The monograph is devoted to evidence on the example and material of Russian history of the 18th-19th centuries. hypotheses about the relationship of social equality and national inequality: the flip side of democracy is nationalism, while tolerance in interethnic relations is ensured by the suppression of the disenfranchised masses by the privileged elite. It has been established that in the first half of this period there is a formation of the estate system, the form and means of which is the westernization of culture, with the help of which the nobility opposes itself to the rest of the population.