The starting point for discussion in the article is the claim made by the 19th-century Russian linguist F.I. Buslajev that deverbatives preserve the category of aspect for nouns like ‘zavyvanije’ (howling) and adjectives like ‘byvalyj’ (old salt) have semantics of multiplicity. The modern Russian functional communicative grammar defines such words as non-izosemic (non-prototypical), or not equal to their part-of-speech semantic prototype. The article focuses on how multiplicity and repetition are expressed in Russian at the levels of morphology, word-formation, lexis, syntax and text. Accumulating and structuring the already studied means of expressing multiplicity in Russian, the author adds some other means to the list. The illustrative case for comparative analysis includes fragments of Russian translations, offering different interpretations of the English narrative which is semantically ambiguous as far is multiplicity is concerned. The choice of research material was prompted by F.I. Buslajev’s ideas of using “comparative syntax” in the analysis of translations.