The collective monograph is devoted to the study of cognitive-rhetorical strategies of prominent British and Russian intellectuals in a situation of systemic crisis during the “Transition Era” and the formation of cultural/national/Imperial identities in Britain and Russia in the 17th and the 18th cc. On the base of the his­torical and comparative analysis of the cultural code of the emerging British and Russian identities basing on historical materials — polemical texts, texts of ser­mons and travelogues of the 17th and the 18th cc. — deals with the common and specific in the practices and mechanisms of impact of various groups of intellec­tuals on power and society in Britain and Russia in the situation of the disintegra­tion of the Universalist image of the world and the formation of new ideas on the human, the society and the state.