Y. Tynianov intentionally turns his fiction to history, demonstrating an outstanding knowledge of the described epochs. But even an inexperienced reader will most likely feel an invention in the writer’s flash fiction, and maybe will even catch literary play with quotations from historical documentary and fictional sources. The stories «Second Lieutenant Kizhe», «Under-Age Witushishnikov» and «A Wax Person» provoked various appraisals of contemporaries
and interpretations of experts in literature. This raises the question of the specificity of using historical sources by Y. Tynianov in his novels. The paper also contains an attempt to formulate the writer's point of view concerning his reference to the historical subjects in fiction. In her work at the problem the author relied not only on her analysis of the texts but also on Y. Tynianov’s
statements in his scientific and critical works, which helped her to learn how Tynianov understood history in general.