The article focuses on the phenomenon of Russian nationalism as an ideology striving to further our already self-exhausted cultural and civilizational paradigm. This ideology aspires to making an absolute of our mentality, of our historical inertia, it sanctions our contemporary social, intellectual, spiritual inaction. The author is considering mechanisms of the axiology of nationalism. Nationalism is comprehended as means of reproduction of Russian culture as dual one, Manichaean by its typology, as a force that narrows the reflection field of culture, blocks the personality principles of the latter. The article exposes the role of the nationalist ideology in the «power–society» system, as well as this ideology’s impact on modernization processes. The author makes the conclusion to the effect of ontological, phenomenological, gnoseological untenability of nationalism as of the world view. The article stresses Utopianism and nihilism of nationalism, its essential inability to be «moderate» and «enlightened».