This article examines the evolution of public legal institutions of financial control in Russia as a system-forming factor in the formation of the state's financial security. Drawing on key historical stages — from early practices of accounting and collection of payments in Ancient Rus' and the first centralized financial structures under Ivan III, through the institutionalization of control in the XVII century and Peter the Great's reform of the supervisory vertical, to the budgetary and control transformations of the XIX century and attempts at parliamentary influence in the early XX century — it is demonstrated that the sustainability of public finances depended not so much on the volume of resources collected, but on the architecture of control, its independence, and its ability to neutralize internal threats (embezzlement, corruption, misappropriation of funds). Special attention is paid to Soviet models based on party-state supervision and "people's control" revealing their structural limitations: the substitution of professional audit with mass participation, the politicization of inspections, and a lack of independence. It is concluded that historical experience confirms that effective financial security requires professional, independent, and technologically equipped control embedded within a system of public accountability.