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.