Abstract: The subject of the article is the national auto-stereotypes of Russians. Perestroika and the ensuing social transformation significantly influenced the collective representation, touching upon the system of ethnic identity to the structure which includes ethnic auto-stereotypes. The need to examine the direction of this transformation of the Russian ethnic stereotype was the reason which defined the subject of the article. The authors not only theoretical but also empirical study of the substantive content of the auto-stereotypes of Russians. In the empirical investigation two methods were used for data collection: projective drawing and questionnaire.This choice of methods allowed us to obtain data from two strata: units of consciousness (questionnaire) and unconscious (projective drawing). The scientific novelty of research is determined, first and foremost, it is a combination of the methods, allowing to study not only autostereotype conscious representation and unconscious, it is difficult verbalize. The result confirmed the correctness of this approach, showing: between conscious and unconscious auto-stereotypes of Russians there is considerable variation. If the result of questionnaire describes the representatives of the people as a whole positively, the processing of projective drawings shows that unconscious auto-stereotypes of Russians have quite a large number of negative connotations.