The article analyzes the rhetoric roots of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s novel «The First Circle». It is proved that the rhetoric nature of the novel as a genre – as described by M. M. Bakhtin and Yu. M. Lotman – is characteristic for Solzhenitsyn’s novel. Research of the rhetoric «sources» of the novel together with other roots of large epic genres in Solzhenitsyn’s oeuvre is an important route to the comprehension of both the nature of the writer’s artistic method and the genre of the Russian novel of the XXth century in general.
