Books from Ukraine
The Ukrainian Book Institute is a government entity, part of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine.
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Humanities & Social Sciences2014History of Ukraine from KGB Secret Files
by Volodymyr Viatrovych
The unknown and classified KGB history of the largest country in Europe - Ukraine is the history of people, events, documents and files. The files have answers to many questions. The most important of which - why did a war begin again in Europe? Why is it so important for Russia to conquer Ukraine? Why are Ukrainians putting up such a powerful resistance? Historian Volodymyr Viatrovych, who declassified the secret archives of the Soviet special services from the Cheka to the KGB, talks about the history of Ukraine, the USSR and Eastern Europe from 1918 to 1991. The reader, is offered, along with various heroes and traitors, those who thought they were in control of events, and those who thought they had no power over them, to recreate the nearly century-old chess game between the Ukrainian liberation movement and the creators of the "prison of nations." Described in reports and recreated by a historian, this work looks at the cunning “special operations”, deadly moves, information wars and complex games among several players that are all an attempt to find an answer to the question: what creates our destiny - human will or circumstances?
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Humanities & Social Sciences2020Zero Point Ukraine
by Olena Stiazhkina
The Western understanding of what happened in Ukraine during World War II has been shaped by historical and ideological narratives created by the Kremlin. The Ukrainian version of the story has been dissolved in the concept of the “great victorious Russian people” and distorted by attempts to equate Ukrainian national army to German Nazis, while the occupation and colonisation of Ukraine by Russian Bolsheviks in the 1920s and 1930s has widely been ignored or artificially silenced. In her Four Essays on World War II, Olena Stiazhkina inscribes the Ukrainian history of the war into a wider European and world context. Amongst other aspects, she analyzes the mobilization measures on the eve of the war, thus questioning Soviet narratives. Scrutinising the social and political processes initiated by the Bolshevik leadership in the 1920s and 1930s, Stiazhkina concludes that mobilisation and militarisation were integral parts of Soviet power policy. The Soviet and contemporary Russian narratives about World War II have been used to justify the Kremlin’s policies towards democratic countries. Today, Russia remains deeply engaged in the falsification of the past, which underpins the claims of the so-called “Russian World” and the ongoing war against Ukraine. Olena Stiazhkina’s book promotes a new, historically adequate understanding of what happened in Ukraine before, during, and after World War II.
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The ArtsJanuary 2021The Ark Ukraine
by Yaryna Vynnytska
An exclusive gift edition on the cultural heritage of Ukraine with special features - lace cutting, golden foil embossing, blind embossing, textured varnish. This is a book of initiation, a journey through thousands of years of Ukrainian history and culture. The book became a visiting card of Ukraine, an official state symbol. The artbook 'The Ark Ukraine' comprises all cultural heritage of Ukraine under one cover: artifacts of traditional culture, masterpieces of professional art, symbols and archetypes, prominent historical and cultural figures - all that deserves the status of 'the Ukrainian brand'.
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Humanities & Social Sciences2021Behind the Scenes of the Empire: Essays on Cultural Relationships between Ukraine and Russia
by Vira Ageyeva
Much has already been written about Ukrainian-Russian relations in the context of Russian interests and priorities. Russia unceremoniously ennobled its history with other people's achievements while depriving Ukrainians of their past. From the Ukrainian's perspective, the story is completely different. For centuries Ukrainian literature has been involved in the anti-colonial discourse. From Kotlyarevsky, Kvitka-Osnovianenko, Kharkiv romantics to the era of modernism and eventually the emergence of contemporary Ukraine, it offered various models of identity, denying imperial claims and asserting its own cultural sufficiency. In this book, the authoritative literary critic Vira Ageyeva analyses the Ukrainian resistance to imperialism and the struggle of Ukraine for the preservation of it's collective memory through the prism of the cultural process.
