This paper aims to analyse the lexical aspect of foreign criticism of Russia at the early stages of establishing international relations. It focuses on the role of pejorative lexis and phraseology used by the English diplomat Giles Fletcher to criticize Russian social, cultural and common phenomena in his treatise On the Russe Common Wealth written in 1591. The research establishes the main objects and grounds of the country’s negative evaluativity as described by the author, identifies the diverse lexical means containing inherent negative evaluations, and reveals their functions in the text. The criticism is underpinned by the author’s pragmatism against the back-ground of deteriorating Anglo–Russian relations caused by the competing interests of the two nations. Our subject here is late-16th-century English society represented by Giles Fletcher, a public officer and politician. He directs his criticism at specific individuals and groups (monarchs, nobility, peasantry, clergy, etc.), the national character of the Russian people, and social institutions (administration, the political regime, law enforcement and judicial system, finance and economy, the Orthodox Church, etc.). The criticism of Russian realities in the treatise mostly manifests itself at the lexical level by virtue of the extensive use of pejorative substantives and metaphoric idioms. In functional terms, negative evaluativity at the lexical level express the author’s emotions and present the characteristics of individuals and ethno-specific phenomena.