The book is devoted to the answer to three key questions: what, when and why went wrong, for what reasons and circumstances did the progressive dynamics of social development change at the turn of the 1960s and 70s. on a destructive trajectory? Based on a cross-analysis of inaccessible sources of Western and Russian archives, memoir literature and his own memoirs, the author offers his version of the deep processes of the last quarter of the 20th century, which ultimately led to the impending systemic, political, economic, cultural, environmental and technological crises.