The article deals with the correlation of historical facts of the foundation period of the Russian centralized state with the culture of its time and establishment of the Russian national thinking.

The article deals with the role of the leaders of the older generation of the school of Annals by M. Blok who originated the study of the “history of mentalities” as an independent direction of historical cognition, in the development of the mentality conception.

There is described the view of a Russian politician and historian Pavel Nikolaevich Milukov (1859-1943) on the Russian literature of the XIX century. There are revealed the fundamentals of his conception of Russian culture originality and their influence on the development of the Russian literature as a whole and especially in the period of the “golden century”. There is found out the influence of P.N. Milukov’s conception on establishment and development of the new “culturological” approaches in study both of Russian culture and of Russian history.

Along with the regularities of the processes of socio-ethnical temporality there are marked out and characterized the main tides of ethnic formation in the world history. Having determined the main stages of Russian ethnos development and having stated their dominant features and peculiarities, the authors show the place of Russia in the world ethnic time.

There is criticized the one-sided approach in evaluation of the place and the role of the Soviet period in the history of the Russian state. There is suggested the possible way of overcoming this approach in the paradigm of industrial civilization development.

There is described the evolution of philosophic views on time. There are revealed such modern categories as social and ethnic time, which in the methodological aspect can be productive in studying the parameters of the historical, social and cultural development of society.