Abstract: This article examines the historical aspect of the evolutionary development of the criminal justice system during the Soviet period, which was characterized by the rejection of the established idea about the criminal justice system. During the first years of Soviet authorities, the government attempted to create something new instead of the rejected bourgeois. The thorough development of the criminal justice system took place during the first codification of the Soviet criminal law based on the Guiding Principles of Criminal Law of 1919; however, the list of punishments was rather approximate, which testified about the lack of the principle of certainty in legislative codification of the penal system. Only in the RSFSR Criminal Code of 1922 the penal system contained an exhaustive list of separate types of punishments. The further development of the criminal justice system was based on the scientific research of the legal experts. The author underlines the establishment of the single terminology within the framework of the doctrine on punishment. The term “penal system” has strongly established in the legal research substituting the previously term “ladder of punishments”. The conducted analysis demonstrates the dialectical unity of the two contrary processes: the criminal justice system, preserving essential properties, was in the constant development through the changes in the inner content. The attempts were made to distinguish the punishment from other measures of state compulsion by means of determination of the essential signs of criminal justice.