BRUSSELS, September 24 /ITAR-TASS/. An investigative book “Neonazis & Euromaidan: From Democracy to Dictatorship” by Stanislav Byshok and Alexey Kochetkov was presented at the European Parliament’s headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday.

The book tells about the bloody events in Kiev in the winter of 2013-2014 that led to an armed state coup and change of power in Ukraine last February. The European deputies also saw a documentary based on the book.

One of its authors, Stanislav Byshok, is a political analyst for the CIS-EMO international organization, which monitors elections. He presented the book to participants in the round table meeting “Political Extremism in Countries of the former USSR: a New Challenge to the European Union” that had been organized by Tatyana Zhdanok, a European Parliament deputy from Latvia.

“Unilateral and biased coverage by Western media of the events in Ukraine this year is depriving Western politicians of their clear vision and understanding that not only pro-European but rather extreme radical forces, mainly extremist movements and organizations that were a striking force in the coup d’йtat in Kiev, are standing behind the Ukrainian chaos,” Tatyana Zhdanov said in an interview with ITAR-TASS.

"We are often being asked why the subtitle says “from democracy to dictatorship” and if we consider the regime/of former Ukrainian President Viktor/ Yanukovich to be democratic. But this is not the case. We describe how the initial popular protest that started under democratic slogans was usurped and completely monopolized by neo-Nazis who used the Maidan victory to their own advantage,” Stanislav Byshok said.

He added that the book was an attempt to trace how instead of uniting the Ukrainian nation, Ukrainian nationalism split the country and plunged it into chaos.

The book, according to Byshok, contains many quotes both by people who have risen to power in today’s Ukraine and by their ideological predecessors; the translation of huge fragments of their political platforms and facts about their activities taken from major information resources.

The book describes the development of Ukraine’s nationalist groups since 1991 until present day. It focuses on the history of the parliamentary right-wing radical Svoboda party and the non-parliamentary Right Sector movement. The authors study the ideology, psychology and methods of political struggle of these structures.

“Any revolution uses the popular ideas and political sentiments that dominate the society as its positive programme. The left-wing ideologies were mainstream in the Russian Empire in 1917; radical Islamism was popular in Arab countries during the Arab spring of 2012 whereas radical nationalism turned mainstream in Ukraine in 2013-2014. It absorbed Euromaidan’s initially pro-democratic and pro-European agenda,” the book’s authors said.