Altogether, 1448 individuals from six neighbouring countries of Russia in the Baltic Sea region (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Belarus) described a ‘typical’ member of their own nation and a ‘typical’ Russian, as well as rated their own personality, using the National Character Survey (NCS). Results suggest that national character stereotypes are widely shared, temporally stable and moderately related to assessed personality traits, if all assessments are made using the same measurement instrument. In all studied countries, agreement between national auto‐stereotypes and assessed personality was positive and in half of the samples statistically significant. Although members of the six nations studied had a relatively similar view of the Russian national character, this view was not related with self‐rated personality traits of Russians but moderately with the Russian auto‐stereotype. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.