There was an initial assumption in the West that the end of the cold war in 1991 brought universal jubilation. But time has proved and the show suggests otherwise. Free-market capitalism brought its suppressions and exclusions, as artists discovered. Among other things, some felt, it undermined the purpose and value of art.

Under Communism artists had limited professional opportunities. Those whose work didn’t adhere to state guidelines found no market. They had to support themselves with day jobs, doing whatever they could. If their art touched on hot-button political issues, it was censored, slapped down.

For some artists repression had a psychological upside. It gave their work a clear-cut sense of importance. It established art’s primary value as moral, not monetary; instrumental, not formal. If what you were doing was censorable, you could trust you were doing something right; heroic, even. And this attitude fostered solidarity and the growth of a counterculture in which experimentation, individuality and iconoclasm were protected and nurtured.

An influential group of dissident and nonconformist artists known as the Moscow Conceptualists set an example of such underground unity in the 1970s and ’80s. A few of these artists, like Ilya Kabakov, became international stars, but we encounter several less well-known members at the New Museum.

For all of them language, particularly the language of state-controlled propaganda, was both a target and tool. In large paintings Erik Bulatov gave ideologically loaded words a mock-monumental grandeur. Andrei Monastyrski, who founded the collaborative group Collective Actions, flew banners printed with absurdist phrases in and around Moscow, baiting censors but giving them nothing solid to latch onto. (Mr. Monastyrski, who represents Russia in the 2011 Venice Biennale, has a banner installed on Governors Island, on the side facing the Statue of Liberty, for the duration of the show. Created in 1977, it speaks in the voice of an outsider, who could be an immigrant: “I Do Not Complain About Anything and I Almost Like It Here, Although I Have Never Been Here Before and Know Nothing About This Place.”) Other artists in the group worked on a smaller scale.