The next morning we make our way to a packed auditorium at Khabarovsk University for a panel discussion related to the exhibition. As an Art+Auction contributor and art market specialist, I am invited to talk about how the market operates and about the relationships among galleries, auction houses and collectors. Gutov preaches the gospel of contemporary art. Brochet works the crowd of 200 students, telling them that in today’s Russia, where art is no longer state sponsored or persecuted, it is not the work alone that has changed but also how it’s shown, viewed and bought. Top Old Masters or Impressionists may be out of reach, he explains, but not top contemporary pieces: "In Russia, collectors have always been more prescient about the value of art than officials. The future depends on you!"

This must be eye-opening — and a bit perplexing — to the students, who have virtually no exposure to contemporary art. Khabarovsk does not have a single gallery (the nearest is in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, 250 miles to the north). It has painters and sculptors, of course, but most create in traditional modes, and their work is not easily viewed.

The 15th floor of a grim apartment block next to the former kgb offices has been reserved for artists since Soviet times. Back then, to acquire paints and canvases, let alone a studio, artists had to study for years and then be admitted to the artists’ soyuz, or union. Dutiful subscribers to the tenets of Socialist Realism could expect enough official commissions to survive. Private sales were virtually nonexistent. The state no longer provides commissions, but little else has changed. There is still no commercial infrastructure and few collectors. The soyuz here still has 100 members, and artists still go through rigorous academic training. When we visit floor 15 of the building, our host is Vitaly Drozdov, the 69-year-old doyen of the Khabarovsk art scene and a former soyuz secretary.

About two years ago, Drozdov sold a picture to a Chinese collector for 200,000 rubles (about $7,500). The memory rankles. Selling privately is "against my conscience," and he has no intention of kowtowing to the uneducated taste of today’s buyers, he says, adding with a sigh, "These days, money goes to entertainment, not enlightenment." The very idea of pricing a work throws Drozdov into a panic. In Soviet times, he recalls fondly, the state set prices according to picture size. But despite his nostalgia for Communist paternalism, Drozdov is no Socialist Realist. In his giant but unheroic canvas of a howling guard dog and a Red Army soldier, the soldier is dead, with only his head above ground. A depiction of a ward of sleeping infants suggests an orphanage in Nicolae Ceaucescu’s Romania. Occasionally, "for the soul," Vitaly paints landscapes. He has no patience with contemporary art that departs from academic tradition. "New Rules," he snorts, with its trivial subject matter and absence of painterly technique, is "impossible to take seriously."

Drozdov’s next-door neighbor, Andrey Blazhnov, disagrees, calling the show "unbelievable — something we could never imagine happening in Khabarovsk." Blazhnov’s parents were artists, but he did not see any other contemporary works until 1997. He specializes in photography and graphic design, explaining that "one can’t sell oil paintings here." Last year he teamed up with Yakovlev and some interior designers to "promote art for private spaces." It does not sound terribly lucrative; they don’t even have a Web site.

At 36, Blazhnov is the youngest artist we talk with in Khabarovsk; Brochet meets some students at the city art academies but says they are "very traditional, all doing portraits and landscapes." In fact, he feels that the best provincial artists he has encountered are those over 50. The younger ones, Brochet says, are less technically proficient and not as imaginative or innovative, perhaps because, unlike their elders, who struggled to express their individuality in Soviet times, the current generation enjoys a freedom that makes it lazy and conventional. His touring exhibition is his way of fighting this inertia.