In the story “Payback” by the famous prose writer Vladimir Tendryakov, the reader will meet with a whole gallery of colorful images . The depth of the characters of his characters, the attitude to reality, the writer has always measured the main measure of today - the human, personal and civil conscience of everyone. Pain, anxiety for a person in Vladimir Tendryakov make their way through a variety of life material, various plots, situations and characters to a single and final: the laws of the moral life of modern man and society. In the center of the story “Payback” (1979), a conflict with conscience is presented against the background of the main defect of the Soviet school depicted by the author the lack of a full-fledged spiritual basis in upbringing and education. Thus, the teacher of literature Arkady Memyatnov admits that his educational principles (“Don’t you dare put up with the bad, fight with meanness by any means”) fail. One of his students, Kolya Koryakin, kills his own father.