The article deals with cognitive and semantic organization of Vs. V. Ivanov’s story «By the Old Road to Smolensk» («Bliz Staroi Smolenskoi Dorogi») in historical, cultural, poetical and ontological aspects. The constructive function of the subtext with its plot-building potential is revealed. The aim of the research is to disclose subtextual scopes of meaning and semantics on the motive and imagery; architectonical and compositional; idea and philosophy levels of the text. With this aim the structural and typological method of investigating literary phenomena was used along with the elements of hermeneutical, stylistic analysis of literary prose in its syntagmatics and paradigmatics. Vs. V. Ivanov’s story devoted to the anniversary of the Battle of Borodino and written in the years of the Great Patriotic War gives implicit parallels between the events fateful for the Russian history, presents a national image of the world and conceptualizes the notion of an individual private history with its close connection with world history. The author’s attention is focused on the image of a Russian peasant woman who accumulated the archetypical features of Mother Earth and Motherland having renounced all her family for the sake of the victory. Comprehension of severe hardships of Homeland is given though her understanding of war and peace. But the image of the old woman – Agrippina Caryina – and her life drama in Vs. V. Ivanov’s story is represented through the eyes of Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky who impersonated the author’s mind. The conflict/dialogue of two different life worlds shapes the inner plot of the story realized in the subtext, which helps the author to comprehend the life and fate of the heroine. The subtext being a constructive means of the story plot building enables the artist to transfer the real thoughts of the heroine, the tragedy and feat of her family in the Battle of Borodino, which she does not directly speak about, but which are clear to the «enlightened» interlocutor.