The article focuses on the under-researched topic of the formation and development of the local Polotsk neo-Scholastic philosophical tradition within the Russian intellectual sphere of the 19th century. Studying it enables us to re-evaluate the development of religious philosophy and reconsider how the ideas of the Enlightenment were adapted in the Russian cultural context. It also allows us to determine the extent to which Western European scholastic ideas were present in the local philosophical landscape. The purpose of the article is to identify and analyze the main stages of the formation and development of the tradition of Polotsk neo-Scholasticism in the intellectual Russian space. The research methodology includes the use of the historical and philosophical method, ideas of the concept of cultural transfer, and the historical and comparative method. The work identifies and analyzes three main periods of the formation and development of Polotsk neo-Scholasticism, which received the following names: genesis, institutionalization, transfer. The works and ideas corresponding to each of the periods are presented, and the characteristic features of each period are determined. The study is novel in that it allows us to rethink the intellectual processes that took place in the Russian Empire in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.