Why is that while moving towards modernity, Russia oppose itself to the historical world of the West and ends up overwhelmed by utopian consciousness? Reflecting on the question of what peculiarities of history perception could predetermine such a transformation, the author emphasizes the bifurcation between historicism and utopianism. While the self-consciousness of European modernity found its manifestation in the idea of history, Russian thought was characterized by a steady desire to stop or accelerate history, to turn it around or go beyond it. Communist utopia and post-Soviet retrotopias are seen as products of this «resistance to history». The analysis undertaken in this book allows us to draw conclusions not only about the system of thought in which communist utopia recodes the perception of reality, but also about the mental products of its disintegration.