The article examines P. P. Bazhov's views on the genre of fairy tales based on the material of the writer's epistolaries of the 1940s. Among the important topics raised in the writer's correspondence, the following problems are highlighted: the folklore and literary component of fairy tales; the place of "fantastic" details; the "Ural" vocabulary of fairy tales; the author's plan for creating fantastic prose; the writer's attitude to the study of his work, to the criticism of professional researchers. A special place in the article is occupied by the theme of "modernity/non-modernity" of P. P. Bazhov's fantastic prose in the post-war literature of the USSR.