This article is dedicated to tne methodological problems of regional, cultural and civilizational self-determination of Russia. The problem is taken in syntactical aspect: the authors analyzes how arid in what way semantical specificity of Russian civilization realizes in the postsoviet conditions and how this specificity actualizes in diffe rent social phenomena The authors uses as the basic concept the concept of "cultural matrix” The cultural matrix is considered as the "pure" possibility, which constructs the social reality. It actualizes as the specific complex of paradigms, behavioral patterns, stereotypes of attitudes, procedures of reflection, life scripts etc. The authors shows how the totalitarian ideology blocades the usual channels of matrix's actualization. After the decay of direct ideological control the ideology is continuing to function in the latent form and to blocade in this new form (and in the new way) some channels of matrix's actualization. As a result our contemporary social reality acquires the amalgamated character. It’s basic feature is the combination and the coexistence cf the incompatible elements. Thus the analysis of the syntactical aspect of the civilizational self-determination of Russia shows that one of the main causes of the contemporary crisis is the lasting blocade of the matrix’s channels and, consequently, that one of the main tasks consists of the opening of this channels, i.e. of their assimilation by social agents. Naturally, this task cannot be solved by the volitional resolutions, because the opening of the matrix’s channels is the objective process.