The article examines the remains of the archaic consciousness of the workers in Western Siberia, inherited from the former social layers of the agrarian society: peasants, burghers and artisans. They had pro-royal mood, patriarchal respectfulness to superiors, and passive expectation of the changes for the better, which would be brought by a certain cultural hero from outside, a negative attitude toward private ownership and hoarding. However, the workers did not like their bosses, businessmen and civil servants, and were in a state of constant conflict with them blaming them for all the trouble. The rejection of the private property resulted in such phenomena as large-scale drinking, often fraught with riot and rampant, the propensity to theft and general criminality. This also contributed to the underdevelopment of personal principle in most workers that in the absence of control by the community led to the fall of morality and the criminalization of the society. The third component of the deviant behavior is the inner irrational archaic revolt against violent modernization. However, all this with the passage of time went to the past and the workers gradually adapted to the new requirements of the time.