The article is devoted to the problem of possible negative pragmatic transfer in situations when American students produce or comprehend requests in the Russian language. Requests are very frequent in Russian communication, but their successful production depends greatly on the precise choice of linguistic means and speaker's knowledge of norms of Russian linguistic behavior. As researchers note, Russian and American linguistic behavior in the situations of request differ greatly, and pragmatic transfer in this area may lead to pragmatic failure and culture shock. The article presents a data-based study of linguistic means used for conveying requests in the Russian language. The object of inquiry is the possibility of using certain linguistic resources in a certain communicative context for conveying requests with different level of politeness. Correlation between the usage by a speaker of linguistic means aggravating or mitigating imposition on a listener and the level of politeness of requests is under scrutiny. Basing on the analysis, the author tries to point out the areas which due to cultural and linguistic specifics of the Russian language might with great possibility suffer negative pragmatic transfer of American RFL-learners. Such areas require special training of American students in RFL-class.