Abstract: The research subject is the actualization of organizational and pedagogic peculiarities of professional training of penal institutions personnel during the Great Patriotic War. Professional training of penitentiary personnel in today’s Russia, aimed at the formation of competent professionals, traditionally deals with the question of continuity of education fundamentals at particular time line.  
The research is based on archive materials of the State Archive of the Russian Federation. The research methodology includes the method of historicism, and the system approach, the chronological method (historical periodisation), the methods of historical retrospective and historical comparison, which help to analyze archive sources from the viewpoint of contemporary historical and pedagogical science. 
The authors study the historical and pedagogical materials and analyze the experience, as well as theoretical and practical results of the search for new approaches, means and methods of professional training and improvement of conceptual background of the educational sphere of penal service of Russia. 
During the period under study (the years of the Great Patriotic War), the most effective organizational and pedagogical models were searched for, as well as their orientation towards school education with prevailing in-service training. 
 

Abstract: The article considers the problem of preservation and upgrading of historical and pedagogical legacy of teachers of the earliest professional training schools and courses for penitentiary personnel in Russia. The author considers the quality characteristics (the staffing level and competence of teachers, the participation of practitioners and scientists, etc.) of personalities of teachers of the earliest educational institutions (schools and courses) involved in professional training of penitentiary personnel. The author notes that the personalities of particular teachers are well-known in the scientific world, some are known only among domain experts (particularly those specialized in jurisprudence), some were known only to their contemporaries, while about others there’s no available scientifically important information at all. The author raises the question about the necessity to admit the role of personalities in professional training of penitentiary personnel in Russia. This research is one of the first attempts to introduce the personalities of the earliest professional training schools and courses for penitentiary personnel to the scientific world. The research is based on the archive materials. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the systematization of tendencies of recruiting teachers of the earliest professional training schools and courses for penitentiary personnel: firstly, the absence of permanent teachers even in schools opened upon the adoption of the Law of 1913; secondly, highly positioned civil servants and qualified practitioners were involved in teaching; thirdly, starting with temporary readings, highly competent and well-known specialists had been involved in the educational process, many of them current or would-be leading scientists and acknowledged scholars. The admission of the role of personalities makes it possible to conduct historical research using biographical methods and personalistics.