Klaus G. Troitzsch

• From September 4 to 11, 1992, a fiirst meeting between Ukrainian and German scientists interested in mathematical and computer modeling of social processes was held at Vorzel' near Kiev. The meeting had been planned for nearly three years by Igor V. Chernenko and Mikhail V. Kuz'min, then members of the research group on mathematical modeling in sociology at the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Science of the Ukrainian Republic, and had to be postponed twice due to the political development in the former Soviet Union, but thanks to the organizers' perseverance (and in spite of a strike of the airport personell at Kiev Borispol Airport on the eve of the conference) the conference could at last be realized.rnThe main purpose of the conference was to discuss a synergetic interpretation of large-scale destructive social processes as catastrophic phenomena in self-organized systems.