The author sketches the concept of the "post-socialist" (or "third generation") avant-garde movements. He explains the historical and political conditions which made the emergence of this specific avant-garde art possible. In his opinion, a unique type of art appeared in socialist countries during the disintegration of Soviet-type socialism due to similar circumstances. Once the global and local political conditions have changed, this art has mostly disappeared, leaving behind only traces of its existence The author then points out the specific representational mechanisms employed by such art and argues that it should be recognised as yet another kind of the twentieth-century avantgarde art.