Why did democracy fail in Russia and society failed to establish control over the power elites? The articles by L. Gudkov, included in the book “Reverse Totalitarianism,” are united by the search for an answer to this fundamental question. In order to identify the reasons that prevent the country from freeing itself from its totalitarian past, the author examines many factors that shape mass consciousness. Traditions of state violence, mass immorality (or the morality of opportunism), the reproduction of imperial and militaristic “historical consciousness”, impulses of counter-modernization - this is an incomplete list of problems that fall into the field of view of L. Gudkov. Based on numerous research materials conducted by the Levada Center since the late 1980s, the author proposes theoretical schemes and analytical structures that correspond to the real socio-political situation. The articles from which the book is compiled were written between 2009 and 2019 and reflect the dynamics of changes in Russian mass consciousness over the past decade. Reverse Totalitarianism is a natural continuation of the work the author began in Negative Identity (2004) and Abortive Modernization (2011). Lev Gudkov – sociologist, Doctor of Philosophy, scientific director of the Levada Center, editor-in-chief of the journal “Bulletin of Public Opinion”.