The article discusses the specifics of military personnel after the end of military service, their problems of transition to the civil society. It is noted that they retain their connection with the army, a social institution consisting of a rigidly hierarchical large armed aggregate of people, under the control of the state, ensuring the protection, defending national interests and providing assistance to other countries in confl icts. The Russians discharged from active military service to the reserve, as an object of sociological research are a set of citizens who were registered with the military, who had served in the Army or were exempted from it for various reasons, but are fi t for military service in wartime. They are a fairly large-scale, complex, heterogeneous object, and at the same time a subject located at the junction of military and civilian life. They are distinguished by the presence of socio-economic problems (choice of a new profession, employment, purchase of housing, etc.).