Setting to the period of the 1990s – a very ambivalent period for Russia – and basing his argumentation on a number of important facts, the author is reasoning about the causes and consequences of the events of that time, about the role played in them by the elites and by society. Besides, such topical themes are also touched upon, as answerability of power to the people, complicacy of the country’s modernization, society’s value and cultural crisis. Finally, the author advances and substantiates his hypothesis as to why, after all, the period in question told so negatively on the Russians’ mass consciousness.