Domestic and foreign history of the development of institutions of crime and punishment

The article reflects a retrospective modification of the concept of «crime», a change in approaches to the punishment of a criminal in the process of the development of foreign law and Russian state and society. The authors conclude that the history of criminal punishment does not represent continuous progress from the replacement of inhumane means of social control with more humane ones and substantiate the need for more intensive criminal legal protection of moral values, taking into account the Soviet, Chinese experience and emerging realities.