The problem of the genealogy of revolutionary terrorism in Russia has long attracted researchers. The ongoing debate about the place of terror in the Russian revolutionary tradition usually revolves around the programs of parties or the conditions of their “subversive work”, bypassing the question of the identity of the revolutionaries, who appear either as fiery fighters against the autocracy, or as villains and murderers. None of these assessments helps to understand what kind of people they were, how they lived, what led them to revolution and terror. Young radicals from among the diverse intelligentsia of post-reform Russia had one thing in common - they were “new people”, different from those around them by a special system of values, which turned them into “renegades” who did not have their place in traditional society.