The author examines the pre-revolutionary works of Aleksei Tolstoy in the context of the trends that dominated in the literary life of the Russia of the 1910s. Emphasis is placed on changes in the «genre politics» that were characterized the works of Russian prose writers, overcoming the influence of aesthetics of symbolism and making an attempt to combine the achievements of symbolistic art with the traditions of Russian realism, in particular in the realization of the thesis of acmeists of the «vershinnyi» («apical») novel.