The article is devoted to an extended analysis of the most important texts of the Stalin era, in which the theory of the socialist state was presented. Based on historical and political analysis, the author traces and reconstructs the history of the development of Soviet political and legal thought of the Stalin period of Soviet history towards the creation of a well-founded and structured theory of the socialist state. This work was complicated by serious problems that arose due to serious contradictions between the theory they were creating and the most important Marxist principles, as well as with the main postulates of the Leninist doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The author comes to the conclusion that these reasons ultimately led to the situation that the theory of the socialist state created from the early 1930s to the early 1950s did not achieve internal structure and consistency. The Soviet theory of the state did not resolve its internal contradictions, of which the most important was the dualism of dictatorship and democracy. Thus, the Soviet theory of the socialist state of the Stalin era did not achieve internal harmony and logic.