Abstract: Russian Orthodox cultural tradition has influenced not only the ideology of Russian writers and their works, but also their creative thinking modes at deeper level, that is, the authors' creative practice and poetic theory construction of literary theorists. Bakhtin's “polyphonic” novel theory is the generalization and summarization of Dostoevsky's mode of thinking as well as the presentation of his own unique artistic way of thinking. The cultural root of this theory is chiefly the concept of Orthodox “sobornost”. Uspensky's viewpoint-centered theory of structural poetics, with its multi-dimensional characteristics of “sobornost”, is the inheritance and development of Bakhtin's theory of “polyphonic” novels and the reverse enrichment and expansion of Orthodox “sobornost”. The Orthodox cultural critical interpretation of text structure of Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time finds the same “sobornost” characteristics, thus providing a methodological perspective for the rereading of classical texts.

Key words: sobornost, M. M. Bakhtin, B. A. Uspensky, A Hero of Our Time