The article examines experience and practices of the formation of the Soviet criminal legislation of the post-revolutionary period of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and their significance for the development of domestic system of law. Attention is focused on the analysis of the norms of the General Part of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1922, for the first time in the national history of state and law, which meaningfully fix social and humanistic patterns that were not previously characteristic of the criminal law normative sphere. The complexity of generating ideas and foundations of Soviet criminal law in conditions of uncertainty, multiplied by many problems of a political, socio-economic, legal, cultural, and other nature, determined the dominance of the ideological content of the introduced restrictions and penalties. On the other hand, the peculiarities of punishment system formation of the period under review should include the innovative social and humanistic orientation, which later became the basis for democratization and humanization of criminal, penitentiary, and criminal procedural law in Russia.