The aim of the text was to locate the Ideology of Official Nationality in the space of Russian socio-political thought of 30s and 40s of the 19 century. The ideology, elaborated by count Sergey Semionovich Uvarov (1786–1855), was not only one among many legitimizing concepts, created mainly in regard to please Nicolai I. This doctrine occurred also to be a central narrative, organizing and polarizing Russian public discourse until the end of the Romanov’s monarchy. At first, the intellectual camps emerged during Nicolas I’s reign treated the Uvarov’s proposition as a central point of reference. Then next generations of the Russian intelligentsia referred to it, including the representatives of nearly all currents within the Russian socio-political thought before 1917. However, the core of the ideology of official nationality, i.e. so called the Uvarov’s triade (Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality; Православие, Самодержавие, Народность) was burdened with an indispensible tension between the values entered into it. Namely, the reference to Orthodoxy (Православие) and Nationality (Народность) was expressing the integrative ambitions of Uvarov, who was searching for values which would enable to unify nearly all inhabitants of the Russian Empire. Nevertheless, Autocracy (Самодержавие), despite Uvarov’s desires and beliefs, was not a principle able to inspire people infi nitely to prefer group rather than individual aspirations. In fact, the last part of the Uvarov’s triade – signifying a variety of modern absolutism – promotes a particular kind of egotism and social atomism.