Abstract: The article examines the historiography of the transfer of industrial technologies in the first third of the XX century. This historical period is of particular interest to researchers. It was at this time that the Soviet model of forced industrial modernization was taking shape. In order to achieve the set goals in the shortest possible time, the Soviet state most actively used the mechanisms of scientific and technical cooperation with foreign countries. Thanks to the scientific and technical policy pursued by him, this cooperation soon acquired a complex, systematic character and, ultimately, took a stable form of technology transfer. The work is based on the provisions of modernization theory, according to which technology transfer is considered as one of the key mechanisms of technological modernization of production. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that no detailed research of historiography on the topic has been conducted to date. The author attempts to eliminate this obvious gap. In addition, one of the goals of this study is to promote the further development of the concept of technological transfer, which involves the transition to a systematic analysis of certain facts of scientific and technical cooperation of the USSR with foreign countries. The paper concludes that despite the extensive historiography on the topic, there are still numerous gaps that have yet to be filled by scientists. At the same time, at the current stage, of particular importance is not the search for factual material itself, which is already very extensive, but the reinterpretation of existing facts from the point of view of the provisions of the theory of modernization and the concept of technological transfer. This will make it possible to bring a systematic approach to the ongoing research on the topic and to make a comprehensive study of the state's scientific and technical policy in the first third of the XX century.