The article shows how the view of English-speaking scholars on the reasons for the influx of British investments into the Russian economy in the late 19th - early 20th centuries changed. It is concluded that the attitude to this issue has undergone a significant evolution. If in the first half of the 20th centuryhistorians and economists considered the influx of foreign capital to be the result of the conscious efforts of the central government and especially the finance ministers I. A. Vyshnegradsky and S. Y. Witte, then from the 1960s in connection with the growing popularity of the theory of modernization in the West, the understanding of the problem has become more complicated. Modern English-speaking scholars believe that in addition to the measures taken by the Russian government, there was a whole range of other internal and external factors that influenced the dynamics of foreign investment. Scientists point out that the model of British investment did not correspond to the economic development cycle of Russia. The influx of British capital was based on previous experience of exporting British products to the Russian market. British capital was «pushed out» of Britain by low domestic incomes and enticed abroad by the promise of high profits in less developed countries. The British government was interested in the economic development of the new resource-rich regions of the Caucasus, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East. Within the framework of the discussion on the role of British capital in Russian industry, the dispute between economists that erupted in the 1970s stands out. The dispute revolved around the impact of the introduction of the gold standard in Russia on the inflow of foreign investment.