The book is an attempt at a new genre - the genre of philosophy of history by analogy with how the philosophy of science or the philosophy of art is written. The material on which the book was written is the history of European civilization of the 20th century, primarily that region of civilization that was covered by communist totalitarianism. The philosophy of history deals not with events by themselves in their time sequence, but with the historical meaning of events. The problems of historical meaning are directly related to the assessment of good and evil in the human rank.