Alexander Zinoviev has described the Soviet regime in terms that bring out its resemblance with our liberal democracies. “It is the mediocre who survive” and “mediocrity has a better chance of succeeding,” as the Dauber reflects in The Yawning Heights, the satirical novel Zinoviev published in defiance of Soviet authorities in 1976. Theorems put forward in the novel by the Neurasthenic and the Careerist include the following:
