The article considers the problem of “Orwell and Dostoevsky” from the point of the intertextual poetic. The author proceeds from the position that intertextuality is a form of existence of literature, and there isn’t any text which is free from the external influences, which spread over the genres and the smallest language elements, such as quotations, allusions, reminiscences and using the words of others. In the article, it is demonstrated that the object of intertextual poetics is not a text per se but those that include this text in visible and latent relations with other texts, some kind of text interference. The subject of the study is the intertextual links of the novels “1984” by G. Orwell and “Demons” by F.M. Dostoevsky. The problem of crime, common for both writers, has become a new perspective and dimension of intertextual relations. The study is aimed at revealing the mechanisms of incorporation, assimilation and transformation of the elements of pre-text (“Demons”) into the manifest text (“1984”), and at illustrating how the process of intertextuality works on the narrative plots with common theme motivation. The common motives, plot elements, transformations and modifications of events dealing with the description of different types of criminals and crimes, their causes and results are analyzed in the article. The character of a “person of iniquity and lawlessness” from Dostoevsky (Pyotr Verkhovensky, Shigalev, Stavrogin, Fedka the Convict) becomes archetypal and presents itself as a matrix, a behavioral model embodied into the figures of the novel “1984” (O'Brien, Smith, Syme, Parsons).