The question of the resistance to corrosion under stress has arisen in the use of an aluminum oxide-base ceramic for the production of bearings, portions of chemical apparatus, and other parts operating in aqueous alkaline and acid media and also in the production from silicon nitride and carbide-base ceramics of parts of motors operating in the air-containing products of combustion of fuel at high temperatures. This review covers questions of the influence of chemically active working media (water, solutions of acids and alkalis, air at high temperatures) on these forms of ceramics. In discussing the corrosion cracking mechanisms certain data obtained in the study of glasses is used for reasons of the similarity between the mechanical behavior of glass and ceramics and of the lack of similar data for ceramics. Methods for tests of specimens both with and without preliminarily applied defects or cracks and for long-term crack resistance tests are assessed. Corrosion cracking behavior for silicon nitride, silicon carbide, and aluminum-oxide base ceramics are discussed in detail.