In the paper they analyze the perception of the Russians and the Russian reality by some representative of Russia and foreign countries. The aim of the paper is to present the results of the social survey devoted to the peculiarities of the national character of the Russians, their mentality, as well as to the problem of perceiving the Russians by the representatives of Russia and other cultures. They emphasize that a people has their unique traits, their unique culture, but from time to time in the world community they create false ethnic characteristics of the Russian people. In the paper the authors comment on the book by V.I. Zhelvis “Xenophobe’s guide to the Russians”, which influenced their interest in the problem of the Russians and caused the working out of the questionnaire to carry out the survey of the respondents about their attitude to the Russians and Russia on the whole. Structurally the questionnaire is a number of multiple choice questions and open questions giving respondents an opportunity to express their own opinions. Three respondent groups were questioned: Russian citizens, Russians living abroad, foreigners. In the paper the authors demonstrate some questions of the survey, the percent of the answers received from the mentioned above respondent groups and make conclusions resulting from the analysis conducted.