The issues of narrative poetics in the creative history of the short novel “Crossroads” by I. S. Shmelev

. The article is dedicated to one of the major problems of literature that is scientific description, introduction into scientific use and comprehension of handwritten materials of writer’s creative heritage. At the heart of the research there is a draft novel of I. S. Shmelev “Crossroads” [“Rosstani”] kept in the Research Department of Manuscripts of the Russian State Library. The article presents codicological description and textual analysis of the draft that brought to light two versions and two editions of the short novel, revealed their genealogy, the process of formation and development of the narration. Philological analysis of discrepancies in the editions allows us to comprehend genesis of the plot, reveal the author’s objectives in the poetics of the short novel. In the course of the comparative analysis of different editions in the poetics of the short novel there were found out literary devices inherent to a Neo-Realist literary work, such as the abundance of out-of-plot elements that produce effect of a discrete narrative; repeating common details, the images of Russian nature, the motives of memory and leave that form a symbolic level of the short novel.