The article tackles investigation of the upheavals in the perception, by Russian mass consciousness, of functioning of the CIS and of prospects of its development. Basing his analysis on the data of the public opinion polls that have been arranged by the “Public Opinion” Foundation since 1998, the author states two tendencies that have clearly manifested themselves in 2005: the tendency towards decrease of the Russians’ dissatisfaction with the condition of the Commonwealth, and the tendency towards diminution of their orientation at consolidating the CIS and at raising the level of integration. It is convincingly demonstrated in the article that these tendencies, mutually contrary on the face of it, are, in point of fact, the two sides of one medal and are determined by erosion of the retrospective model — which has been dominating mass consciousness — of perceiving the CIS as the Soviet Union’s “altera essentia”.