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49aims of my survey is to make the information about the regionaltraditions of vocal polyphony from the territories of the former USSR,available to the western scholars and readers, interested in theworldwide distribution of the tradition of vocal polyphony. Unlike thesurvey of African (or later Oceanian) polyphonic cultures, wheretranscribed materials are relatively easy to access for the westernreaders, materials from former Soviet Union and the Eastern Europe aremuch more difficult to access. So, unlike the review of African andOceania polyphonic traditions, I am including quite a few musicalexamples from the Europe, and particularly from the Eastern Europeanpolyphonic traditions.I will start the review of European polyphonic traditions from the East Europe.Then we’ll move to the polyphonic traditions of South Europe (Mediterranean Basin),where we will touch some Central European polyphonic traditions as well, and finallywe’ll discuss the North European polyphonic traditions. As I have already mentioned,“pockets” of traditional vocal polyphony are represented in all of these major regions ofthe Europe.Vocal Polyphony in Eastern EuropeAccording to our current knowledge, Eastern Europe has some of the richestpolyphonic traditions of the Europe. We will discuss most of the countries and importantminorities of the Eastern Europe. We will start with three Eastern Slavic states. First wewill discuss Russia, including the numerous peoples of the Russian Federation (NorthCaucasian Ossetians, Balkarians and Karachaevis, Chechens and Ingushes, Dagestanians,Volga-Ural region peoples – Mordvinians, Komi, Udmurts, Tatars, Mari, Bashkirs,Chuvashs, speakers of Finnish languages from North Russia, as well as Jews and Rom).Then we will move to polyphonic traditions of the Ukraine, then to Belarus, and willfinish with polyphonic traditions of Georgia.RussiaEven after the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russian Federation remains easilythe largest country of our planet, comprising major parts of the East Europe and the entireNorth Asia. Regarding the sheer size of Russian Federation and the wide distribution ofethnic Russians (with subsequent close contacts with totally different cultures of Europeand Asia) it is clear that all the generalizations about Russian traditions of polyphonicsinging cannot be exhaustive. We will first discuss polyphonic traditions of ethnicRussians in both (European and Asian) regions.The study of traditional polyphony in Russia has quite an extraordinary andsomewhat paradoxical history. Today Russian traditional music is widely known for itsrich polyphony, but during the first few decades of development of Russian musicology(roughly the second part of the 19 th century) it was mostly believed that Russian musicwas monophonic. Influential Russian musical critic Vladimir Stasov (1824-1906)