Lermontov's main work in prose does not have an author's designation of the genre. In criticism, the designation “novel” immediately appeared and became established, for lack of a better one. There was a desire to emphasize the integrity of the work. In our time, theorists have substantiated secondary genre formations - the book and the cycle. They eliminate terminological inconsistency (a novel consisting of... stories; this is a book consisting of stories) and even more effectively help to understand the integrity of the work. Our research eliminates the terminological confusion in addressing Lermontov’s main creation in prose, which is not bad, but it is not formal, but substantive. Increased attention to dialogic connections between the components of the cycle has shown and will continue to show its fruitfulness.