The compulsory social insurance system is multifaceted: it guarantees social assistance and protection to the population; provides financing of the corresponding expenditures of the state; governed by public authorities. With this in mind, it falls under the legal regulation of a number of branches of Russian law – social security law, financial law, administrative law, and insurance law. In view of the above, it seems important to study the basic principles of compulsory social insurance in order to identify them by industry. This will allow the law enforcement officer (primarily the courts) to use them as legal regulators in resolving disputes arising in various spheres of public relations. Achievement of the task and purpose of the research is ensured through theoretical research methods. As a result, it was concluded that the basic principles of compulsory social insurance are enshrined in the federal laws “On the basics of compulsory social, insurance”, “On compulsory social insurance against industrial accidents and occupational diseases”, “On compulsory health insurance in the Russian Federation”. The principles studied are reasonably identified as principles of social security law, principles of insurance law, principles of financial law and principles of administrative law. Also identified are the rules enshrined in the legislation as principles, but do not have the proper qualifying features of the principles of law. Based on the foregoing, it was proposed to make appropriate changes to the industry insurance legislation, namely: to consolidate the principles of law common to all types of compulsory social insurance in the Federal Law “On the Fundamentals of Compulsory Social Insurance”, and to include special principles of law, which are legal regulators for certain groups of insurance relations. The conclusions drawn from the results of the study of the basic principles of compulsory social insurance can be used to further study the sectoral principles of Russian law, as well as to improve legal regulation and law enforcement practice in this area of public relations.