The aim of this article - to investigate attitudes of the Russians to volunteering, study national characteristics of them. The paper describes four of these distinctive characteristics. The first one concerned with distrust of citizens to organized forms and types of charitable activities. The second is connected with difficulties in identifying informal forms of volunteerism as a volunteering activity - the helping a stranger without any organizational structures. The third characteristic shows that volunteering activity in Russia doesn't turn into public target. Low social and civic engagement rates in Russia on the background the approval and support of volunteers by majority of Russians is the fourth characteristic.