The subject of the article is the right to private correspondence (correspondence, telephone conversations, postal, telegraph and other messages), within the borders and limits defined in the constitutional law of the Russian Federation and Western European countries, as well as in EU law, taking into account law-making and law enforcement practice. The purpose of the work was to reveal the content of the right to private correspondence and identify the features of the regulation of this right in the domestic constitutional legislation. The research methodology is predetermined by a dialectical approach to the knowledge of constitutional and legalphenomena, as well as by proven constitutional and legal science, General scientific (system, analysis and synthesis, logical, etc.) and private scientific (normative-dogmatic, historical-legal, comparative-legal, etc.) methods. They are used to determine the essence, guarantees and permissible restrictions of the right to private correspondence. One of the main conclusions of the study was the understanding of the dual nature of the right to privacy of correspondence, which, first, appears as an independent fundamental right and, secondly, as a guarantee of the right to privacy, personal and family secrets.