The article is devoted to the "village prose", one of the most popular and the most significant phenomenon of Russian literature in the second half of the XX century. Phenomenality of "the village prose" is considered in its correlation with the national literary tradition, whose influence on the literary situation, from the point of view of researchers, resulted in the emergence of the "traditional" prose. Beyond the discourse output theoretical fnd literary concept of "traditionalistic" prose. We present a large and diverse literary-historical and literary-critical material, indicating the perception of "the village prose" by contemporaries, professional critics, literary theorists and ordinary readers. The characteristics of "the village prose", which are now forced to change its historical and literary status are revealed.