The article discusses the crisis in the socio-economic and socio-political development in the late Soviet period that led to the non-critical borrowing of the neoliberal economic doctrine capable of solving the tasks of the consumer society. A the same time, a new developmental model was forming in the West — to be formulated in 1992 during the UNO Summit of Rio de Janeiro (“Agenda XXI”): the coordinated plan for the XXI c. to reach “sustainable development.” Yet the liberal economic doctrine monopolized the concept of “sustainable development.” Ignoring of political economy as science that happened in the course of this monopolization, turned to be an unpardonable mistake that allowed the neo-classical mainstream interpret and reduce this concept in accordance with aims directly opposite to its essence.