The book offered to the attention of readers is the first attempt in Russian science to give a general overview of foreign studies on ethnography and to a certain extent folklore of the Eastern Slavs for almost the entire post-war period (practically before the collapse of the USSR). With such a chronological (almost 50 years), territorial (Foreign Europe, USA, Canada) and "disciplinary" (except for the works of ethnographers, in some cases, studies of "allied" - folklorists, archaeologists, historians, religious scholars, linguists, etc.) the breadth of the material in the book are inevitable separate omissions.