The second book of Julian Semyonov’s novel “Burning” is a continuation of the chronicle of the life of the outstanding revolutionary internationalist F.E. Dzerzhinsky. The action of the second book takes place in the spring of 1906, when the tsarist secret police were doing everything to strangle the first Russian revolution. The novel shows the arrangement of class and political forces in Russia of that period: the struggle of Leninists against Mensheviks; the creation of a Kadet–Octobrist bloc intended to preserve the monarchy.