[en] In the present report we present a highly condensed summary of our previous works in which we investigated the spin-orbit motion of particles in a storage ring. The starting points of these investigations are the Lorentz equation and the BMT equation. Having defined a suitable coordinate system and having described the external fields, the linearized equations of motion are derived. In the discussion of the orbital motion (which includes radiation damping and quantum excitations) the betatron oscillations and synchrotron oscillations are treated simultaneously. Explicit expressions for the transfer matrices of the orbital motion are given for the most important beam line elements (i.e. quadrupoles, drift spaces, rotated quadrupoles, solenoids, cavities, electric and magnetic dipole fields). In the appendix a numerical scheme is described for calculating the spin transfer matrices. Using Bogoliubov's averaging method the following physical quantities are calculated: i) damping constants of the synchro-betatron oscillations; ii) beam emittance matrix; iii) depolarization time due to quantum fluctuations of the radiation. Finally, we show how one can express these quantities in terms of the dispersion. (orig./HSI)