The article turns to the problem of modernization of the structure of mass consciousness of post-Soviet Ukraine and Russia (system of values, of socio-political views etc.). With an extensive amount of sociological data used, the authors discuss the reasons that made for difference of the ways and methods of the solution of the socio-cultural and socio-political collisions which had sprung up in the course of the adaptation of mass consciousness in each of the two countries to institutional and value standards of modern democracy. The authors mention serious disfunctions of the political systems that have formed in both countries in the post-Soviet period, which revealed themselves in the course of the Russian (2003 to 2004) and Ukrainian (2002 to 2004) electoral cycles. As a result, in Russia (with passive approval by public opinion) a course was adopted for simplifying correction of the institutional design of the political system, fraught with actualization of a Weimar scenario; whereas Ukraine chose a different strategy - but no less destructive for democracy - one of direct (revolutionary) and extra-institutional solution of the contradiction between the democratic ideal and reality.