The article analyzes the experience of Soviet scientists with foreign theories of modernization, highlights the stages of perception in the USSR these theories reveals the discourse in relation to these theories. It is concluded that in Soviet times, social scientists could get acquainted with the various theories of modernization and their heuristic possibilities for the study of the historical process in General and peculiarities of Russian history. The reason for this was that of modernization theory, especially in the classic variant, was not considered in Soviet times as a uniquely «class-alien». A relatively good familiarity of Soviet scientists with theories of modernization was not the only reason for their rapid spread in the Russian social Sciences in the 1990s, but has left a strong imprint on their interpretation