In the collection “Zero. Degree. Letters” included essays by Russian historian Ilya Gerasimov from 1999–2009. Most of them were written for the specialized Russian-American historical magazine Ab Imperio as marginalia on the fields of narrow professional debates, projecting their problems and methodology onto current cultural phenomena of Russian life: films, books, high-profile speeches. The core theme of articles written on a variety of occasions is reflections on the fate of the Westernization project in modern Russia. The book is centered on the crisis of the Westernizing paradigm of perestroika times, the dead end of alternative holistic projects and reflections on the new “Westernism for the 21st century.”