В контексте литературоведческих дискуссий первой половины XX начала XXI в. в статье впервые целостно рассматривается вопрос о русском просветительском реализме как системе в отечественной литературной культуре 1760-1820-х годов. Высказывается гипотеза о центральной роли данного явления в развитии русской словесности рубежа XVIII XIX вв., о его синкретичной направленческой и жанрово-тематической природе. На обширном историко-литературном и литературно-теоретическом материале делаются прогностические выводы о цельности идеологии просветительского реализма в России с точки зрения главенствующих концептов рационального/эмоционального начала, долга/добродетели, внесословной ценности человеческой личности. Намечены выходы к перспективам исследования идеологем просветительского реализма и Просвещения в фокусе задач так называемой «срединной культуры» в её генезисе и развитии.The present paper for the first time deals comprehensively with the problem of Russian educational realism as a system in the national literary culture of the 1760s-1820s in the context of basic literary discussions of the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries. The hypothesis of the core role of this phenomenon in the development of Russian literature at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, its syncretical orientation, as well as genre and thematic character is introduced. The prognostic conclusions about the holistic ideology of educational realism in Russia from the perspective of the leading concepts of rationality/emotionality, duty/ virtue, value of a human person without regard to their social class are drawn on the basis of a wide range of historical-literary and literary-theoretical materials. Furthermore, ways of finding prospects for investigating ideologemes of the educational realism and the Enlightenment in the focus of the so-called “middle culture” tasks in its genesis and development are also outlined in the paper. Autonomy of the genre system of the educational realism movement with interpenetration of prose, poetry and drama, which is peculiar to it, is proved in the paper under review on the basis of the most recent scientific data. The structure of the present paper is defined in line with the described research paradigms and obtained analytical results. A systemic review of the basic discussions in literary studies on the phenomenon of educational realism, its existence and meaning is given in its first part. Dwelling on the concepts of both adherents of this idea and its opponents, the author of the article comes to the conclusion about the crucial significance of the concepts of “educational realism”, in particular in the Russian historical-literary process of the last third of the 18th-the first decades of the 19th centuries. Educational realism is one of the key embodiments of the Enlightenment in Russian literature, the first stage of realism development as artistic vision, and the unique epilogue of the national literary culture of the 18th century. The second section of the paper is devoted to analysis of the ideological and thematic, philosophical and esthetical levels of the Russian educational realism system in the context of generating tasks of the “middle culture” of that time. The author’s position on the problem of genre systematicity of the national educational realism of the period of interest is proposed in the third (concluding part) of the work.