This paper considers the stress-dependent fatigue life of polycrystalline materials and their fatigue failure as a result of the relaxation processes that occurred on the stress risers of various scales: macroscopic stress risers of technological nature (pores, cracks, surface roughness, etc.), and microscopic stress risers at the grain/subgrain boundaries and/or second phase particles. Participation of the relaxation mechanisms plastic (vacancies and dislocation activities, grain boundary sliding) and brittle (cracks) nature in the process of the ‘fish eye’ fatigue crack formation is also addressed. The model described the parabolic dependencies of the densities of elementary carriers of plastic and brittle relaxations on the load change rate (i.e., on the growth rate of the stresses concentrated at the vertices of the stress risers) correlates well to the fatigue life data observed for the surface-modified metallic materials.