The application of finishing frictional treatment provides the effective strain hardening and the increased wear resistance combined with the high quality of austenitic Cr-Ni steels treated surface. However, the surface deformation treatment may cause the corrosion properties decrease because of the presence of strain-induced α´-martensite in the metastable austenitic steel surface layer. In this paper, the authors used the methods of transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction analysis, microhardness testing, and optical profilometry to study the influence of the temperature of nanostructuring frictional treatment with the sliding indenter on the structure, phase composition, hardening and surface quality of 12Kh18N10T metastable austenitic steel. It is shown that frictional treatment in the temperature range from -196 to +250 °C provides close levels of austenitic steel hardening when the efficiency of the strain-induced martensitic g®a´ transformation in the steel surface layer is strongly dependent on the loading temperature. Frictional treatment at the room and subzero temperatures forms the high quality 12Kh18N10T steel surface with the low values of roughness parameter ( Ra =75-120 nm). The elevated temperatures lead to the seizure and growth of Ra to 180-270 nm. It is determined that after the frictional treatment, in the thin surface layer of steel, the fragmented submicrocrystalline and nanocrystalline structures of strain-induced α´-martensite (at the loading temperature of T= -196 °C) and austenite (at Т= +250 °C), as well as two-phase martensitic-austenitic structures (at Т= +20 °C) are formed.