The article presents retrospective review of the technical requirements for the creation and testing of wheelset for speed rolling stock in the Soviet Union and Russia since the 1980s until now.Creation of wheelsets performed using both domestic experience and the experience of foreign companies. The domestic experience in development of technical requirements for the wheel sets accumulated during the development of domestic passenger cars of locomotive traction and electric multiple unit trains (EMU).To a large extent this contributed to the experience of operating high-speed electric locomotive CHS200 with "Aurora" and "Troika" trains as well as EMU ER200 with speeds up to 200 km/h. Then - the creation of high-speed train ES250 "Sapsan" with a design speed 250 km/h, and EMU ED6 with design speed 160 km/h.The most productive was the last decade, when for designing high speed rolling stock European companies with relevant experience were involved. The joint work of research institutes of JSC "Russian Railways" and leading European companies led to the appearance in Russia of rolling stock with the range speed up to 250 km/h (design speed of 300 km/h).Improving the regulatory framework will be the basis for the transition to the next stage in the development of high-speed transport in Russia with even higher speeds. In this case even higher reliability requirements will be presented to the running part of the rolling stock. Development experience obtained in the previous stages will contribute to this challenge.