The ideological consciousness of man is for Zinoviev beyond the bounds of an unreliable historical experience, since "there are only illusions of historical explanation" ("Communism as a Reality"). Hence the extra-historical approach and the lack of chronology in his works. As Maxim Kantor writes, all events, "both Marx, and Ibansk, and "catastroika", and utopia, and the Master (Stalin), and Westernism", occur simultaneously in the consciousness of the individual. For Zinoviev, history is a history of disintegration, both personal and social, the history of dehumanization in the name of progress. Ibansk – a completely dehumanized society, in which there is no linear time; "the story ran aground", turned into an absurdity. People are sentenced to the eternal present, waiting for the end, without hope, for hope refers to an open story. The characters of "Yawning Heights" do not even try to leave a mark on history, because they realize that the past can always be rewritten.