It is kind of like how modern art doesn't mean modern today. It means that time period where people called art "modern". Novel meant new as in "novel science results". It was used differentiate prose (the new style at the time) from epic poetry back in the 16 hundreds and stuck. How that translates to Russian IDK.
There is no "novel" (as like "new" thing) as genre in Russian lit. in russian things called "novel" in english are called a russian word that is a translation of "romance". and tbh "romance" makes tons more sense than "novel".
But "novella" (different genre) is a thing in russian.
