Introduction. The article is devoted to the study of the specifics of the ballad genre development in modern Russian poetry of Mordovia and it fits into the complex of Finno-Ugric literary studies concerning the problem of genre synthesis. The subject of the analysis is the genre features of the ballad. Objective: to analyze the genesis and development of the ballad in creativity of modern poets of Mordovia. Research materials: ballads of A. Terentyev, V. Fedoseev, V. Gadaev, A. Sharonov, S. Kaznov, etc. Results and novelty of the research. Analysis of Russian poetry of Mordovia showed that the ballad, which has passed a long way in its formation and development, remains a very popular genre. At the modern stage, it significantly changes its genre and style features preserving an important dominant feature. These features are tension and dynamism of the events. The ballad as a lyre-epic genre, on the one hand, synthesizing the signs of ode, heroic story in verse, legends, elegy, loses the specific stable features (A. Terentycv, V. Fedoseev, V. Gadaev, A. Sharonov, etc.); on the other hand, there is an obvious decanonization of the classical romantic ballad. Modern poets, using postmodern techniques (play, intertextuality), bring to the ballad elements of allegory, parody, absurdity, which allows to demonstrate the instability of the epoch of the late XX century, frustration of people in the whirl of socio-political events (S. Kaznov, S. Scnichev). The genre flexibility of the ballad makes it possible to show the whole range of feelings and emotions, to reflect the main trends of the modern poetic process, to identify actual problems of reality. Identification of features of the ballad genre, the dynamics of its development will allow not only to determine the features of the creative manner of writers, but also to trace the nature of development of modern poetry of Mordovia as a whole.
