The study is devoted to one of Leo Tolstoy's later short stories, Master and Man [Khozyain i rabotnik]. The article traces its links to other 'stories for the people,' describes its reception by Tolstoy's contemporaries and deals with the problem of the artistic and didactic agenda that was so relevant for Tolstoy. The authors also examine Tolstoy's preliminary drafts. The article contains an exhaustive analysis of the two main characters, their relationship and correspondence with time and space, daily routine and abstract existence. Tolstoy is presented as a pioneer of methods typical of 20th-c. literary Modernism, which were utilised by A. Bely, A. Remizov, and V. Nabokov. According to the scholars, the story offers an unequivocal illustration of the main thesis of Tolstoy's later religious and philosophical outlook that the material world is a false and illusory form of life, while true life is only achievable through spiritual being.