At the present stage of the interdisciplinary links theory development,  tasks related to the search for effective approaches to teaching foreign students of Russian universities in Russian seem relevant. New approaches include content and language integrated learning (CLIL). The introduction of this approach is due to the need to increase the educational and professional motivation of students and to create conditions for optimizing time resources within the educational process. The article, based on the materials of the subject “International Economic Relations”, presents a comparative analysis of the pedagogical conditions for teaching Russian as a foreign language for specific purposes and the pedagogical conditions for CLIL training in the basic educational programs of non-philological universities (the purpose of the course, the focus of the educational situation, the role of language, students’ competence level in the Russian as a foreign language, which is necessary and sufficient to achieve the goal, etc.).