Abstract: The subject of the research is the works of the outstanding Russian historian of education, corresponding member of the RAO E.G. Osovsky (1930-2004), devoted to the study of school, education and pedagogical thought of the Russian abroad. The article outlines the reasons for the scientist's choice of a new pedagogical topic at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, identifies the research approaches and problem fields implemented by him, and offers an analysis of the most important works. The comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of pedagogical emigration presented in the scientist's works opened up opportunities for subsequent generations of researchers to build a holistic picture of the formation and development of schools, education and pedagogical thought in foreign Russia. The authors present the main directions of the scientist's research, the characteristics of their influence on the development of modern historical and pedagogical science and its prospects, which determines the relevance of the article. The wide coverage of sources, the accounting of materials from the personal archive of the scientist, the involvement of works from inaccessible publications and the introduction of the entire complex of materials into scientific circulation determine the scientific novelty of the article. The implementation of such an approach, which is based on a complex combination of traditional methods of historical and pedagogical science and new methods of analysis (hermeneutical, contextual, microhistoric), provides the necessary interdisciplinarity and allows us to talk about the productivity of its application in the study of the heritage of outstanding Russian teachers.