Perception of class structure of Russian society by public consciousness

The problem of perception by a society of the class structure, in particular, change of public consciousness during the periods of social transformations is considered. It is noticed that in modern science there is an uncertainty concerning the existence of so-called "middle class". On a material of sociological researches of VCIOM (Russia Public Opinion Research Center) the author shows that in public consciousness middle class has no accurate criteria of definition, and the social groups carrying to middle class are too diverse to represent a steady generality.