Dear reader, we are launching a new journal, Issues of World History, which, as the editorial board hopes, should take a prominent place in historical journals. The journal is scheduled to be published regularly because the State Institution “The Institute of World History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine” is assigned a mission to be a coordinator on world history research in Ukraine.

For further ascension of Ukraine, an important task is a broader study of the problems of world history: not only theoretical problems of the world-historical process, but also world-system transformations under conditions of global development, competing versions of the progress of modernity, features of the world cultural and civilizational progress. For our state and society, research on international security issues, settlement of international conflicts, influence of geopolitical processes, interethnic and interfaith relations on international security, etc. are important. Nowadays, issues of civilization, political, economic and cultural relations of Ukraine with the countries of the world, analysis and forecasting of these relations occupy an important place.

The main features of the progress of the contemporary world are its globalization and regionalization, informatization and extraordinary intensification of relations between countries and peoples. Ukraine, having regained its state independence, imperatively asserts itself as an equal actor in international relations and strengthens its position in world economic relations and global information space. One of the conditions for successful completion of these tasks should be a basic knowledge of other countries of the world, in particular, their experience and practice of overcoming crisis phenomena. Finding out the wide range of our people's relations with them should help society and the state to think carefully, consciously and effectively in implementing foreign policy strategies.

At present, studies of the patterns of historical development of the countries of the world, their transformational transformations, and the place of the Ukrainian people and their state formations in the past and the role of Ukraine in modern world cultural and civilization processes are relevant. At present, the key task for Ukrainian historical science, especially in the context of our strategic course for joining the Euro-Atlantic space, is the conceptual understanding and integration of Ukrainian history into the world at large and European one in particular. First, it is necessary to overcome the historical charts, myths and conceptual approaches that have dominated in Ukraine in the past and to present to the world our own vision of the role of our state in world history and the rise of human civilization. Indeed, even in leading European countries such as Germany and France, with which our people have been linked for centuries, many politicians do not sufficiently differentiate Ukraine, its national interests from Russia or other CIS countries.

It is also important to realize that without the context of the world civilization progress it is not possible to continue at the current scientific level the process of complete and objective reproduction of national history, clarification of the role and place of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people in the world historical process. After all, external factors and international relations had a significant and sometimes decisive influence on the historical destiny of the Ukrainian people.

Nowadays, Ukrainian historical science imperative needs its own research paradigm for the history of the country, its national-state dimensions, which would be in line with world history and correspond with each other. After all, contemporary Russian, Polish and other paradigms of Ukrainian history do not take into account, ignore or present in a mythologized form the specifics of the Ukrainian historical process in the context of the history of Europe and the world. That is why it is important to integrate Ukrainian history organically into the world, based on the principles of objectivism, scientificism and based on your own, Ukrainian vision of this process.

Therefore, we hope that a thorough scientific approach to the coverage of the events of history will be a sign of our publications so that the current studios, studies and developments of the authors of the magazine have wide domestic and foreign readers and are in demand by our state and society.