The study presents the four main approaches in the historiography of Stalinism, summarising features of the system along the modernisation school, the totalitarian paradigm, various revisionists, and the main theses of the authors of the civilisation theory. Although scientific aspects increasingly come before in the examination of the Stalin phenomenon, in the environment of global capitalism, the research of state socialism is effected on the long run by the choice of accepting or rejecting socialism as a new civilisation.