The article deals with the question of how the concept of Russia is realized in the space of M. Gorky's novel “Life of Klim Samgin”. The purpose of the article - through the structural features of the Gorky text to trace the ways that contribute to the activation of the thesaurus of the recipient in the formation of a complex image of Russia. The paper concludes that the ability of Gorky to rely on collective memory, on the subconscious processes of national mentality allowed him to connect together different space-time layers, to introduce the concept “Petersburg” and “Petersburg text” in the constitutional foundation of the concept “Russia”.