At Moscow State University, Zinoviev formed a group of followers from domestic and foreign students and graduate students. Listeners recalled that Zinoviev was impressive with his erudition, his classes were not "lectures on paper", but improvisations on a given topic, offering a systematic vision of the problem, a dynamic creative search. According to the memoirs of the physicist Peter Barashev, who studied at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Zinoviev forced to read the originals of the original sources, evaluate each text used, look for not only the strengths, but also the weaknesses of scientific works. He rather sharply and emotionally criticized his predecessors and opponents, but he treated students warmly, seeing them as like-minded people, communicated informally, took them to exhibitions, to the cinema, to cafes. Listener of Zinoviev Valery Rhodes recalled: