The article examines the role оf Bunin’s short story “Tanya”, which is included in the cycle of short stories about love “Dark alleys”, and establishes its “expositional” essence. The analysis shows that “Tanya” contains a number of elements, motives and situations close to the story “Dark alleys”, which opens the cycle of love and lacks the background of the characters Nadenka and Nikolai. The comparability of the situations of “Tanya” and “Dark alleys” allows us to understand more deeply the impossibility of mutual love, which both Bunin’s heroines count on. The article challenges the idea of researchers that in the cycle “Dark alleys” the dominant role is given by the writer to female images. The paper argues that the central role in the character system of the Bunin”s cycle is not occupied by the heroine (although this or that story of the cycle is called by her name), but by the hero, a male autopsychological type that obscures the female characters, who serve only as an expressive background for explica