CONTEXT Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is an under-diagnosed OBJECTIVES To describe Russian rheumatologists' knowledge of fibromyalgic patients. METHODS The questionnaire was sent to a random sample of Russian practitioners, who were answering the same questionnaire as that used by French practitioners in 2003. RESULTS The average number of patients seen daily by each practitioner was 58 (median 36 patients) 88% and 75% of the doctors claimed, individually, that they had not received any education on fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue during their medical studies. During their professional activity, 53.9% of the doctors have still not had any professional training on fibromyalgia. One percent of the doctors believed that fibromyalgia does not exist, while 36.5% believed that fibromyalgia is an illness and 63.2% that it is a syndrome. Forty percent of the doctors who answered were continuing to treat fibromyalgic patients, 28% referred them to a specialist rheumatologist, 14% to a neurologist and 9% to a psychiatrist. Excessive fatigue, diffuse pain, a tendency to feel depressed, anxious and sad, and muscle weakness were recognised respectively as being the main symptoms of fibromyalgia by 64, 77, 64 and 45 % of the rheumatologists respectively. Digestive problems, palpitations, swollen joints and radiological irregularities were recognised as being the main symptoms of fibromyalgia by 10, 13, 12 and 9% of the rheumatologists respectively. CONCLUSIONS As in EC countries, a wide-scale training effort should be made in order to improve the diagnosing of patients. The data collected via these evaluations was close to the results for France. .