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Book 1. How Ukrainians Destroyed the Evil Empire

At the end of July 1991, a KGB report to the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR Leonid Kravchuk informed him of a scenario of a possible collapse of the USSR that had been predicted in the United States. The head of the USSR KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, would argue that a few years earlier, the communist secret services had sensed the impending collapse. What was going on behind the scenes of the August coup, which made the collapse of the USSR rapid and irreversible? How did it happen that out of the four scenarios described in the CIA's forecast, Ukrainians chose the most radical one - "Collapse"? In this book, the author recreates the events of 1991 day by day. He cites until recently secret archival documents of the CIA and KGB. For the first time, he compares the memoirs of participants and witnesses of Ukraine's independence: politicians, historians, and writers. And he answers the question of who really destroyed the evil empire."

Book 2. Ukrainian language. A Journey from Bad Ems to Strasbourg

There are two important points on the cultural map of the modern Ukrainian language: Bad Ems, where a decree was issued to convince the world that the Ukrainian language does not exist, has not existed, and cannot exist, and Strasbourg, where on 21 March 2022 Ukrainian was granted the status of the future official language of the European Union.

Orysia Demska tells the story of the origin and development of the Ukrainian language from the Indo-European proto-language to the present day, its interaction with other languages, the history of mutual enrichment, the irreconcilable confrontation with Russian, and the course of linguistic crises from which it emerged victorious.

An accessible account of the formation of Ukrainian statehood and national identity through language and thanks to language.