PONIMANIYE — NACHALO SOGLASIYA: MEZHKUL’TURNAYA SEMEYNAYA KOMMUNIKACIYA (UNDERSTANDING IS THE BEGINNING OF ACCORD: INTERCULTURAL FAMILY COMMUNICATION). <...> It is due to the current boost in international relations, politics, economy, culture, and sports that the theory of intercultural communication holds a well-deserved place on the cutting edge of today’s social sciences research. <...> Olga Leontovich is one of the eminent scholars who have made a contribution to the Russian version of intercultural communication theory and continue to develop it as both an academic and applied field of knowledge. <...> The new monograph “Understanding is the Beginning of Accord”: Intercultural Family Communication by Olga Leontovich and Ekaterina Yakusheva focuses on an array of issues concerning multiethnic marriages and is another step forward in intercultural communication research. <...> Structurally, the monograph is composed of an Introduction, three Chapters, a Conclusion, a Bibliography, three Appendices, and an Alphabetical Index. <...> Vital components of the monograph’s formal structure are the epigraphs prefixing several sections of the monograph and giving the text a special poetic touch. <...> The research is centered on intercultural family communication, which involves a wide scope of subjects ranging from family psychology to semiotics. <...> An attentive reader of the book will appreciate comprehensive answers to a great variety of questions dealing with the peculiarities of verbal and non-verbal communication in an intercultural family. <...> Chapter One offers a fundamental analysis of such notions as ‘family’, ‘interethnic / interracial / multicultural marriage’, as well as the way these notions are viewed in sociology, psychology, ethnology, culture studies, communication theory, linguistics, semiotics, and a variety of other fields. <...> Chapter Two deals with the social, territorial, temporal and functional dimensions of intercultural family communication, as well as its other constituent features. <...> Chapter Three describes the intercultural family’s communication space, the peculiarities of verbal and non-verbal interactions between its members, touches upon the problem of bilingualism, looks into the causes of communication failure in social discourse and many other arguable points. <...> In the Conclusion the authors point out that the number of multicultural marriages is steadily growing. <...> They focus on the essentials of successful intercultural family communication stressing that, first and foremost, “love is the most reliable basis for building a united and lasting family” (pp. 197—198 <...>