The article examines the evolution of the phenomenon of mass reading in the USSR and Russia during the last decades of the 20th century – a period of sociopolitical transformations. The relevance of the work is determined by the need to understand the role of reading not only as a cultural practice, but also as an indicator of underlying social processes. The study of changing reader priorities goes beyond marketing analysis and allows us to identify value shifts, changes in collective consciousness, and different experiences of historical time in the eras of stagnation, reforms, and crisis. The purpose of the study is to analyze how the structure, motives and content of mass reading have transformed in response to the changing sociohistorical context, highlighting the key stages of this evolution. The author identifies three fundamentally different periods: the era of late “Brezhnev’s socialism” (1970s – 1985), the time of perestroika (1986–1991) and the post-Soviet period of the 1990s. At each stage, reading preferences, motivations for engaging with books, and the book’s symbolic role in society underwent change. The findings indicate a close relationship between the political and ideological climate in the country, the state of the book market, and reading practices.