The last book of Tsvetan Todorov (1939-2017), published in French in the year of his death, and in the Russian translation appeared this year, at first glance, is only able to disappoint. In the first part, this is a combination of biographical stories of a dozen with small figures of Russian culture, whose activities fell on the revolution and post -revolutionary decades, in the second - a detailed (comparable to previous) monographic essay on Kazimir Malevich.