The research under scrutiny develops the ideas of integral theory of lexical meaning and a number of studies on the structure of the pragmatic macrocomponent (Yu. D. Apresyan, G. N. Sklyarevskaya, V. N. Telia, E. Yu. Bulygina, T. A. Tripolskaya). In order to identify the structure of the pragmatic macrocomponent of ethnonyms a complex of methods was used: comparison of lexicographical dictionaries’ strategies of different periods and study of the Russian National Corpus. The investigation involves "Dictionary of Russian language" edited by D. N. Ushakov (19351940), "Dictionary of Modern Russian literary language", edited by V. I. Chernysheva (19481965), "Dictionary of the Russian Language" edited by A. P. Evgeneva (19811984), dictionaries and encyclopedias of different periods of time and about 2,000 contexts from the Corpus.
The purpose of this article is to describe the structure of the pragmatic component of ethnonyms, the ways of fixing this semantics in dictionaries and realization in the modern Russian discourse. It is established, firstly, that academic Russian dictionaries present ethnonyms as neutral lexemes in the interpretation area, and in some cases in the illustration area a pragmatic context is applied. Ideological microcomponent is often revealed while comparing dictionaries of different time periods. Secondly, the structure of the pragmatic macrocomponent of nominations on the national basis includes estimating microcomponents and ideological values. In its turn, the ideological microcomponent includes such components as closeness, farness, alienness, hostility, and evaluation microcomponent includes such components as developed / undeveloped nation, which determines its position in the scale of prestige, usefulness and / or accepting – a kind of ranking of nations. The level of development is supported by a set of particular judgments (ethical and rational), representing national stereotypes.