The aim and objectives of the article are connected with studying the changes that happen with the authoritarian word in the course of its transposition to the contemporary literary-art discourse. The study is based on the works of A. Solzhenitsyn ("Matryo-na's Home" and The Gulag Archipelago), in which the authoritarian predicatory element plays an important role. The methodological basis of the study was the combination of the principles of motive analysis and a psychobiographical approach. As is known, the authoritarian word is characterized by such features as inertia, dogmatism, hardness (M. Bakhtin); in the literature of modern times it is rarely found in its pure, uncompounded form -we can rather talk about the periodic switching of the narrative to the authoritarian-ethological register. The analysis of Solzhenitsyn's works leads to a conclusion that the inclusion into the construction of a fictional and ideological text, as a rule, leads to a significant weakening of monologue rigidity for the authoritarian word. Both in "Matryona's Home" and The Gulag Archipelago the transformation the preaching judgments of the narrator undergo shows a similar nature: preaching acquires some characteristics of confession. Thus, in "Matryona's Home", the concept of voluntary austerities that is strongly promoted at the level of authoritarian rhetoric in a rather obvious way comes into contradiction with the behavior of the main characters including the hero-narrator. Apparently, switching of the narrative from an everyday informative register to preaching is caused, among other things, by the doubts of the narrator that the ideals of selflessness can be translated into reality. Perhaps, the authoritarian preaching pathos should be recognized as a sign of hidden skepticism to some extent: partly it is personal hesitations that the hero-ideologist is trying to obliterate with the "pontificating" word. Similarly, authoritarian discourse detects a confessional nature in The Gulag Archipelago. Confessional and penitential intentions destroy the monologism of preaching invectives. A call to kill snitches is largely neutralized with insightful wishes to understand and forgive the sins of others. As a result, there is a complex, truly polyphonic artistic and meaningful entity, in the coordinate system of which any authoritarian judgment becomes relative and incomplete. The final part of the article suggests that any authoritarian word involves a confessional-autobiographical component to a greater or lesser degree; perhaps, this sort of paradoxical synthesis is especially typical for the national culture.