The text explication of the key and title concept of Pavel Nilin’s novel Cruelty is considered in the article. The place of this mental formation in the linguistic and cognitive picture of the world is very important, despite the differences in the approaches of different scientists to its understanding. Cruelty is equated with aggression and violence in most social sciences (psychology, philosophy, sociology). Philological studies consider the phenomenon of cruelty as a literary motif or concept and its verbalization in the paradigm of texts which are created in different epochs. The interpretation of the concept field “Cruelty” is realized in close connection with the field “Mercy”. This connection has a significant basis in the Russian linguistic and cognitive picture of the world and is confirmed by lexicographic data. Numerous indications of the existence of the concept of “Cruelty” and direct/indirect data indicating the concept of “Mercy” are contained in the text, which has become the subject of analysis of this article. Mercy as one of the fundamental Christian moral qualities and virtues, the manifestation of love and truth is opposed to lies and betrayal, which are components of the concept sphere “Sin”, which, in turn, verbalizes the hyperconcept “Darkness”. The speech characteristics of the characters, text markers and contexts are saturated with lexical components that verbalize these conceptual fields. At the same time, the name of the concept “cruelty/ cruel” is practically not used. The comprehension of revolutionary events during