The article is focused on the causes of the ambivalent perception of corruption. Authors try to explain the coexistence in mass consciousness of the disapproval phenomenon while a tolerant attitude exists to the facts of corruption at the grassroots level. These causes are associated with the features of economic consciousness of society generated by the privatization results of the 1990th. The flexibility of frontiers between political and economic forms of corruption is considered. In the interpretation proposed, corruption is understood as the use of any public resources for private benefit. This interpretation of corruption should be extended not only to the power, but also to another core institution of society – property. In case of political corruption, corrupt officials seize the power not belonging to them. In the case of economic corruption they arrogate property. In modern Russia, such appropriation of public property took place in the 1990–th throughout privatization process. Such kind of a “birth trauma” has plunged the economic consciousness of society into a state of anomie. The ways of property legitimation in modern Russia are discussed. It is concluded that the only possible form of the property legitimation and elimination of the privatization negative effects in Russia today is a “rational” way of its practice in the development of social production. This gives the possibility to ensure the recovery of economic consciousness of society and moral reflection in relation to corruption.