal of promoting an image of independence, glamour, and modernity. It’s a rhetoric in which some observers have heard echoes of the Soviet pathos for the nano-technological age.

But although the city may aspire to hyper-modernity, in the halls of the Central House of Artists it feels like the 1970s never ended, even though the works were mostly produced after 2000. Granted, there are no examples of worker worship or attempts at updating the Socialist Realism to include subjects of the present. But former official artists (you’ll find no underground masters here), absent the pressure of state commissions, are dabbling in other forms of the past, producing mostly small-sized variations of Symbolism or of Cezanne and Chagall. The paintings look by turns commercial and old-fashioned, and only a few are fit to show in Moscow galleries. Some works present a kind of neoclassicism that evokes works by John Currin; some use Expressionist, angular shapes to depict contemporary Russian life. But the main impression is of insularity from the issues raised by both contemporary art and the nostalgia for Soviet times that one finds in music, film, and pronouncedly subdued parliament debates. The MUA artists of the 21st century want an impossible mixture: the money and social security of the 1970s and the freedom of the 1990s. They refuse to understand that you can’t have it both ways. An artist paid by the state works for the state. Their work is naïve and politically toothless.

So much for past glories: No new official art will emerge from here.