Abstract. Salafism as a religious phenomenon isn’t something new in Islam and has appeared at the very beginning of the formation of this religion. In the course of many centuries of its existence it has spread over different regions of the Muslim World and has gone through various transformations overcoming the frames of religious Salafism and giving birth to political Salafism as well as extremist forms of Jihadi Salafism.    Salafism began to penetrate the Islamic continuum of the post-Soviet space since the end of the XVII c. but was stopped by the atheistic policy of the Soviet government. Beginning from the 1990s Salafism has quickly spread  in all of the post-Soviet Moslem states and Russia, but due to active countermeasures taken by official Islamic structures and state organs it has been restricted only to the religious sphere. Nevertheless in case of political instability and crisis situations in these countries Salafism may become a catalyst of public protests. Because of that the study of Salafism has to remain an essential part of modern  academic research.