The article deals with the main artistic functions of intertext in the work of one of the leading representatives of the Russian north-eastern prose A. M. Biryukov, whose artistic search is almost not studied in modern literary criticism. It has been found out that in the novel “Wide Range Freedom, or a Modern Amazon”, the writer uses a diverse range of literary techniques typical of intertext: from direct citation to metatextual relations creation. At the same time, special attention is paid to the functionality of such elements in the writer’s work; it is proved that they have a leading semantic meaning, allow deep understanding of not only the heroine’s moral evolution in the novel but also the author’s conception as a whole.