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The article deals with the problem of delineating the middle strata of Russian society in the context of the social and economic crisis and assesses the correlation of the differences in social positions of middle class representatives as a criterion for social stratifi cation in general. Since the position of the middle strata within a system of social inequality is vulnerable enough, the economic crisis has quite a sizeable impact on the middle class and changes its structure. Over the past twentyfive years, Russia's middle class has undergone a number of transformations caused by the new waves of social and economic crises. So, in 1998 the Russian sovereign default resulted in the fact that following the massive declining trends the middle classes have thinned out to a minimum. The subsequent economic recovery accompanied by a social and political stabilization has led to an increase in the number of middle class members up until 2008 when another wave of the economic crisis had its dramatically significant impact on the middle strata. A comparison of survey data collected by the Public Opinion foundation in 2004 and 2014 leads to the conclusion that on the level of identity middle-class population trends have been stable in the past decade, except for the period of severe fl uctuations under the infl uence of the waves of the 2014 economic crisis. It was also considered how the economic crisis that emerged in the fall of the national currency proved quite a painful impact on the social well-being of broad layers of Russian society. This fact indicates that in the context of a lasting disorientation and supplemented by state of anomie in which a large part of the population exists, the middle strata — the way western scientists understand it, i.e. as the actor and regulator of social processes — cannot perform the functions assigned to them. To the present day, the dominating macro-trends erode the middle class which is accompanied by a decrease in the welfare of this group. Finally, the paper concludes that there are signifi cant differences in the tools applied by Russian sociological services, first of all concerning the criteria and indicators used for identifying the middle class.