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This article deals with the way the heritage of literary studies of Russian Symbolists (V. Ya. Bryusov, Andrey Bely, V. Ivanov, etc) influenced the establishment of poetics in Russia. Their studies provided an impetus for the Russian formal school (B. M. Eykhenbaum, Yu. N. Tynyanov, etc.) and development of the approaches to text studies in the works of V. M. Zhirmunskiy and M. M. Bakhtin. As literary studies of Symbolists are synthetic by nature, one of its parts (attention to form) refracted in formalism, for example, in the works by Zhirmunsky, and the other part (semantics) is found in works by M.M. Bakhtin. A significant role in this process was played by Andrey Bely. He was the one to provide an impetus for supporters of the morphological school to aim for precision, he pioneered the idea of fusing the sciences and the humanities. Bely was the first to put forward an idea of separating form and content, central for future Russian formalism, and other concepts that made the basis of the formal school. It sheds a new light on the development of Russian literary studies, primarily on the establishment of the formal school that has its roots mainly in theoretical contemplation. Russian Symbolists, especially Andrey Bely with his sharp interest to the form and poetics of works, introduction of new approaches to a word, new methods in literary studies and his input in poetry studies, reawakened the Russian formalists. They are their precursors.