Poverty as a multiple phenomenon is a result of the influence of many factors that can be found in all the spheres of public reproduction on the one hand, and they can be caused by the socio-psychological nature of a man on the other hand. However, the research of poverty factors, conditioning its development, is not devoted enough attention. At best, the majority of specialists place emphasis on the quantitative assessment and economic behaviour of households’ study. The aim of the given work is the research and reasoning of socio-cultural features of poverty phenomenon in Russia and also defining subjects that are socially responsible for poverty. The novelty of the work is to reveal to define meaningfully the culturological approach to the analysis of the poverty phenomenon in Russia. This phenomenon helps to comprehend the underprivileged sections’ poverty as a social phenomenon and get to know mechanisms of its reproduction. The great attention is paid to the forming factors. The revealed characteristics of subcultures of the Russians’ poverty and subcultural factors of the domestic poverty let to give scientific credence to measurement provided by programs of socio-economic support of people.