This volume presents an authoritative collection of major survey papers on algebraic combinatorics which originally appeared in Russian, augmented by four survey papers written specially for this book. The algebraic theory of combinatorial objects is the branch of mathematics that studies the relation between local properties of a combinatorial object and the global properties of its automorphism group. The content is divided into three parts: the first deals with cellular rings; the second deals with distance-regular and distance-transitive graphs; and part 3 contains papers on the relatively new branch of amalgams and geometry. For complex systems theorists; mathematicians interested in group theory and combinatorics.