Abstract: Even though liberalism has a wide historiography, the problem of genesis and evolution of the liberal mentality still lacks serious researches. Description of the mental content and structural components of the liberal mentality, their hierarchy, interaction and interdependence is still one of the most methodological issues. The author offers a more complex definition of the liberal mentality that includes the social component. Special emphasis is made on the determination of special features and differences between the Russian and Western types of liberal mentality. The author of the article also makes an attempt to describe ethic beliefs, functional nature and peculiarities.The main method of research is the dialectic method. Comparative-historical and structural-functional methods have also played a significant role in determination of the structural components and interactions between these components as well as the nature  and mechanism of their formation. The results of research prove that Russian liberal mentality has its unique logic of cultural and historical development. The spirit and features of Western liberalism were adopted and Russian liberailsm had its own national grounds related to the Orthodox development thrust of the Russian civilization. The author offers a definition of Russian liberal mentality and analyzes factors defining its special features. He also touches upon the featurse and qualities of Russian liberailsm as a special type of thinking defining the behavior, ideology and selection of social development alternativef. The author describes a special mechanism of liberal mentality (archetypes, the core and etc.) that guarantees the dynamics of the liberal way of thinking and fixes spontaneously arising mental stereotypes of liberalism.