The review provides basic information about electrostatic suspensions and their principles for creating precision gyroscopes and highly sensitive accelerometers. Design peculiarities of foreign sensitive elements with active electrostatic suspensions are considered, diagrams of main electronic units used for separation of suspended body movement signals, generation of power and correcting control signals are given, and comparative analysis of the considered diagrams is given. The review uses literary sources from 1960 to 1986. The review is addressed to engineers and specialists working in the field of navigation instrumentation.