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Abstract: The existence of synonyms in a language proves its high level of development and its lexical diversity. The abundance of synonyms gives Russian speakers not only a wide range of lexical means but also a wide variety of stylistic and rhetoric means of manipulation and expression one’s attitude to the described phenomenon. In some cases synonyms may perform the function of euphemisms, which allows to avoid confrontation in the description of a current issue. Thus, synonymic chain is an important part of lexical system of Russian; a foreigner should learn synonyms properly to communicate easily in Russian. The paper classifies synonyms according to different principles (semantic variants; stylistic variants; semantic-stylistic variants; absolute synonyms). The author offers a methodology of learning synonymic chains, which includes such methods as explanation, comparative analysis of the members of a synonymic chain; translation of the sentences; discussion of the topic using synonyms). This methodology is described on the basis of the synonymic chain for the word “country”. The paper addresses teachers of Russian to Chinese students, that is why most of the words and word combinations are translated into Chinese. This makes it possible to use the material of the article in teaching Russian as a foreign language.