Famous linguist N.S.Trubetskoy in his book Europe, Culture and Language (About real and false nationalism. Europe and Mankind, pp.95, 114) writes about the necessity to avoid “universal civilization” if one is to become a “real European”. Eurocentrism and orientation towards “universal civilization” result in sad consequences when people lose confidence in themselves and their own potential. Trubetskoy formulates two precepts: “study yourself” and “be yourself”.

According to Academician L.V.Scherba, real knowledge of the language depends on one’s knowledge of the nation’s mentality. The latter can be best studied in the light of the differences between the mentality of the nation speaking the target language and the mentality of the nation speaking one’s native language.

Unfortunately, even the best course books either ignore the features of the Russian mentality and character or just give Russian equivalents of English words and expressions. The reasons for this are quite understandable.

Russian mentality features have not yet been studied very thoroughly. Anyway, we can say that language, reflecting as it does social processes, clearly shows that American culture influences Russian culture significantly (V.G. Kostomarov, Language Taste of the Epoch, M., 1999, p.246). The same goes for business setting. We have lost old traditions of running business; new traditions have not been established yet. We cannot find equivalents of American business ideas and notions. Business training centres use a lot of American and British books in Russian and English. We can see the results of the influence of western mass media. Those who study Business English using popular American and British course books are surely influenced by Anglo-American culture.

In view of the present-day situation and in agreement with Trubetskoy’s ideas, it is important to study ‘cultural scenarios’ (the term is borrowed from: Anna Wierzbicka, Language. Culture Cognition, M., 1995, an in-depth study of the semantics of culture-specific lexis) of Russian businessmen. A relevant experiment has been carried out. The objective was to find out the extent of influence of American mentality on Russian businessmen who work according to the American model of running business.

Businessmen were asked to fill in the questionnaires which inquired indirectly what way of thinking, feeling, and communicating they prefer: Chinese, Japanese or American. Questionnaires were designed using the Russian Academy of Sciences’ forms and A.Wierzbicka’s forms. Professional businessmen gave statistically clear answers: they prefer to think, to feel, and to act American way. It was only the beginners who were more inclined to select the Japanese way. This first experiment is obviously proving that our businessmen are not only under the influence of American business culture; they are just part of it. Actually, these facts show that further experiments can lead us to new interesting conclusions. So far, we can see that American and Russian scenarios can be actually the same in business context.