The problem of intertextuality is comparatively new for literary Russian studies. The article dwells upon different elements of intertextual poetics. Intertextuality determines meaning-generation that broadens the context of interpretations. We want to speak about the most topical aspects of Dostoevsky’s legacy in comparison to Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy”. Intertextual elements are represented both semantically and structurally on the different levels of Dreiser’s novel. Dostoevsky’s text is considered as “pre-text”, a source and parent of “elder” text. The main problem of the article is to identify the main forms of presence of Dostoevsky in Dreiser’s novel and to determine their functions. It is possible through a special approach. We adhere to the position that the intertextual area includes different elements: settled forms of representative (genre form, plot elements, archetype constructions and images), and slice of other messages pertaining to cultural code and partaking to author. Moreover, there are many intertextual signals like titles, epigraphs, quotations, allusions, reminiscences, referring to cultural and semeiotic code and author intentions. Thus, it includes this manifest text in implicit and explicit dialog communication with another text.