Cardiovascular epidemiology has a rich history that may be considered to be initiated by a Framingham Heart Study (1948) that played an important role in the formation of risk factor concepts. Just this study revealed the role of arterial hypertension and dyslipidemia as risk factors for coronary heart disease and stroke. The multifactorial theory of cardiovascular diseases and the use a multifactorial model for risk assessment are a main advance in epidemiology in the past 60 years. The development of epidemiological technologies has resulted in the use of the new paradigm: from risk factors to the assessment of total cardiovascular risk. In 2012, the multicenter epidemiological study "Epidemiology of cardiovascular diseases and their risk factors in the Russian Federation (ECCE-RF)" has been launched in Russia on the initiative of and under the support of the Ministry of Health. The main goal of the study was to investigate the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and their risk factors in different cities and towns of Russia and to elaborate a cardiovascular risk profile model for the population on the basis of traditional factors, and to estimate the contribution of traditional and new cardiovascular risk factors to mortality rates. The parameters that allow not only the social, but also economic burden of chronic noncommunicable diseases and their risk factors to be estimated will be first studied within the framework of the large-scale epidemiological study in Russia.