The article examines the process of improving the mechanism of the fight against terror in the Russian Empire. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of normative legal acts regulating the work of the bodies of political investigation in Russia and abroad. The process of emergence of a new body of the Police Department - Secret Police Departmetn for Goreign Affairs [Zagranichnaya okhranka] - has been subjected to thorough analysis. A great deal of attention has been paid to such operative-search activities as external surveillance: it was at the end of the nineteenth century that the Secret Police Department committed themselves to strengthening and centralizing the external surveillance system with the aim of improving the quality of its functioning and eliminating individual elements of disunity. It was noted that the anti-terrorist potential of the Russian bodies of political investigation at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was not implemented to full extent. When organizing the fight against terror, in addition to the successes that had been achieved, attention has been drawn to the facts that were of great concern to the Government: local administrative governing bodies reasonably paid much attention to the quality of the work of law enforcement agencies at all levels of subordination. Then-prevailing revolutionary situation demanded that the Russian Government continued the course of reforms and searched for new organizational and legal solutions in the field of the fight against terror, some of which were finally found at the end of the 19th century.