The sociological interpretation of reality and the processes occurring in it is determined by various approaches to understanding its nature. The diversity of these approaches is eventually reduced to its definition as a reality of the social world, which reflects, on the one hand, objectively existing phenomena and processes and, on the other hand, people's subjective perceptions about the objective reality. Social actuality as objective social reality exists beyond the subject of social cognition, i.e. objectively. Each new generation inherits from their parent generations a complex system of economic, social and political structures, institutions, organizations and t5he established relationships which form the social infrastructure of objective reality (social reality). But people perceive directly only the part of objective reality in which they have their own knowledge. Due to knowledge of its particular sphere or different objects of reality, people get its more or less adequate subjective perception. Therefore, the study of social reality focuses on the process of formation of subjective ideas about the objects of social actuality and attitudes to it, which is included in the subject area of sociology of knowledge. That is, from the standpoint of sociology of knowledge, the research object is not reality, but ideas about the reality. Based on subjective perceptions of reality, people construct their own reality. These perceptions change under the influence of various factors affecting the changes in social reality in the process of its formation. A significant change factor is the crisis which affects all spheres of the Russian society. The article analyzes the impact of the crisis on the changes in social reality in different population groups in Russia and the way it is reflected on people's attitudes to each other, to family, work and education. Based on analysis of data from nationwide studies it has been revealed that there is a contradiction between Russians' traditional attitudes to each other, family, work and education and the emerging modern attitudes. Amid crisis, this contradiction tends to exacerbate due to the impossibility of maintaining the traditional principles underlying the old way of life, which leads to uncertainty and formation of new forms of certainty through the change in life paradigm.