The monograph of the prominent medievalist Professor E. A. Thompson (1914-1994) was first translated into Russian. This study focuses on the history of Western Europe in the 5th-6th centuries, when the Western Roman Empire broke up and was inhabited by Germanic tribes. Relying on early medieval chronicles, the author tried to highlight the political and socio-economic processes that took place on the outskirts of the barbarian world - in Italy, Spain, Britain. This book will be of interest to historians, archaeologists, ethnologists and everyone interested in the history of Europe in the early Middle Ages.