Abstract: The subject of the study is the interest of the French socialist press at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries in the spiritual and political position of Russian writers (using the example of the socialist newspaper "L'Aurore". The article is devoted to an urgent topic – Franco-Russian cultural ties based on the analysis of the Russian literature Since 1870. The purpose of the work is to analyze and generalize the semantic content of published texts from the perspective of determining their adherence to a given political course and the idea of engagement. The material was selected by the method of directional sampling, collection and classification of articles, taking into account the editors' particularly close attention to such writers as F.M. Dostoevsky, Lev Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky. The research methodology is complex and includes content analysis using biographical, historical, cultural and comparative methods. The author's special contribution to the research of the topic is the explication of the close attention of the Western press, especially of the left, to the position of Russian writers, which served to attract the interest of the mass reader to their works. However, the main conclusion of the author is that the driving incentive for the press to address the names of great thinkers was the affirmation of socialist ideals and the idea of the writer's engagement, his unity with the people and opposition to power. The novelty of the work is determined by the scrupulous selection of relevant material and the practical development of this topic, which has so far remained outside the field of research by other authors.