The 10th European Conference was held in a modern building complex in Moscow from 14–19 September 1981. Of about 700 participants, almost 500 were Soviet attendees. Unfortunately, problems of a non-scientific nature led to a reduced participation from some Western countries so that certain important areas of interest to the international plasma physics community were not fully represented (e.g. Garching programmes in stellarators and poloidal divertor tokamaks and the French programme in ICR heating).