The article discusses personsphere of the Russian literary anecdote of the 18th century, a genre which served as an alternative to the dominant genres of classicism. Often functioning as a part of memoir text, the anecdote reflected the originality of personal beginning start “private honest” life in the depiction of such significant figures of the eighteenth century, as the figure of the Emperor (Empress), court jester, poet and nobleman. The author answers the question, what personal and socially determined qualities of each of these people have allowed one to become the hero of anecdotes, and how the originality of national subcultural psychology of Russian nobility was reflected in the anecdote.