Today, Ukraine is not merely a frontline or a rear. It is a space where, in the words of this year’s laureate of the German Booksellers’ Peace Prize^[1], Karl Schlögel, “the very horizon of experience in which we grew up is disappearing”^[2], while at the same time a new one is emerging. It is the one that, as Klaus Schwab notes in his introduction to “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”, “fundamentally transforms the course of our daily lives, our modes of work, and our interactions”^[3]. Under these conditions, knowledge is no longer simply an academic value. It becomes an act of responsibility, for it safeguards historical memory and spiritual and material culture, the very foundations that the rashists are once again attempting to destroy or appropriate.

In an era when chaos proliferates on digital platforms, encyclopedias remain one of the few spaces of trust, where a fact is truly a fact. Their mission in accumulating and preserving knowledge is to safeguard cultural codes, languages, and the traditions of peoples, as well as the typical and unique features of individuals, societies, nations, and all humanity. By compiling encyclopedias, we stand guard over fundamental meanings and values, affirming what sustains society: knowledge, language, material and spiritual culture, human memory, and national self-respect.

The year 2025 has become another year of trials and, for many, of revelations. The Russian Federation is dismantling the system of values upon which the modern world is founded. Communities must be prepared for new challenges and threats arising from the transformation of various systems in the contemporary world order, and they must take responsibility for the future.

In this volume of the Herald, we continue our traditions while striving not to overlook innovative trends spreading across the world. In the article by Mykola Zhelezniak and Yuliia Mishura, the authors draw attention to the role of artificial intelligence in encyclopedic practice. This is not merely a technological experiment but a new mode of thinking, one based on collaboration between humans and algorithms. As the researchers note, ChatGPT can serve as a useful assistant to editors, helping to view text as a system, identifying inaccuracies, suggesting interpretations of structure, and more. The dialogue between human and artificial intelligence is now emerging as one of the leading themes in contemporary encyclopedism, confirming the thesis that human knowledge remains the decisive factor in any form of intellectual production.

The question of competition between humans and artificial intelligence is further examined by Oleksandr Ishchenko in his publication on the world's first machine-generated universal encyclopedia, Grokipedia. A comparative analysis of its articles with the corresponding ones in Wikipedia convincingly demonstrates that human cognitive capabilities remain paramount. Even in the age of nano and biotechnologies, high-speed data transmission, and unprecedented scales of knowledge storage, humans continue to embody the highest achievement of earthly civilization. Of course, this refers to homo sapiens, not to those beings for whom, in the apt words of poetess Lina Kostenko, “the soul has not yet climbed down from the tree”.

The issue of scientific integrity, which today stands as one of the many challenges facing Ukrainian society, demands urgent and systematic resolution. At the same time, this is neither a uniquely Ukrainian nor exclusively contemporary problem. The figure of Ivan Puluj, who is the subject of two substantial studies in this year's issue of the Herald by respected authors Roman Pliatsko and Viktor Zhovtyansky, vividly illustrates that nations must not only nurture their talents but also protect them and promote their achievements and ideas on the global stage. In this context, love for the national is not a manifestation of primitive nationalism or chauvinism but emerges as responsible nationalism, the kind that Fabian Baumann defines “as the belief that: a) humanity can be divided into distinct sociocultural groups called nations, and b) these groups are the sole legitimate basis for statehood”^[4].

Iryna Bagmut’s article is devoted to analyzing the semantics of the word “polon” (captivity) in contemporary encyclopedic discourse. The author examines how a term that once merely delineated freedom from bondage acquires new meanings in the context of the Russian Ukrainian war, and how encyclopedic knowledge responds to this transformation.

Viktor Sokolov’s inquiry focuses on the first encyclopedic work created on Ukrainian lands, New Athens by Benedykt Chmielowski. In an era when an encyclopedia still resembled a universe in miniature, the word “knowledge” carried a sacral connotation. The author shows that even a compilatory book from the eighteenth century can symbolize the aspiration to bring order to the chaos of the world, just as today’s digital projects seek to impose structure on endless streams of information. New Athens appears not as a curiosity of the past but as evidence that every epoch seeks its own way to make sense of the disorder of reality.

The contemporary Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, analyzed by Andrii Kudriachenko and Vladyslav Mukha, stands as an example of a digital humanities resource that combines scholarly reliability, educational mission, and openness to a global audience. Its structure, multimedia features, and multilingualism illustrate how contemporary encyclopediс practices can integrate archive and reference, science and public history, academic rigor and empathy. For the Ukrainian context, this experience is instructive. It outlines methodological and technological benchmarks for creating national digital encyclopedias.

Vladyslav Verstiuk’s review presents the concept of the Encyclopedia of the History of the Ukrainian Revolution 1914–1923. This project is not merely historical but also a moral act. It is born amid war, in a reality of daily risk, and it acquires particular significance precisely for this reason. It represents an attempt to preserve the continuity of state memory, to restore the link between past and present, and to remind us that the history of liberation struggles is not the past but exists here and now.

For many years, we have had the opportunity to collaborate with Academician Yaroslav Yatskiv on the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine, the primary project of the Institute of Encyclopedic Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and one of the academy’s key initiatives. In October of this year, we celebrated the jubilee of this distinguished scholar, public figure, and statesman. Several brief reflections from notable figures in contemporary Ukraine provide an opportunity to portray the persona of Yaroslav Yatskiv.

Together, all these studies form a map of the current state of Ukrainian and European encyclopedistics, from technical explorations to moral reflections. They attest that, despite war, crises, informational noise, and technological shifts, what endures is paramount: humanity’s capacity to understand, to order, and to transmit meanings.

NOTES

^[1] The German Book Trade Peace Prize (Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels) is an international award established by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association. It is annually bestowed upon figures in literature, science, and the arts whose work promotes peace, humanity, and understanding among peoples. The prize is traditionally presented during the Frankfurt Book Fair at St. Paul's Church.

^[2] Makeiev, O. (2025, October 20). [Facebook post by Ukraine's Ambassador to Germany Oleksii Makeiev on the speech by Karl Schlögel—recipient of the 2025 German Booksellers' Peace Prize]. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/16JDmbbULY [in Ukrainian].

^[3] Schwab, K. (2019). The Fourth Industrial Revolution (Book 1; trans. from English by N. Klychuk & Ya. Lebedenko). Kharkiv: KSD [in Ukrainian].

^[4] Baumann, F. (2025). Dynasty Divided: A Family History of Russian and Ukrainian Nationalism (from English by L. Belei). Lviv: Local History [in Ukrainian].