Soviet communism as a social system incapable of reform was not justified. From the point of view of Western researchers, he was refuted by historical events: Perestroika, the collapse of the Soviet Union. Claude Lefort in 1989 summarized: According to Philip Hanson, the turn of the late Zinoviev to criticism of the West resembles the evolution of Herzen and Solzhenitsyn, who, like Nikolai Berdyaev, retained a deep affection for Russia. Unlike Berdyaev and Solzhenitsyn, Zinoviev was guided by communism, rationality and society. The thinker evolved from Westernism to Slavophilism (Michael Kirkwood) or to "Soviet patriotism" (Philip Hanson), social, rather than ethnic nationalism (Zinoviev laughed at particular "Russian spirituality"). Zinoviev's post-communist opus, Hanson believes, simplifiedly generalized the non-Western world and exaggerated the invulnerability of the West; the commentator doubted that the Soviet Union was a super-society. At the same time, the results of sociological surveys about the attitude of Russians towards the collapse of the Soviet Union and the social changes that have taken place largely confirm his vision. According to Hanson, Zinoviev's large-scale historical scheme clearly expressed and partly anticipated the public mindset in modern Russia, especially the views of the ruling elite of the Putin era: a feeling of humiliation, anti-Americanism and regret about the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although Zinoviev did not have time for the Russian leaders, he thought in a similar way that they too were, but more clearly. Perception in Russia Alexander Zinoviev belonged to those Soviet philosophers who opposed dogma in science and humanitarian thought in the 1950s and 1960s, their heated debates influenced public attitudes, shaped the views and beliefs of the Soviet intelligentsia. His sociological novels, which were circulated in samizdat during the late "stagnation" period, contributed to the collapse of official ideology, which had already pretty weakened after strikes by dissidents and Solzhenitsyn. Zinoviev's books were written on the topic of the day, they reflected one or another public mindset, therefore in the 1980s their readers were "westerners", in the 1990s they were "soilers". His works began to be published quite late, after the books of Andrei Platonov and Vladimir Nabokov, but before Solzhenitsyn. "Yawning Heights" sold out in a rather large circulation, "Communism as a Reality" in 1994 did not arouse much reader interest. The difficulty of Zinoviev's language was not noticed by readers of samizdat; more important was the fact of reading forbidden literature; only later did complex