The article examines how the idea of death as “departure”, being typical for the Russian medieval mentality, was transformed in Russian literature of the second half of the XX – beginning of the XXI century. It allows us to identify changes in modern public consciousness. The article reveals that the idea of death as “departure” is characteristic of the Old Russian literature, and, in particular, of the hagiographic tradition based on the ideas of Orthodoxy. Continued in the literature of the XIX century, this tradition gained newfound relevance in the middle of the XX century in the works of authors who survived the Second World War, in particular, Y. Kazakov, in whose mind there is a struggle of opposing ideas about death. A meaningful acceptance of death is distinctive for the authors representing so-called “village” prose of the second half of the XX century. The strengthening of naturalistic and postmodern trends in the literature of the late XX century deprives the image of death of the aura of sacredness. However, along with this, there is a return to the hagiographic tradition, for example, in the prose of M. Paley, in which death as “departure” appears as a measure of the moral assessment of characters again. The article can be useful in the theoretical aspect for further development of methods of interdisciplinary analysis of essential phenomena of human existence.