The article is devoted to the expeditions organized in the 1920s by D. A. Zolotaryov - an outstanding ethnographer and anthropologist, head of the Russian-Finnish ethnography department in the structure of the Russian Museum. There were six ethnological expeditions carried out through his work, during which the collection of the Russian Ethnographic Museum was significantly replenished with material and photographic materials. The publication highlights the geography, organizational features of expeditions, the impact of innovative solutions on the structure of the collections collected in field research.