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Humanities & Social Sciences2022The Moscow Factor: US Policy toward Sovereign Ukraine and the Kremlin
by Eugene M. Fishel
24 February 2022 was not the beginning of Russia's war on Ukraine. Back in 2014, Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine, bolstered a separatist conflict in the Donbas region, and attacked Ukraine with units of its regular army and special forces. In each instance of Russian aggression, the U.S. response has often been criticized as inadequate, insufficient, or hesitant. The Moscow Factor: U.S. Policy toward Sovereign Ukraine and the Kremlin is a unique study that examines four key Ukraine-related policy decisions across two Republican and two Democratic U.S. administrations. Author Eugene M. Fishel asks whether, how, and under what circumstances Washington has considered Ukraine’s status as a sovereign nation in its decision-making regarding relations with Moscow. This study situates the stance of the United States toward Ukraine in the broader context of international relations. It fills an important lacuna in existing scholarship and policy discourse by focusing on the complex trilateral—rather than simply bilateral—dynamics among the U.S., Ukraine, and Russia, in 1991–2016. This book brings together for the first time documentary evidence and declassified materials dealing with policy deliberation, retrospective articles authored by former policymakers, and formal memoirs by erstwhile senior officials. The study is also supplemented by open-ended interviews with former and returning officials.
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Humanities & Social Sciences2019Famine of 1946 - 1947 in Ukraine: Collective Memory
by Vasyl Marochko
The collection of materials of oral history and local history journalism is the first archeographic and memorial publication in Ukraine, which directly reproduces the causes, circumstances and socio-demographic consequences of the post-war famine of 1946-1947 in Ukraine. The collection includes an archeographic overview, scientific and analytical articles on the peculiarities of famines in Ukrainian villages and cities in the 1920s and 1940s, a memorial and biographical account of O.M. Veselova’s ascetic activity, thoughtful reflections by A.I. Bondarchuk, an eyewitness to the famine disaster, and a collection of memoirs and journalistic materials arranged according to the administrative and territorial division of Ukraine. This collection is an attempt to preserve and express Ukrainians’ collective memory of this tragic event. For historians, local historians, museum workers, and the people of good will.
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Humanities & Social Sciences2017Survival as Victory: Ukrainian Women in the Gulag
by Oksana Kis
Of the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian women were sentenced to the Gulag in the 1940s and 1950s, only half survived. In Survival as Victory, Oksana Kis has produced the first anthropological study of daily life in the Soviet forced labor camps as experienced by Ukrainian women prisoners. Based on the written memoirs, autobiographies, and oral histories of over 150 survivors, this book fills a lacuna in the scholarship regarding Ukrainian experience. Kis details the women’s resistance to the brutality of camp conditions not only through the preservation of customs and traditions from everyday home life, but also through the frequent elision of regional and confessional differences. Following the groundbreaking work of Anne Applebaum’s Gulag: A History (2003), this book is a must-read for anyone interested in gendered strategies of survival, accommodation, and resistance to the dehumanizing effects of the Gulag.
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Humanities & Social Sciences2019Historical Essays. Volume 2
by Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytskyi
The second volume of "Historical Essays" includes works on the history of modern Ukraine. They analyze the legacy of the most influential trends in Ukrainian political thought of the 20th century: conservative, national-communist, nationalist, and liberal. Key issues of the historiography of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921, the role of historical myths in Russian-Ukrainian relations during the USSR, discussions among the Ukrainian diaspora after the Second World War, and the evolution of the political consciousness of dissidents in post-Soviet Ukraine are highlighted.
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Humanities & Social SciencesOctober 2020Ukraine: wars, battles, personalities
by Yaroslav Trinchuk
The historical events and personalities, which left their marks on Ukraine history and which are described in this book, are considered from the point of view of modern sociological and historiosophical doctrines. The author steps aside from outdated and compromised historiographical clichés and mythologies, which were imposed on our nation for more than one century and hindered the development of Ukrainian historical science. The text describes in detail the motives of the actions of prominent figures of Ukrainian history, the course and purpose of wars and battles, well-known or little-known, as well as those about which Russian and Soviet historical science carefully kept silent. The author skillfully embodies the credo: "The greatest art (and happiness) of the historian is to cure the nation history from all the diseases with which its enemies have infected it. And don't get infected yourself."
