The article presents a study of a group of speech genres, where the factor of the past is relevant, i.e. which are reaction genres. The relevance of the research is determined by the need for the next step in the study of speech genres: from the description of specific genres to the identification and description of systemic relationships between them. The study is a genre analysis of the statements of the Russian language, recorded in the Corpus of the National Russian Language. The article identifies subgroups of genres of negative reaction in relation to the type of initial remark: reactions to imperative genres, reactions to informative genres and a group of genres, which can be caused by both initial remarks and facts of reality. In the course of the research, it was found out that groups of genres united according to the characteristics of the initial remark break up into other groups in case negative reaction genres are grouped according to their illocutionary purpose. Thus, it can be argued that in the genre system of Russian discourse one can see relations similar to paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations in the language system. Each genre, according to different genre-forming features, is associated with different groups of other genres. The approach proposed in the article allows to see those features of the speech genre that are not obvious in its isolated characterization.