What are the hidden mechanisms of terror? What can the state do against it? Is it possible to justify the choice of people who have taken the path of political reprisal? This book will help answer these and many other questions. It is dedicated to the fate of the populist movement in Russia. Yu.V. Davydov’s novel “The Dead Time of Leaf Fall” is one of the most striking and historically accurate literary works of the 20th century about the Narodnaya Volya. At the center of the narrative is the story of the split of the Narodnaya Volya organization, associated with the name of the provocateur Degaev. In the essay by L.M. Lyashenko “... The eighties of sad memory” an attempt was made to analyze such a controversial phenomenon as terrorism, primarily its moral aspects, historical background and consequences.