Different historical periods are characterized by different attitudes of native speakers of the Russian language to its norms. Russian history during the Soviet period was marked by the struggle for the purity and correctness of the Russian speech. The process of protecting the Russian language was filled with deep ideological meaning, since the Russian language acts as a single means of communication for the multinational population of the USSR. The period of perestroika is characterized by the struggle against Soviet officialese, which took the form of the democratization and vulgarization of speech, the abolition of censorship in the media. This resulted in a stream of substandard and non-literary vocabulary penetrating into public speech, a special literary-jargonizing type of speech culture being formed in the journalistic environment. The second and third decades of the 21st century demonstrate an easy attitude of native speakers of the Russian language to its norms, the decreasing concern about the form of thought expression, the active penetration of colloquial speech into other spheres of communication. Digitalization of communication leads to a decrease in the level of speech culture, the development of clip thinking and the predominance of “point” attention (this is especially noticeable among adolescents and young people). Globalization of the most important spheres of society, on the one hand, contributes to the expansion of the morphemic and lexical repertoire of the Russian language, the development of the meanings of its lexemes, on the other hand, it brings about a fashion for anglicisms and a focus on foreign speech culture. Nowadays, protecting Russian literary language standards is becoming one of the most important national tasks; finding an effective solution will help preserve the Russian culture.