Thus, the West perceives its own smallness, reflected in the curved mirror of Soviet society, as a grandiose phenomenon p. 598 - Alexander Zinoviev

Perestroika is nothing but a spectacle organized from above.

Communism was an ideal for me. But above all an education system: […]. I was therefore educated and raised as an idealist communist, in the sense that Thomas More, Campanella, Charles Fourier or Saint-Simon understood it, who mean a lot to me. But this communism was perverted and betrayed by the leaders of the Party. The reality I observed did not correspond at all to the ideals of communism.

Furthermore, if people seek power, it is not for power per se, but for the material advantages that their position and influence could provide them. p. 42