The severe crisis in Russia was expressed in a deep defeat of public consciousness, in a violation of logic and the ability to “measure” social phenomena. During perestroika and reform, such strong technologies of consciousness manipulation were used against the population that a breakdown occurred and a chain process of loss of logical reasoning skills was launched. The departure from the norms of logical thinking has become one of the most important national problems. This is most strongly and clearly manifested in the reasoning of the power elite and the educated layer of the country. People with a lower level of education are still held together by common sense and tradition. A new book by a famous political scientist provides a classification of defects in thinking and their manifestations in the interpretation of the main problems facing society. In the question of ways to overcome this crisis, the author adheres to the view that the repair of “consciousness” will not go through a shift to postmodernism, but through the restoration of the methods and norms of thinking developed by the Enlightenment - with their necessary modernization, but without separation from the main trunk of the rationality of the New Age.< /p>