The article introduces the section n.8 of the review “Avtobiografija” dedicated to the diary genre. In late 20th Century, literary critics became increasingly interested in the practice of diary writing and tried to identify the specific features of a multifaceted type of autobiographic text that rightly because of its intrinsic complexity is hard to define in an exhaustive and decisive way. The contributions collected in the article offer an insight to the wide range of the actual outcomes of diary writing in the context of the Russian culture and of the various functions associated to the genre, highlighting related critical issues and hinting to further reflection about possible narrations of a complex genre where the line between everyday practice and literary writing is extremely blurred.
