The motif of the article is analysis of factors of the perception of Russia abroad. On analyzing ideas of our country that have formed in the West, and their evolution, the authors demonstrate that the formation of Russia’s image is a dynamic and contradictory process developing under the impact of a complex of natural-geographical, historico-political, institutional, geopolitical, ethno-national and cultural factors. In the authors’ estimation, the concrete content of this image is determined not only and not so much by what is going on in Russia herself, as by the general situation in the world. According to their conclusion, negative attitude towards Russia in the West is due to the fact that throughout the 19th to 20th centuries she was appearing (and is to some extent still appearing up to now) in the capacity of that “alien other”, in contraposition to which the Western identity was in the making. Real opportunities for the improvement of her image in the West, as the authors maintain, just opened for Russia in recent years, now that with the change of the geostrategic paradigm of opposition the functional role of the “other” has begun to gradually come over to the Islamic countries and China.