The author argues that the (post)structuralist conception of “intertextuality” mismatches rhetorical literature, where free borrowings from others' texts, even with direct indication of the source, do not lead to a dialogue of texts or authors. The illustrations of this thesis are taken from the works by Mikhail Lomonosov, Yakov Knyazhnin, Antiochus Kantemir, and others, as well as from rhetorical treatises of the second half of the 18th - first third of the 19th centuries.