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Biography & True Stories2016The Universe behind Barbed Wire: Memoirs and Reflections of a Dissident
by Myroslav Marynovych
The author of the book served 10 years in prison in a concentration camp and was in exile in Brezhnev times for participating in the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Group (UHG). It was the first legal, not underground, group of the Resistance Movement, which, acting for a long time, revealed to the whole world the situation with the human rights in Ukraine under the Soviet rule. Born in Galicia after the World War 2 and brought up in a Soviet school, the author shows in his memoirs the role of the Galician family in shaping the position of resistance to the totalitarian regime. He tells vigorously, interestingly and frankly about life in Kiev under the Soviets in the era of the Helsinki movement, about the activities of the UHG and its members, about unjust arrests, and Soviet crooked justice. He recounts in detail the life of political prisoners in a concentration camp, describes the circumstances of his exile in Kazakhstan. He pays great attention to the spiritual growth of a person, shares his reflections on dissidence and the nature of totalitarianism. And conclusively, he condemns the communist system.
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Decorative arts2016The Hope Chest. Ukrainian Treasures
by Yaryna Vynnytska, Yulia Tabenska
Exclusive deluxe edition on the traditional heritage of Ukraine with special features - die cutting, foil stamping, blind embossing, textured varnish. We went across all the regions of Ukraine in quest of folk treasures and came up with a list of Ukrainian must-haves – the things that should belong in hearts and homes of every Ukrainian. We carefully packed them in our Hope Chest as if it were a cultural Ark preserving its treasures from the outpour of globalizing floods — so that they may be returned to where they belong. These are not simple belongings but powerful totems. In having them in your home, goodness is instilled — for in stillness, you find yourself.
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Humanities & Social Sciences2021Taste of the Soviet Union: Food and Eaters in the Art of Life and the Art of Cinema (mid-1960s - mid-1980s)
by Olena Stiazhkina
This book is about Soviet people - women, men, children - who ate at home, at work, on the road, in kindergartens and schools, in the system of the Soviet canteens. It describes those who fought for their food in long queues to the empty shops, at collective farm markets, gathered it in their own gardens, obtained it through bribes and barter exchanges and stole it at workplaces. It is about those who created the food surpluses in the system of the shadow economy and about those who refused food as a way of rebellion against the system and about those who managed to preserve national cuisine despite its deliberate extermination by the Bolsheviks and calling national dishes "simple nationalism." Food culture is considered not only as a sign of the late Soviet consumer revolution, but also as one of the powerful mechanisms of social engineering and (self) coercion. The real world of Soviet eaters is analysed together with the artistic world where filmmakers created and broadcasted the images of Soviet food, as an object representing repressive society in which taste was as problematic and almost unattainable as food and freedom associated with taste and choice.
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Biography & True Stories2019The triumph of men
A book about Ukrainians who were prisoners of Nazi and Soviet concentration camps
by Volodymyr Viatrovych
People from Ukraine were in many concentration camps of Nazi Germany. In the Soviet concentration camps, the regime exterminated the Ukrainian nation. But none of them achieved the goal. A book about the power of will, faith and love. About the victory of hope. About freedom in hearts.
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Children's & young adult: general non-fiction2020Union of Soviet Things
by Petro Yatsenko
The soviet realia are not entirely clear to modern adolescents. Childhood in the late Soviet Union was not like it is now. Back in those days, everything was different and even scary to some point: a premonition of the nuclear war, propaganda, shortages, and confusing household items. The main characters of the book, a teenage Matvii and his father Petro, go to Lviv to visit their grandmother. There are still heaps of Soviet things in her ceiling cabinet and they are good at telling stories. Paretns are good at this as well, if you ask them well. The book gives a reason to talk about feelings of nostalgia and values.
