In 1975–1976 a remarkable volcanic eruption took place on the Kamchtka peninsula, part of the Soviet Union's arc of active volcanoes. Dr Fedotov and his colleagues studied the largest basaltic eruption in history, one of the most important volcanic events in the twentieth century. During this prolonged eruption they carried out extensive seismological, geophysical, geodetic and geochemical investigations. The results of this detailed and thorough investigation were collected as a series of papers under the editorship of S. A. Fedotov and collected into this volume, which was originally published by Cambridge in 1983. The result is a classic descriptive work of a major volcanic eruption.

This paper presents the results of visual observations, particle-size analysis, seismological observations, and acoustic measurements carried out during a small-magnitude eruption of Bezymyannyi in June 1986. A mlodel is proposed for the mechanism of the eruption. A specific character of the eruption is explained by a deeper localization of a gas-rich aagia portion in the conduit,

This paper is concerned with the geological history and petrology of a major polygenic volcanic edifice dating back to Upper Pleistocene to Holocene time. This long-lived volcanic center is remarkable in that it combines basaltic and trachybasaltic magmas which are found in basaltic andesite and trachybasaltic– trachyandesite series. The inference is that the coexisting parent magmas are genetically independent and are generated at different sources at depth in an upper mantle volume. The associated volcanic rocks have diverse compositions, stemming from a multi-stage spatio–temporal crystallization differentiation of the magmas and mixing of these in intermediate chas.