Application of methods of comparative textual criticism allowed the author of article to find out features of formation of two literary works containing historical plots. The first is Pushkin’s tragedy “Boris Godunov”. It became clear that in a monologue of one of characters (the monk of the Chudovsky monastery the chronicler father Pimen) Pushkin used scientific ideas of the German scientist Augustus-Ludwig Shlötser. He considered necessary to check reliability of the Russian chronicles by means of identification of the distortions which appeared in the course of copying of annalistic texts. The great Russian poet didn’t completely realize Shlotser’s ideas, but all of them influenced Pushkin’s ideas on formation of the Russian annalistic works. The second literary work is the poetic retelling of the Old Russian composition “Slovo o polku Igoreve” (The Tales of Igor’s Campaign) written by the Altai poet Gennady Panov. The retelling was publshed twice (in 1983 and 1984). Panov made changesto the second edition resulted from improvement of his knowledge of events of 1185 when there was a campaign of the prince Igor to the Polovetsky steppe. Two cases described in article show the value of application historical textual methods for studying of ways of formation of literary texts.