Algebraic geometry and its applications

This volume contains 18 papers at the Algebraic Geometry Conference, Yaroslavl', August 10-14, 1992. These conferences in algebraic geometry have a great tradition in Russia and are helt since 1979 in Yaroslavl' every second year. The present conference, the eighth one, was the first in which several foreign mathematicians participated. From the Russian side, there was a large group of specialists in algebraic geometry and related fields (invariant theory, topology of manifolds, theory of categories, mathematical physics etc.). Lectures on modern directions in algebraic geometry, such as the theory of exceptional bundles and helices on algebraic varieties, moduli of vector bundles on algebraic surfaces with applications to Donaldson's theory, geometry of Hilbert schemes of points, twistor spaces and applications to string theory, and more traditional areas, such as birational geometry of manifolds, adjunction theory, Hodge theory, problems of rationality in the invariant theory, topology of complex algebraic varieties, and others are contained in this volume.