This article, which functions as a stand-alone analysis but also introduces this volume's cluster devoted to pop-cultural literary practices, highlights the possibilities and perspectives of an approach that puts the reader at the center of research on Russian-language literary practices and texts. The author focuses primarily on texts related to popular culture, but she also reflects on the contemporary reception of Russian classics and new novels. Drawing upon her experiences as researcher of online Russian-language literary communities that focus on fan fiction and manga, the author argues for methodologies that combine the underused classic paradigm of “Rezeptionsästhetik” with new research possibilities that follow “real” readers' traces online and offline. The author proposes Jenkins' concept of “participatory culture” as a tool that can potentially enrich scholarship on contemporary readers of Russian-language literature. As examples of such research perspectives, the author outlines three problems discussed within the framework of research on participatory cultures: new affective schemes of reading and writing, i.e. the “new emotionality” of popular literatures; the well-known problem of “treating characters as if they were real people” in popular reading; and the impact of participatory cultures on the transcultural flows of texts, ideas, and translations.