The article offers an overview of the social and cultural changes brought about by the globalization process. The author focuses on individual and group identity as the main field of cultural changes. These are seen as an antinomic process of modernization and traditionalization, inclusion and exclusion, western and non-western influences etc. Special attention is paid to those developments in Russian society, and, in particular, in choices and mental models, that are brought forth by the country's integration into the global world.