Soft Interactions and Diffraction Phenomena

Abstract

Until the mystery of confinement is understood from the first principles, so called `soft physics' remains an important area of research, providing valuable information on underlying dynamics of strong interactions at long distances. In this short review an attempt is made to summarize recent experimental results on multiparticle production in e+e- annihilation and on diffraction at HERA.

Comments: 16 pages, Latex 2.09, 18 figures included. Plenary talk given at the 28th International Conference on High Energy Physics, 25-31 July, 1996, Warsaw, Poland. (Description of Fig.4c and Ref.2 have been corrected)