This paper deals with methodological tasks and forms of teaching Russian as a Foreign Language when working with authentic multi-genre and multi-style texts. The study is focused on the individual style and the personality of the Russian novelist, the largest thinker of the second half of the 19th-early 20th century L.N. Tolstoy. Special attention is paid to the Kazan period of the writer's life and activity. The proposed author's methodological model to study a writer's biography as a tool to enhance the mastery of the Russian language helps achieve the following objectives: didactic purpose (familiarization of foreign students with the personality and works of L. N. Tolstoy), cross-cultural goals (familiarization with the Russian cultural and historical realities of the nineteenth century), and the methodological objectives proper (the development and activation of analytical reading and speech communication skills according to the literary standards, active vocabulary build-up). The paper is intended for advanced foreign students of Russian, philology students, as well as for teachers of Russian as a Foreign Language and teachers of Russian literature. The paper materials can be used both in various courses on reading, communication, and as part of independent work of students and teachers.