Abstract: The improvement of the criminal legislation including the system of criminal punishments throughout several years is carried out without the sufficient scientific substantiation. Currently, the improvement of the system of criminal punishments is impossible without a comprehensive examination of the historical experience. Thus, the presented article reviews the questions associated with the criminal punishment within the researches of the Russian jurists of the stated time frame. The author attempts to analyze and compare the notions of punishment and system of punishments, presented in the works of the Russian jurists of the late XIX and early XX centuries; the importance and effectiveness of the certain systems of punishments provided in the Russian Criminal Code of this period. The foundation for the research of the systems of criminal punishments became the principal positions of the materialistic dialectics, within the framework of which the system of criminal punishments is examined in a state of constant changes and gradual development. The jurists in their criminal legal researches of the late XIX and early XX centuries connected the punishment with the committed crime, i.e. the punishment was considered as a consequence of the committed crime. The concept of punishment, its essence and legal nature was determined mostly as a measure of state coercion. There is no doubt that the criminal legal researches of the jurists made a significant contribution into the development of criminal law science in the area of the doctrine on punishment.