The article is written in honor of the Professor of Tomsk state University Anisa N. Zheravina, who was the author's scientific supervisor when she began to study the history of the Russian Silver Age thirty years ago. The article aims to clarify the concept of the Silver Age based on a critical analysis of the available scientific literature interpretations. The author questions on its stereotypical perception as a purely aesthetic phenomenon. In this paper the author attempts to interpret the Silver Age as a multidimensional and holistic sociocultural phenomenon. In the section "Terminology Issues" the expression "The Silver age" is examined in journalistic and scientific discourses. The author studies the evolution of its meaning from metaphor with evaluative connotations to the term with the unique socio-cultural background, which developed on the basis of a specific worldview in the framework of Russian culture of the late XIX early XX centuries. Further the related concepts, that are close but not identical in meaning, are compared: the Silver age, the Russian Renaissance, decadence, fin de siecle, the era of modernity. The section "Silver Age in Focus of Cultural-Historical Analysis" deals with the attempt to define an outer border and to reveal the internal semantic content of the studied phenomenon as system integrity. The author proves that the Silver Age was embodied in the holistic system of creativity, attitude and lifestyle. So it was not a combination of modernist artistic movements, but fully-fledged culture. At the same time one should not understand it as a certain stage of Russian cultural history. The Silver Age became one of the components of a more general phenomenon of the Russian culture of the late XIX - early XX centuries. The section provides analysis of the system-forming elements of the Silver Age, such as cultural nature, social base, language culture, the chronotope of the phenomenon under study. It is shown that the unity of the Silver Age was determined by its belonging to the neo-romanticism as a type of culture. The author gives the characteristic features to confirm its romantic cultural nature. The work identifies the specific historical conditions of formation of the cultural elite of the Russian society of the late XIX early XX centuries, which formed the social base of the Silver Age. The author displays the peculiarities of mythopoetic perception of the world characteristic of the Silver Age creators' environment and its contribution to the actualization of symbolism as the leading language of culture. Spatial and temporal limits of culture of the Silver Age are also investigated in the article. In conclusion the author gave a working definition of the Silver Age, formulated from the standpoint of cultural-historical approach: the Silver Age as a sociocultural phenomenon was embodied in the combination of the processes and phenomena of neo-romantic in nature which occurred in the Russian culture of XIX-XX centuries and expressed the world-view of creative intellectuals. The break with the positivist-populist cultural tradition united them in search of a spiritual-moral perfection of the world.