Publisher's Synopsis
Part of a series reporting to the West on significant developments in Soviet space research, this paper focuses on young stellar groupings - open clusters, associations and stellar complexes - and explores the properties and peculiarities of their distribution in relation to star formation and galactic structure. The essay also discusses the Magellanic Clouds, the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies, IC 1613 and NGC 6822 and the problem of the scale of distances for open clusters and Cepheids.