The article analyzes the possibilities of the methodology of the school of chrono-discrete monogeographic comparative jurisprudence in relation to the penal policy, which is considered in the context of the Soviet period of modernization of Russia. The subject of the article is the arrays of social and legal information in the field of the criminal law, the history of the penitentiary system, the history of the establishment of public control institutions, the genesis of the Russian language in the political and legal sphere. The purpose of the study is to demonstrate that the penitentiary policy is of a chrono-discrete nature, which is due to the peculiarities of Russia's civilizational backwardness at the early 20th century and the requirements of catching-up modernization of its technological structure. The methodological basis of the study was a chrono-discrete monogeographic comparative legal approach, which, in addition to the wellknown comparative, historical, formal legal types of analysis, proceeded from the following research attitudes and assumptions: 1) the object is taken in the same topology, but in different periods; 2) the scholar believes that there is a chronological gap in socio-legal and political processes. As a result of the work carried out, national characteristics in the evolution of penitentiary policy from the end of the 19th to the end of the 20th centuries were studied. A retrospective analysis of the penal policy humanization is presented and the reasons for the Soviet chronopause in the observance of human rights are named, the historical heterodynamics of the penal system in the system of state and law is substantiated. Problems of interaction of the penitentiary system with civil society institutions are implicitly touched upon. It is concluded that the current humanistic trend in the development of the penal system is a natural continuation of the penitentiary reforms of the 19th century, continued after the necessary socio-technological modernization of Russia, carried out by the Bolshevik party. Key words: penal system, punishment, time gap, chronopause, chrono-discrete monogeographic comparative legal approach (HMSP), industrialization, modernization, nonlinear cliodynamics