Hi,

In ASCII encoding, in my understanding, Russian characters (Cyrillic) are placed 
in the extended ASCII area, overlapping other languages' non-English alphabets 
(like Hebrew, Arabic, etc.). If your Windows' "locale" is set to a Western 
European, e.g. English, the Operating System displays unintended fonts for 
such extended ASCII characters. To handle multiple languages simultaneously, 
Unicode was invented. (MS Word contains Unicode internally. Origin's "Rich Text" 
can represent Unicode with a escape sequence, as well.)

So, I think, you can take either way to write Russian characters: 
Change your (whole) Windows' locale to Russian, or use the Unicode string 
for the Origin text label. To do so, the following methods can be taken: 

1) To change the Windows' locale (may differ by versions of Windows): 
  i) Start Region and Language tool in the Control Panel, and choose 
    "Administrative" tab.
 ii) Select "Russian" at the "Language for Non-Unicode Programs" option 
    for the System Locale.

Please note that once you change the system locale, all extended ASCII 
characters would be displayed according to the locale.

2) To write Unicode string as Rich Text in Origin: 
  Use Origin's Symbol Map feature in "in-place editing" mode when entering 
  string for text labels in Graph, or in a Rich-Text-set worksheet ["Format: 
  Worksheet" menu, "Format" tab, "Apply To" setting] . To do so, when entering 
  characters, right-click at the blinking cursor, and choose "Symbol Map" 
  fly-out. Choose a Unicode font such as Arial MS Unicode, then, turn ON  
  "Unicode" check box, and choose and insert any Unicode characters.
  The following thread may be also helpful: 
   http://www.originlab.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9584

I hope you try the either approach above (whichever suitable), and be successful.

Happy New Year, 2012.

--Hideo Fujii
OriginLab