This collection of articles analyzes a number of problems related to a search for national and civilization identity in today’s Russian society, as well as to a nation-wide idea of Russia’s  «own peculiar way»  of development. The most important factors contributing to the formation of this idea in Russian mass consciousness, as well as to establishing various images of national and civilization identities in Russian society, are revealed here through the analysis of a great body of sociological data. The book also dwells on changes in national identity that occurred in post-war Italy and Japan and are closely associated with modernization in those countries. These changes are of interest as regards prospects for the formation of a new national and civilization identity in the contemporary Russia.