A model is proposed for the initiation of cracks at “knife” grain boundaries, i.e., rectilinear, broken boundaries of deformation origin, oriented along the tension axis, arising as a result of rotational incompatibility in the form of a disclination dump at the stage of pre-fracture of the material. The disorientation of the “knife” boundary decreases down to the breaking point in the body of the grain, and its decrease (rotational instability damping) occurs not continuously, but discretely through the branching of secondary low- and high-angle boundaries. In this case, along the “knife” boundary, at the points of its branching, linear mesodefects of the rotational type arise-wedge disclinations of the same sign. A model of crack initiation in an elastic field of a chain of negative disclinations that create tensile elastic stresses is proposed. When analyzing the conditions for crack initiation, a combined criterion was used, according to which the simultaneous fulfillment of force and energy conditions was required for crack initiation. Within the framework of this model, the critical values of the total value of the Frank vector of disclinations located on the “knife” boundary and the average gradient of its misorientation are calculated, upon reaching which the criterion of crack initiation is satisfied. The dependences of these quantities on the length of the “knife” boundary and the effective screening radius of the elastic field of disclinations are calculated. It is shown that the appearance of cracks is most likely at the boundaries with the largest misorientation gradient (exceeding 8–20 deg/?m, depending on the length of the boundary).