CONTENT AND GENRE ORIGINALITY OF THE CYCLES OF ESSAYS BY A. N. TOLSTOY ABOUT THE FIRST WORLD WAR

The article examines three main cycles of military essays by Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy, which were created by the writer during military missions to the combat zone on the Southwestern and Caucasian fronts of the First World War – «In Volhynia», «In Galicia» and «In the Caucasus». The features of Tolstoy’s reflection of the reality of wartime are analyzed. The genre affiliation of Tolstoy’s military essays of the period under study, which are defined as a military travelogue, is established. In particular, from the point of view of belonging to this genre, such a feature of the writer’s military journalistic prose as compositional fragmentation with meaningful unity is considered.