According to Western critics, the claims to create an "absolute" social science, to a "truly scientific" description of society, in particular Soviet society, and to discover absolute and mathematically precise social laws have become outdated. Zinoviev was the heir of 19th century scientism and Soviet scientism and was not familiar with the achievements of the classics of Western sociology. The naive desire to learn society as a "reality" with the help of the method excluding interpretations reflected the influence of Hegel and Marxism (ideas about the real and reasonable identities) and did not withstand the criteria of Kant established for scientific knowledge (distinction between phenomenon and noumenon). As a result, the objective social laws with which Zinoviev replaced the Marxist laws of historical development were placed by him as natural laws into reality, which corresponded to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism.