on the Soviet system", he then called the Soviet period the best in the history of Russia, the best that Russia was able to create. The figure of Zinoviev is tragic, he was distinguished by pessimism and, probably, an extremely "tragic view of history". With good reason, he rejected Western society ("Westernism"), but he perceived Russia ambiguously, combining love for Russia with a desire to understand it scientifically. However, Zinoviev was not an apologist for real communism and did not at all consider him an ideal. Finally, his vision of the world was deeply personal, created "out of himself" – many of his books did not contain footnotes. Therefore, Mezhuev concludes, it is difficult for Zinoviev to compare with someone, to understand to whom he inherited, including in Russian thought. According to Maxim Kantor, Zinoviev became a writer "out of shame for human nature" and created a multi-volume "history of the Russian state" in the form of a folk epos, covering the period from Khrushchev to Yeltsin; the history of the people's tragedy – dehumanization and degradation of social and human dignity, the history of the collapse and series of disasters, however, told as one endless joke. The chronicle of the era of disintegration was a "study of research", through double exclusion described the ideological factory of society – philosophers, sociologists, nomenclature. According to Kantor, Zinoviev's fairy-tale epic from book to book became increasingly banal, unfunny, flat and boring: later works on the West did not reach the level of "Yawning Heights". Bold, but scientifically naive and unreliable books about the West were actually written by the author about Russia; the real West was never of interest to Zinoviev. The image of the West was one of the metaphors of Russian life – Zinoviev followed Russian emigrant thought, starting with Herzen. According to Russian sociologist Nina Naumova, "Yawning Heights" were the only attempt in Soviet sociology to propose a description of the Soviet system. Russian-American philosopher and sociologist Oleg Kharkhordin considered "Communism as Reality" the best introduction to the sociology of Soviet life, noting the exceptional "clarity and power" of Zinoviev's conceptualization of informal activity. Kharkhordin saw the proximity of his model to the analysis of traditionalist communities by Pierre Bourdieu and found advantages in the Zinoviev model. Andrei Fursov brings Zinoviev's work closer to the "new social history" that arose in the 1970s based on the ideas of Edward