Why does the traditional Russian consciousness reject liberal model of modernization? Why does it consider the liberal values not only alien, but absolutely unacceptable and associated with snares of the devil? In our view, the problems of the society, which has announced its desire to modernize, lie primarily in its culture and mentality. Historic collisions of its development lie in the contradictions between what is dictated by the vital necessity and what is embodied in the culture with the help of archaic and stereotyped patterns of consciousness.