The research objective is in revealing thematic affiliation of standards of stable comparisons, motivation of comparison, the importance of these units in the Russian language consciousness according to questioning of native speakers, as well as to investigate features of their functioning in the modern Russian speech. The analysis of Russian language units was carried out against the background of kindred and not kindred languages. To achieve the goal, the authors have identified the structure of standards of the considered phraseological units according to Russian lexicographical sources, carried out a comparative analysis of the obtained data with the collection of units functioning in the ‘Russian National Corpus’, conducted a survey of native speakers of Russian and of other languages, analyzed the results. The research has shown that thematic spheres of comparison standards in different languages coincide in many respects. The most universal standards are zoonyms. This thematic group, as well as comparisons with standard-names of inanimate objects, can be considered to be motivated in all languages. National specific manifests itself in concrete realities chosen as comparison standards. For Slavs in general the choice of ‘wooden’ subject for standards is very typical. A choice of any standard is influenced by such factors as traditional household culture, country geography, folklore ideas of animals. A lacunarity in Russian of such thematic group of standards as names of natural realities is of interest. The results can be used in theory and practice of phraseography when reprinting dictionaries of Russian stable comparisons.