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Historical fiction2021Bat-Ami by Oleksiy Nikitin
by Oleksii Nikitin
Ilya Goldinov, Ukrainian Jew boxing champion, had won the second place in the Soviet All-Union championship when World War II started. After Germany invaded Ukraine, he joins the guerrillas in the forests behind the front line. Only by a lucky coincidence does he survive and he joins the regular army as a soldier before being sent by the secret service on a life-threatening mission to occupied Kyiv. This family saga, full of inconceivable twists and turns, is told in such a thrilling, detailed and touching way that it captivates its readers after only a few pages. Bat-Ami is not a documentary novel, but its story is inspired in part by the author‘s family recollections and is based on the documentary files relating to 1941-42 secret service operations from the archives of the Ukrainian Secret Service released only in 2011, as well as from other Ukrainian archives, in particular the Museum of the Dynamo Kyiv Sports Club and Yad Vashem organisation. The fight of Ukrainian patriots for independence of Ukraine from Russia, the USSR, and liberation from German occupiers captures your attention and can become the vital lesson for present-day Ukraine.
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Biography & True Stories2017Open My Lips, O Lord
by Yosyf Zisels, Izabella Khruslinska
In conversations with the famous Polish journalist Iza Khruslinska, Yosyf Zisels talks about his life path, the struggle for human rights in the USSR, the restoration of Jewish communities in independent Ukraine, Ukrainian-Jewish relations, problems of recent history and modern politics.
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Humanities & Social Sciences1996An Essay on the History of Ukraine. Formation of the Modern Nation in the 19th-20th centuries
by Yaroslav Hrytsak
The first edition of this book was published in 1996. It can also be called the first popular history of Ukraine, which, according to the author, can be "read without bromine" and which affirms the fundamental normality of Ukrainian history. The new edition corrects some inaccuracies and errors of previous editions, as well as adds new sections, including a section on the last two decades of independent Ukraine, up to the time of the 2013-2014 revolution, the war with Russia and the election weeks of 2019.
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Humanities & Social Sciences2018Conversations about Ukraine
by Yaroslav Hrytsak, Izabella Khruslinska
This is the third book in a series of conversations between Iza Khruslinska and Ukrainian intellectuals. The first two books were with Oksana Zabuzhko and Yosyf Zisels. The one with Yaroslav Hrytsak, although, is chronologically the first book. It was first published in Polish language in 2009. The main topic of the conversation with Yaroslav Hrytsak is the suitability of history for understanding what is going on in Ukraine in recent decades. Special emphasis is placed on Ukraine's relations with its historical neighbors – Poles and Russians, as well as Ukrainian-Jewish relations. But first of all, it is about the historical dimension of the current problems and challenges that Ukraine is facing - and to what extent knowledge of history makes it possible to understand future development scenarios. Since the Polish edition was published almost ten years ago, many things in this book have been rethought and rewritten, in particular, a new chapter has appeared on the development of events over the most recent decade.
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Travel & Transport2021UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Ukraine
by Roman Malenkov
The history of Ukraine is turbulent and rich, and the nature is truly unique, so it is not surprising that there are many attractive and interesting tourist sites. But which ones are worth seeing first? According to a number of definitive criteria, UNESCO has identified 7 main natural and cultural sites of Ukraine and included them in the World Heritage List. Moreover, there is also a list of sites considered for nomination in the World Heritage Sites List,which is called the UNESCO Tentative List; in Ukraine there are 17 more such sites. The guidebook by Roman Malenkov, a traveller and founder of the local history website "Ukraine Incognita", will tell about them all.
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Humanities & Social Sciences2013Painted history of Ukraine
by Kapranov Brothers
It's a well-known short narration of the history of Ukraine starting from archaeological cultures going all the way to the declaration of independence in 1991, accompanied by comics, maps and portraits of prominent figures.
