The main aim of this article is to examine the ways in which Russian national identity has been constructed by contemporary Russian historians and reflected upon in the widely disseminated official texts, such as school history textbooks. The very nature of these debates implies the existence of a set of complex questions, if not contradictions. In this study the authors do not attempt to resolve the contradictions in order to explain what ‘Russia’ and ‘Russianness’ are. The main rationale instead is to provide evidence on whether or not, and how contemporary political elites and intellectuals employ school history textbooks to position Russia, its national ‘self’ or constituent ‘other’, not least in relation to the concepts of “West” and “Eurasia”. This paper maintains that the debate on Russian national identity lies not so much in the conclusions, but in the nature of the discussions and arguments.