The relevance of the research topic is substantiated by the social commitment to the establishment of a system of craft training focused on training personnel for craft enterprises. The purpose of the article is to provide theoretical and methodological substantiation of the necessity to provide organizational and pedagogical foundations for the development of craft training in Russia. The main method of research on this problem is the method of studying and generalizing the pedagogic experience to identify the main tendencies and contradictions of formation of a new kind of vocational education in Russia. The outcome of the research is the theoretical and methodological justification of the development of craft training as a special kind of vocational education, revealing its role and place in the social economic sphere and in the system of vocational education; the identification of the value and target base and organizational pedagogical foundations of the development of vocational education in crafts as a set of interrelated managerial and organizational, informative and technological ideas, principles and conditions taking into account the patterns and contradictions of development of this kind of education. The material of the article may be useful for practitioners and researchers in the field of vocational education, for lecturers and graduate students who are interested in the development of the system of vocational education and training.