The article analyzes the role of Russian classics: Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky – and their influence on formation of poetics of Miloš Crnjanski’s novel. In the first novel, “The Diary of Charnoevich” (1921), there are many intertextual links with Russian literature. In “The Relocation” (1929) and “The Second Book of Relocation” (1962), the influence of Tolstoy’s novels is observed, while in “The Novel about London” (1971) it tells of the fate of the Russian emigrant in the modern city. The ties with Russian literature connect not only the novels of Crnyansky, but also his travel notes, firstly of all “The Love in Toscano”, probably the key book for understanding the poetics of Sumatra. In several essays created in the first half of the 1930ies, Crnjanski writes about Russian literature after the October Revolution.