In Russian historiography, for more than a century, there have been disputes about the possible reasons for the origin of East Slavic / Old Russian cities. Today, several hypotheses coexist: 1) cities are products of state power, 2) their emergence was influenced by the trade and craft factor, 3) the needs of defense influenced the formation of towns, 4) cities arose from rural settlements and were brought into being by the need to coordinate the increasingly complex social and political life -as the administrative centers of Slavic tribes / tribal unions. Such hypotheses began to appear as early as the 18th century, at a time when the features of the classical European model of historical science began to take shape on the basis of European rationalism. Historiographic sources for research were (big) national histories, essay kinds of historical narrations, scientific research, historical descriptions, educational books on history, etc. Analysis of historiographic sources of the 18th century allowed identifying two close views that influenced the formation of the hypothesis about the city as the administrative center of the district. The basis of the first view was the stage theory of human development that appeared in the second half of the 18th century. Its universal nature made it possible to hypotheti-cally represent not only the difference in the "nomadic" (wild-ness) and "settled" (barbarity) stages, but also to draw attention to the sedentary population, which had to settle in certain places "villages" - settlements farmers, some of whom became urban settlements. The second view was based on the interpretation of historical sources (chronicles). Historians drew attention to individual Slavic tribes, which created their own "towns" ("fenced villages"). By the end of the 18th century, in educational books on history and in researches A.L. Schlozer drew attention to the city as a product of changes in the economic activity of the population and as the administrative center of Slavic societies.