The novel «Resurrection» by Leo Tolstoy It is regarded as an epic one in the article. What is attributed to its specific features, includes – the fundamental importance of the common, folkish in the value system of the book, as well as the encyclopedic coverage of the late 19th century Russian life. What became the starting point for considering the material, is raising the problematic question of the inevitable contradiction between the objective re-creation of contemporaneity and the heightened subjectivity of Leo Tolstoy’s late creative work, which the increased ethical pathos is characteristic of. The article argues that the «removal» of the contradiction is due to the nature of the novelist’s approach to depicting the facts of contemporaneity. This approach implies the scale of generalisations, the correlation of the facts of contemporary life with folkish life, immersion of the facts in a voluminous historical and cultural context, including the historical and literary one. It is stressed that the author’s subjective coverage of St. Petersburg life paradoxically becomes a handwriting of the image of an objective picture. This is due to the fact that the author, who describes and evaluates the processes of contemporary life from the point of view of substantial and «due», relies on the folkish «view of things». In general, the coverage and assessment of trends in the development of contemporary Russian society are given in the novel «Resurrection» in an epic perspective.