Problem statement. Insufficient attention is paid to the problems of historical interpretation of the criminal law in the scientific literature. At the same time, the issues arising here of the grounds, sources, limits, forms of application and the meaning of the results of interpretation in their entirety constitute a significant component of criminal law theory, the improvement of which seems necessary in the interests of the development of both the science itself and the practice of applying criminal law. Aims and objectives of the research. The purpose of the work is to develop the theory of historical interpretation of the criminal law by clarifying ideas about its purpose, grounds, sources and limits. Methods. The work is based primarily on the use of a documentary method of researching materials of judicial practice and a critical analysis of scientific literature. Results. According to the results of the study, the differentiation of methods of historical interpretation and historical study of law was carried out; a differentiated range of sources of historical law enforcement interpretation of the criminal law was determined; the boundaries of historical interpretation and the grounds for its differentiation from evolutionary interpretation were established; the results of the analysis of the scope and features of the use of historical interpretation of the law in judicial practice were presented; typical situations of the use of historical interpretation to establish the meaning were identified and the content of the criminal law. Brief conclusions. The historical interpretation of the criminal law is, although auxiliary, but an independent way of clarifying the meaning of the legal norm to be applied. In judicial practice, the sources of historical interpretation are the materials of the legislative process objectified in the explanatory notes to the bills, the bills themselves and official responses to them, in the materials of the parliamentary discussion of bills. Referring to these sources, the court is able to clarify the content and meaning of the lexical constructions used in the law, as well as the purpose and intentions of the legislator, which he pursued when drafting the law. The use of historical interpretation is justified, as a rule, in two main situations: when clarifying the meaning of the newly adopted criminal law and when comparing the newly adopted law with the law repealed to resolve the issue of giving it retroactive effect. Since historical interpretation is limited to referring only to historical and legal documents, it is fundamentally different from the evolutionary interpretation, designed to analyze the text of the law in changing social conditions