The article presents the analysis of the transformation processes of the lexical and phraseological systems of the Russian language due to the transformations at the social, economic, political and cultural levels in the 1990s. The transformation processes at the lexical and phraseological levels are considered in close connection with the factors of non-linguistic reality. The trends and mechanisms of the emergence of new lexical and phraseological units, as well as the dynamics of internal processes representing the changes are under consideration in the article.