Abstract: National identity was one of the core discourses of criticism in the large-scale Russian patriotic literary magazines in the late 20th century. Unlike the "democrats" who focused on literary criticism and reflect on it, the "patriots" re-examined the concepts of "nationality", "race" and "nationalism", and isolated the core category "Russian nature" to explain the literary phenomena of national identity. Through discriminating against "others", incorporating new literary phenomena into "self", and demarcating the boundary between "self" and "others", patriotic magazines finally constructed a set of their own national identity discourse. It is undeniable that the discourse has significant positive significance in the specific context of the time, but with the development of the times, it has gradually exposed its limitations.