This pilot study in contrastive pragmatics provides a detailed introduction to the problems of intercultural communication between Germans and Russians. Culture-specific conversation behaviour (structuring signals, organization of turn-taking, feedback behaviour, etc.) is pinpointed and described on an empirical basis. The contrastive analysis of opening gambits, core structure of verbal exchanges, and the termination phase in German and Russian conversations points up both typical structural features and also different forms of politeness, address, and other semantic and pragmatic particularities. The book is angled at all those interested in German Russian communication and provides useful aids for the successful handling of conversations in German or Russian.