This monograph was the result of the work of the all-Russian conference of medievalists of the same name, held at the Faculty of History of Moscow State University on February 15–16, 2012. Ethnic and proto-national discourses, as well as the practices resulting from them in Europe in the Middle Ages and early modern times, are studied using extensive historical material. Particular attention is paid to the factors that determined the specifics of ethnopolitical processes in states that were composite and complex in ethnic composition. For historians, political scientists, sociologists, as well as those interested in the ethnic history of European peoples in the Middle Ages and early modern times.