In the 1970s, rather than be anti-Soviet and pro-Western, many artists took a neutral position that would allow them to question and analyze the perceived gap between the ideologies. For Kabakov, these developments led to his friends and colleagues forming a group that became known as the Moscow Conceptualists, which developed out of the Sretensky Boulevard Group. It is problematic to determine exactly who was a member of the group, as the term is fluid, broadly encompassing the Sots artists and the Collective Actions group, which both were influential in the construction of Russian conceptualist art. Prior to creating the installations for which Kabakov is known worldwide, Kabakov created fictional albums. He has created a total of 50. Each album is a story about one character who is often able to overcome the banality of everyday existence, or, "of a small man, possessed by big ideas." The first ten albums is a series called "Ten Characters" (1972–75). In the story of the Ten Characters, a man, attempting to write his autobiography, realizes that nothing much ever happened to him, and most of his life amounted to impressions of people, places, and objects. So he creates ten different characters to explain his perception of the world. Each story is text with illustration, demonstrating that Kabakov’s official work as a book illustrator is a strong presence in his "unofficial" work as well. In one of the albums from Ten Characters, called The Flying Komarov, average Soviet citizens grasp the wings of undersized versions of airplanes, some being pulled by ropes like water skiers in the sky. The illustrations also depict, in a cartoon-like fashion, the townspeople holding hands and forming large circles while floating in the air. The drawings are highly fanciful and could easily be used for a children’s book, if not in the Soviet Union then certainly in the West. The written explanation, however, suggests a deeper, perhaps more cynical meaning. Kabakov claims the albums are a genre somewhere between several types of art including literature, fine arts, and cinematography. “Most of all,” he suggests, “the ‘albums’ are a type of ‘domestic theater’…like old theater conducted on a town square in broad daylight". He compares his albums to theater where the viewer is bound by action and darkness, which does not allow for examination and evaluation of the action. The interest in giving the viewer the freedom to interact with and interpret the artwork is central to Kabakov’s oeuvre.