The article discusses the issues of constructing the identity concept that is relevant for cross-cultural communication in the frame of literary discourse. The author considers the literary text as a symbiosis of the content and features of individual creativity, which reflects the author's ethnic and cultural identity. This is due to the poly-code nature of the literary text, which has an ethnic specificity, implemented in the dichotomy ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’. While studying the relationship between ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’ in Russian and German linguistic cultures embodied in lexical units, the author comes to the conclusion that these language units of literary texts with ethnic coloration act as specific indicators of communicative behavior of men and women belonging to different ethnic groups. The article emphasizes that in the mentality of the ethno-cultural community the concepts of ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’ are also reflected by means of stereotypes through which the characteristic of ‘Us’ in comparison with ‘Them’ is revealed. Analyzing the literary works by Eugene Vodolazkin, the author pinpoints the heterostereotypes underlying the discreteness of ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’. Besides, the author focuses on the fact that ethnic self-identification in this opposition is based on relations within such categories as norms of behavior, traditions, food, drinks, clothing, language and habits. The main aim is to determine how the self-identification of the personality created by the writer is expressed linguistically based on existing stereotypes in the society regarding the ethnic community of different cultures representatives.