Аннотация: In the article the author examines the issues of establishing criminal liability for banditry in the domestic criminal legislation. At the same time, the author reveals the features of responsibility for the prototype of this criminal act in the pre-revolutionary legislation. The author believes that in pre-revolutionary penal legislation a type of banditry was the perpetration of robberies, and in the mid XIX century and beginning of XX century – the organization of gangs and crimes of this resistant group. The very composition of this crime, which appeared only in Soviet legislation, was understood very broadly for reasons of political expediency: both as a criminal law phenomenon and as political banditry. This was facilitated by the low quality of the study of the Soviet-era NPA and the imperfection of their legislative technique.