The article is devoted to the identification and characterization of  a "middle" hero in the novel trilogy by Ivan Goncharov and the novel-epopee "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy. The research method is typological one. The theoretical basis of the research is the investigations by V. Markovich and A. Davydov. The similar typologies of characters in Goncharov’s and Tolstoy’s  novels are described. The end points of typology are presented by the impersonal type of characters (which has no outstanding features: Alekseev, Ayanov, Karataev) and the type of excessive characters (they have one or more of the qualities much developed; they are Rayskii, Natasha, Andrei Bolkonsky). In the area of the ​​mediation is the "middle" hero – a special type of personality, characterized by smoothness, calmness, moderation in the manifestation of emotions, restraint actions. But the "middle" hero by Goncharov is able to overcome the boundaries of  its type, occasionally going beyond the usual level of feeling (Stolz and Olga Il’inskaya, Oblomov, Tushyn), and  the "middle" hero of Tolstoy  is not able to do it (Nikolai Rostov).