The article is devoted to the crisis that Russian conservative nationalists faced in the second half of the 1880s. - contrary to their own hopes connected with the coming to power of the «nationalist tsar» Alexander III. Part of the reason for the crisis was the death of three relatively independent intellectual leaders of this trend: I.S. Aksakova, M.N. Katkov and N.P. Gilyarov-Platonov. However, the reaction of Alexander III to the «foreign policy» activity that was carried out in 1886-1887 also played a role. M.N. Katkov and his associates, including General E.V. Bogdanovich. This activity, aimed at Russian-French rapprochement, also had internal political and ideological aspects.