Abstract This article is devoted to the functioning of Russian language in the modern world and raises a few issues: What are the regions of Russian diasporas nowadays? Under what conditions can Russian language survive in the foreign countries? How does Russian language change in its mother country and outside? It is also under discussion how language norms transform in modern Russian. It is stated that liberalization in lexical and register choice is opposed to the requirements of grammatical accuracy. Grammar is still considered as a marker of good education and culture of a person.