Abstract. The author addresses the issues of understanding culture and cultural policy as the topics of interdisciplinary research, the concept of cultural policy as the special type of managerial activity. The stress is put on the interdependence between public understanding of culture and practices of the state cultural governance. The foundations of cultural policy and mechanisms of its implementation are analysed in the context of socio-cultural transformations. The attention is given to principles of the state cultural policy in contemporary Russia that develops in situation of multiculturalism, decentralisation and modernisation.