The article discusses a theory of Asiatic mode of production. This theory had a great influence on the development of historiographic and sociological science thoughts of the 19th-20th centuries. The theory of Asiatic mode of production proposed by Marx in the Soviet years was under ideological and political pressure, and its discussion was interrupted twice - in the 1930s and 1960s. Nevertheless, indirect developments of this theory had a great influence on the development of Oriental studies in the USSR. Many points of Marxian theory are now outdated, but still it is being discussed both in the post-Soviet space and in Western science.