ABSTRACT “The Living Sword, or a Study of Happiness” is a multifaceted artistic narrative from the era of the Great French Revolution - the main social revolution in Europe, which laid the political foundations of the modern world. In the center of the novel-essay is “The Angel of Death” Saint-Just, the closest associate of the “virtuous” dictator Robespierre, one of the creators of the first republican constitution and the organizers of the revolutionary army, who sought to implement his own social utopia of a just society based on the principles of the philosophy of J.-J. . Rousseau. Among the other heroes of the book are Caesar's killer Brutus, "Napoleon Crusoe", the former emperor of France, exiled to the island of St. Helena, the Marquis de Sade, the “hero of three revolutions and two continents” General Lafayette, the Parisian executioner Sanson, “the national razor” - the guillotine of fifty people a day, and even Comrade Stalin himself, who almost carried out the tanks of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army his great dream of world revolution in practice.