I will be listing a few instances of Russian communication patterns that lead to communication failures - even if the latter is only manifested in a worsened mutual image that communication partners go with after the speech event took place. In most cases their relation to the basic cultural values introduced in 1.1. is evident. These patterns cluster and make two types: one is related to the Politeness phenomena, the other to information-processing strategies characteristic of the given culture. Politeness as a socio- and linguapragmatic mechanism of human communication has been widely discussed and described in a variety of languages since the famous work of Brown and Levinson (1987). A typology of human information-processing strategies is yet to be developed. Main assumptions of the Politeness theory are discussed below.