The subject of this article is the main positions of Russian researchers in identifying the determinants of crime. The main aim is to analyze the basic approaches to the definition of the determinants of crime in the domestic criminological science and to express the authors' attitude on this issue. The works of Russian researchers on the indicated problem encouraged the authors. In the process of work, the authors used the methodological principles of universal communication, objectivity, consistency; general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, analogy) and private scientific methods (formal-logical, method of summary and grouping). In the second half of the 20th century, there were two main directions in studying the causes of crime: sociological and anthropological ones. The Russian sociological school was distinguished by two main features. The first is a multifactor approach to the explanation of the causes of crime; the second is a smaller dependence on anthropological theories of the causes of crime than in the sociological schools of Western countries. The anthropological direction in Russia was represented both by doctors and lawyers. But unlike their colleagues from other countries, they were not the orthodox supporters of the anthropological doctrine of crime, because they recognized the influence of social processes. In the USSR, in the early 1920s scientific research centers were offices for studying the criminals and crimes established in several large cities, but their activities did not last long. In the 1930s, criminological research was practically suspended, and the institutions that conducted these studies were either closed or re-profiled. Until the 1960s, certain provisions on crime and its causes were studied in the context of judicial statistics. Since the mid-1960s, the situation began to change. During that period, the positions of researchers converged in the following: they unanimously recognized the anti-criminal nature of socialism. However, it did not prevent criminologists from dividing into three main groups: some researchers explained the existence of crime by subjective causes, the second by objective social processes, the third by the biological features of individuals. The article analyzes all directions in the causes of crime explanation. In the period of modern history of Russia, many criminological works tend to pay insufficient attention to the question of the determination of both criminality in general and its individual types. The article deals with some modern approaches to the causes of crime. The authors note that proponents of these approaches are often careless about the terms they use for defining the processes of determination of criminality. The authors analyze these approaches, give their opinion about the problem of determination of crime, define specific terms, reveal their content and indicate the existence of links between them.