Vladimir Kantor’s new book Demythologisation of Russian culture is concerned with interaction of world cultures and the turning points in the world history — the fall of the Roman Empire, World War I, Russian Revolution of 1917, etc. What drives the masses in times of war and revolutions; how mob mentality takes over society, and how the truth known to an individual defies widespread delusion; what is the nature of the myth and of the two principal events of world history — ‘the life and death of a living being’ — each of these questions receives an answer in seventeen essays on key figures of Russian culture: Peter I, A. Pushkin, I. Turgenev, F. Dostoevsky, A. Chernyshevsky, M. Katkov, A. Kerensky, M. Gorky et al. Published as an addendum to the book is Kantor’s short story ‘The death of a retiree’ [‘Smert pensionera’], supplied with a dedicated article ‘On the event of death’ by K. Barsht.