This article is devoted to reflections on the problems of L. Ulitskaya’s small prose on the example of a series of her stories "Poor Relatives." Interest in the study of the posed in the title problem is connected with the contradictory and, in the opinion of the author of the article, very controversial L. Ulitskaya’s notions of so-called immorality, seamy side, naturalism and slice of life. The author of the article analyzes in detail the problems and peculiarities of the artistic conflict of short stories "Poor Relatives", "Genele the Bag Lady", "Lyalya's House", etc., and comes to the conclusion about L. Ulitskaya's attention to the existential problems of human being: harmony and disharmony, carnal and spiritual. A detailed picture of the world of characters is observed(Lyalya, her husband and Kaziev in the story "Lyalya's house", Bronka and Irina in the story"Bronka", Genele in the story "Genele the Bag Lady"), the peculiarity of internal conflicts in Ulitskaya's prose is revealed, those which the writer puts inside, and not outside. The development of the plot, in fact, is devoid of open confrontation, but it makes sharper and more intense its inner course in the psyche of the characters who are experiencing the collapse of their worldview. L. Ulitskaya subjects the system of stable representations of her heroes to a serious spiritual test and then analyzes both the origins of the hero's emotional crisis and its sense-forming essence. The study allows us to conclude that the prose of Ulitskaya being devoid of appreciable moralizing at the sametime is based on profound notions of moral and immoral, living and dead, true and false. Interest in the substational and existential in Ulitskaya's prose is realized through the image of inner conflict, a tragic clash in the soul of a character of the conflicting value systems.
