The paper investigates the semantic border and limits of the travelogue story in the prose of F. M. Reshetnikov and V. G. Korolenko. Also investigated is the category of anthropological authenticity. The selection of characters of peasants, whose picture of the world is significantly mythologized, determines in both cases the narrative specificity of their works. The world observed
by the character is transformed into simple framework. Whatever does not find any verbal equivalent, is excluded from the consciousness of the character, and next, of the narrator. The factor uniting the two works is the effect of a «veiled» travelogue. In general, effect «hidden» travelogue connects two investigated texts. The path traversed by Podlipovians was known to the author Reshetnikov; the travel to America realized by V. Korolenko’s characters, is
also based on the writer’s life experience. The break with the travelogue form in favour of fictional genre is undeniably an interesting phenomenon in the context of the research into the semantic limits of the travelogue plot.