The article describes the perception of the world in a cultural-historical context as a certain image of the world obtained by recoding perceived signals and secondary (semiotic) data. On these grounds, a study of the image of the world of the mono-ethnic group of Russian respondents was carried out. It has been established that the characteristics of the image of the world reflect the main ways of world perception and typical features of the Russian mentality, and the choice of the basic values for it is associated with the adoption by the mono-ethnic group of the native (Russian) culture.