Loess and loess-like deposits were much studied in the Soviet Union, and are currently under investigation in Russia and surrounding countries. There is a vast literature in Russian, which touches on all aspects of loess science and technology. In particular, the studies of the origin of collapsibility are almost totally in Russian, and of course studies on the various regions of Russia and the countries of the Former Soviet Union FSU appear in Russian. This review looks at the literature in Russian and attempts to pick out key contributors, major topics and works and to identify the critical regions and zones of investigation. Because so many regions of the FSU had people living on loess ground, there is a vast literature on engineering geology and ground engineering topics, and this tends to dominate all the literature on loess in Russian. Following Russian practice, the fine-grained deposits under consideration are divided into loess and loess-like deposits. Three main topics are recognised across the whole spectrum of loess research: formation and distribution of loess deposits; stratigraphy, cyclicity and palaeoclimatology; and engineering topics, in particular hydrocollapse and subsidence, and we concentrate on the engineering geology topics. An attempt is made, based on the map of Abelev and Abelev Abelev, Yu.M., Abelev, M.Yu., 1968. Fundamentals of design and construction on collapsible macroporous soils, 2nd ed. Stroiizdat, Moscow, 431 pp. (in Russian) of collapsing loess deposits, to define seven loess regions within the geographical limits of the old USSR. The seven regions are those where geotechnical problems might be expected.