The article discusses the main stages of development of domestic legislation on criminal liability for disclosure of state secrets from 1397 to 1996. Within the periods from 1397 to 1917, from 1917 to 1943 and from 1943 to 1996 the characteristic feature of the first and second stages of the development of criminal responsibility for the disclosure of state secrets is that there was no separate norm providing for responsibility for this crime for the persons beyond the military. In addition, some acts qualified as disclosure were previously equated to espionage and entailed much harsher penalties than at present. The second stage was characterized by the introduction in 1943 of an independent articleto the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1926, providing for responsibilityof officials who are not military personnel for the disclosure of state secrets and for the loss of documents containing them. It underwent several changesbefore 1958, after which it entered the Criminal Code of the RSFSR 1960.