Abstract: The State has been a participant in economic relations since immemorial times, but it has always been expressed through a system of its organs and organizations. The modern problem of the legal status of state bodies remains relevant even after the extreme reform of civil legislation, since many aspects of such a status remain unclear to the science of civil law. One of the reasons is that the issue is at the intersection of private and public law. The author, using the comparative historical method of research, on the basis of a systematic approach, tries to establish the continuity of approaches to determining the civil status of state bodies at different stages of the development of the state and law. Thus, the author comes to the conclusion that the pre-revolutionary and Soviet stage of the development of civili law thought is characterized by the consideration of state bodies as integral parts of the entire state, in which they play the role of representatives of the latter. At the same time, with the justification in Soviet law of the formal separation of the property of state bodies from the treasury in the civil legislation of the early stage of modern Russian law, individual state bodies are given the independent status of legal entities. However, this trend is not caused either historically or formally legally. As the author shows, it is caused by an attempt to shift the Soviet system of management of socialist property to the modern conditions of a free economy, when the state acts as an equal participant in the market. In conclusion of his research, the author comes to the conclusion that the problem of the participation of state bodies in civil legal relations is rather characteristic of the modern stage of the development of civil law and is due to the desire to limit the civil liability of the state for the actions of its bodies.