The paper compares two corpora of Russian and English research articles in dentistry to identify differences between texts as regards evaluative language and other language tools to pursue politeness strategies. Positive politeness strategies are understood as a part of the positive evaluation process having the pragmatic function not to offence each other’s desire to be approved of. The study aims to define the politeness strategies that are most commonly used in Russian and English medical journals and to focus on the possible reasons for differences in Russian and Anglo-Saxon academic writing cultures that underlie the choice of politeness strategies. The analysis of the data shows that Russian research articles rarely employ politeness strategies if compared to their English counterpart preferring negative politeness strategies to positive ones. This study also provides some methodological advice for developing a syllabus in academic writing. Conclusions made on the basis of two compared corpora can also provide insights into both translation and contrastive studies.