ABSTRACT
The reasons for landslide and pre-limit deformations of slopes and near-slope soil massifs that are widely spread on urbanized territories can be different. The paper is focused chiefly on a liquefactioninduced sliding zone in places where groundwater discharges onto the slope surface as the source of stress release and deep-seated block landslides formed by the compression mechanism (zone II), and on a zone of a pre-limit deformation of a soil massif. The characteristics and mechanisms of deforming zones are described on the examples of sliding slopes in the cities of Novocheboksarsk and Rybinsk (Quaternary sediments), Tomsk (Paleogene clays) and the bridges over the Moskva River and Volga.
