The article presents information about the history of the origin of orientalism in the Russian literature of the XIX century, the origin of Russian orientalism as an independent literary system. In the scientific work, an attempt was made to isolate the borrowed oriental vocabulary in the texts of M.Y. Lermontov, to clarify its role in the meaningful and figurative structure of the poet's texts. Since the most important processes in the understanding of the East took place in the Russian literature of the romantic period and the period of transition from Romanticism to realism.