Abstract: This article is devoted to the study of prototypes in the novel "The Mental Wolf", the images of which are made up of both fictional and real characters. The author brought them out under other names, but the prototypes are easy to guess: Pavel Matveyevich Legkobytov is Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin, Alexander Stepanovich Savely Krud is Green, and Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin is a "peasant/elder/wanderer". The intertextual connections between the biographies of the prototypes and the novel demonstrate the author's intention to recreate the reality that he could not depict within the framework of a documentary biographical narrative. The reader and researcher are given a unique opportunity to observe how artistic reality is born on the basis of the life material of historical figures, refracted in the author's mind. The author himself has repeatedly given the key to understanding the novel's intent in his interviews, saying that he was able to express through fictional characters what he did not express in the biographies of the prototypes. The following research methods are used in the article: comparative, hermeneutical, comparative-typological, descriptive. With the help of a systematic approach, an analytical study of the prototypes in the novel is provided. Despite the coincidence of the factual material, Varlamov establishes a distance between the characters depicted in the novel and their prototypes, gives them new names, places them in slightly different event contexts. Thus, an artistic world is created on the interweaving of fiction and real events. Relevance is seen in addressing one of the key problems of literary criticism based on the material of the work of a modern author. It is the biographies of prototypes that become the core on which fictional events are strung and which determines the storylines of fictional characters. By virtue of the above, biography is neither a framework component nor an autonomous genre, but it becomes a kind of paradigm for the plot structure of the novel. And already in this paradigm, each of the characters is free to express their ideas, to argue about the present and future of Russia, to observe the era of historical social upheavals and wars.

Abstract: The subject of the research is the reception of A.N. Varlamov in Chinese literary criticism. The object of the study is critical articles, literary works devoted to the work of A. Varlamov, and an interview with the author. The novelty of the article is determined by the fact that the works of Chinese researchers are analyzed in order to characterize critical judgments about the work of a modern Russian author, taking into account national specifics. The article highlights the main aspects in the field of studying the work of A. N. Varlamov by Chinese criticism and literary criticism. It is determined that Chinese researchers pay attention to the consideration of religious themes in the writer's prose, and also analyze Varlamov's creative method, defining it as neo-release. The main conclusions of the study are the definition of aspects of the study of religious themes in Varlamov's novels, such as eschatology, the level of morality and religiosity in Russian society, the spiritual salvation and rebirth of man, sectarianism. According to critics, Varlamov's work shows sectarianism as a viral idea of the Russian people, poisoning the collective consciousness and historical memory. The creative method of A. Varlamov is assessed by critics as neo-releaseism, the features of which are marginal heroes, a combination of mysticism and realism, artistic time-space. Chinese literary scholars also note mythological prototypes and folklore elements that are important for Varlamov's works. The main contribution of the author to the study of the topic is that the points of view of Chinese literary scholars and critics are considered, which expand the reception of Varlamov's work in world art, complementing a single receptive field, organizing a dialogue of cultures.