The article substantiates that the complicity in a crime with a special subject shall not be considered in the period of Kyivan Rus, as there were no crimes with a special subject at that time. It is established that with the enactment of the Second Statute of Lithuania in 1566, the formation of the institute of complicity in a crime with a special subject can be with certainty stated, since the wording of the crimes indicating the liability of accomplices in a crime with a special subject began to be formulated. The tradition of such a method of regulation persisted until the end of the nineteenth century. It is also found that the rule of qualification of complicity in a crime with a special subject, provided for in Part 3 of Art. 29 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine of 2001, is not a novelty for criminal law but was available in the Criminal Code of 1903 and the Criminal Code of the German Empire. It is submitted that the norm foreseeing the liability for the actions of accomplices, not endowed with the features of a special subject, appeared in military crimes as early as 1927. However, such a regulation of complicity in the crimes is considered to be not perfect and contains a number of drawbacks: by a literal interpretation, it can be concluded that non-servicemen in complicity may be held criminally liable as the perpetrators of such crimes, and it is methodologically not appropriate to place the rules of qualification of complicity in crimes with a special subject in the Special Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, since such general provisions of criminal law shall be contained in the General Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The inconsistency in the development of institute under consideration is substantiated, mainly because Ukrainian lands were part of different states, whose criminal laws occasionally did not take into account the positive developments of previous years. Particularly negatively the development of the institute of complicity in a crime with a special subject was influenced by the period of Soviet power in Ukraine, as the above-mentioned institute essentially re-started its formation. From 1917 to 1927 the institute of complicity in a crime with a special subject was legislatively not regulated, but only since 1927, when the rule of qualification for the actions of an accomplice in a war crime, not endowed with the features of a special subject, had been fixed. Consequently, it shall be definitely affirmed that the Criminal Code of Ukraine of 2001 contains both the positive experience of legal regulation of complicity in a crime with a special subject in Part 3 of Art. 29, and deficient – in Part 3 of Art. 401. In view of the study, the need to improve the existing legislative regulation of the institute of complicity in a crime with a special subject is confirmed.