Available now: "VZ: Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Making of a Nation" by Dmitry Bykov & John Freedman
Our "Zelenskyy book" is finally here!
Although the time between agreeing to publish VZ: Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Making of a Nation and today, its official pub date, has been relatively short in terms of a typical publishing schedule, I feel like we’ve been waiting for ages for this to finally drop.
When we signed this on last year, the hope was that it would come out after the war with Russia had ended. That Putin’s advances would’ve been rebuffed, that America and Europe would’ve taken the hard line to protect Ukraine’s people and its sovereignty. Unfortunately, that is not the case and instead we’ve been subject to a despicable display of Zelenskyy being bullied by Trump and J. D. Vance in the White House, statements about how “Crimea will stay with Russia,” and, most recently, Trump throwing his hands up about brokering a ceasefire with a pretty unhinged quote.1
To be clear, VZ covers a lot more than just the current conflict with Putin’s Russia. It’s a book about Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s life and how he was elected president of Ukraine. It’s about the shift in what people expect from a politician, and about the challenges that Zelenskyy faced early in his presidency, as evidenced by low approval ratings and various socio-political struggles.
But it does also hone in on the transformation that happened to Zelenskyy as a leader when Russia invaded. (And yes, Trump, Russia did invade no matter how many sound bytes you float.) In Bykov’s book, this moment fundamentally altered the narrative and redefined Ukraine as a nation. Even absent the ongoing conflict, this would be a powerful book about the state of global politics, but coming out at this moment in time, it’s a testament to the strength of Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people, and one of the best sources for more fully understanding contemporary Ukrainian history and the political shape of things before and after the start of this conflict.
Bykov—who currently resides in Rochester, NY as the University of Rochester’s Scholar in Exile—is an extremely prolific writer known as a poet, a biographer (he’s written books on Maxim Gorky and Boris Pasternak, among others), novelist, journalist, and dissident. It’s that final category that not only landed him in Rochester, but nearly got him killed.
In April 2019, Bykov fainted during a flight to Ufa and was hospitalized immediately upon arrival. Various reports came out about his health, but based on reporting by the investigative journalist group Bellingcat, it appears that Bykov was poisoned by the same FSB operatives who poisoned Alexei Navalny a year later. Given that Bykov had refused personal invitations from Putin to meet on at least two occasions, and was an outspoken critic of Putin’s regime, this isn’t terribly surprising. Nor is the fact that his books are officially banned in Russia now.
Hopefully the excerpt below will convince you to take a chance on the book, but, also, if you’re like me, knowing that the existence of this book probably irritates both Trump and Putin is cause enough to get it . . .
Anyway, here’s an excerpt from the section entitled “The Narrator King,” which shows off Bykov’s approach to his subject, and his inclusion of asides from his Russian editor, which adds an interesting dimension to the book:
Nassim Taleb (the author of The Black Swan) earned money and fame with a simple, yet precise notion, from which all his subsequent books followed. The future is always a) absolutely logical when viewed in hindsight, and b) equally unpredictable.
Zelenskyy’s election as president of Ukraine by a landslide would have seemed incredible just a year earlier, although in retrospect it was absolutely logical, and reflected two closely related trends that the world has not yet comprehended or even really noticed. But the main result of what is happening now in Ukraine is precisely the result of these two trends rising to history’s surface.
First: the world is tired of systemic politicians, bureaucrats, the deep state, hereditary career diplomats, and professional economists. They can exist somewhere in the depths, as befits a deep state, carrying out their activities, some of which may even save lives, but it’s the specialists who should know about them, not the voting citizens. Second: the head of state becomes a showman, actor, and writer—one who creates narratives. A nation is not interested in following real politics, or to put it more precisely, politics descend to the regional level, where the citizens themselves decide on the elimination of a monument or the construction of a bridge. Meanwhile, the so-called big politics is now formed by those whose professional duty is composing plots.
As paradoxical as it may be, Donald Trump’s 2016 victory in the United States was dictated by the same two factors. He was not only not a systemic politician, he was anti-systemic. He was not merely a freak, but was a professional showman whose only truly successful activity was running a TV show. Trump and Zelenskyy demonstrate, of course, a different level of showmanship—Zelenskyy is a much more gifted actor. But I do not advise overestimating his education. Furthermore, Trump’s ability to learn is not bad, only his conceit is greater. This is, first of all, age-related, and secondly—it is typically American.
Here we must introduce the concept of the narrator king, since this is a new type of leader present not only in Ukraine.
RUSSIAN EDITOR’S NOTE IN THE MARGINS:
Actually, the “narrator king” (as you describe him) is a constitutional king. A king who represents. And you know: the first narrative king was . . . Wilhelm II. He was, basically, a narrator. Tirpitz built the fleet, Ludendorff ran the war, and Rathenau oversaw the economy. As for Wilhelm, he handed out memes. When he repealed the exceptional law against the Social Democrats, he said publicly, “I want to be the king of the poor” (it sounds ambiguous, but everyone understood the emperor correctly). War began and again there was a meme: “I presently do not know parties, I know only Germans!” You have touched on a very fruitful topic.
As always, the United States was first with Trump, but the first Trump turned out to be a failure (although we shall see who laughs last when the new U.S. President is inaugurated in January 2025). We will call the narrator king a ruler who, leaving professionals to deal with economics, industry, and military affairs, is himself engaged in what gives society its Plot of Existence.
This key concept was introduced not by a political scientist, but by a writer. “The plot of existence is more important than any economic laws, or rather, economic laws themselves can work only when a person has a plot of existence. If depositors stop believing in the plot of the bank’s existence, the bank bursts. If the citizens of a country do not sense the state’s plot of existence, it will fall apart. Give me a plot! Give me a plot!”
This is from a 1997 story by Fazil Iskander. And when I asked the author about this plot—thank God I had such an opportunity—he replied: “My dear man! Had I sensed even a shadow of a plot for Russia, I would be doing nothing else right now.” But there was no such plot, and when it appeared, it was the plot of a caveman’s revenge, of war. One must possess a minimal literary ability in order to invent a plot.
Undoubtedly, the narrator king rules. Although he rules not by gross material things, but by the moods and hopes of his subjects. He puts them in the space of an artistic text, a series, a television show, and does not tend to such boring things as economics. The narrator is fundamentally different from the ideologist. The ideologist creates a system of control and demands—the narrator motivates citizens with the aid of what is INTERESTING, not useful or moral. Yakov Golosovker, the philosopher, mythologist, and author of a profound work on the phenomenon of what is interesting, postulates that the interesting lies a) outside of ethics, and b) outside of aesthetics. We label as aesthetic, i.e., beautiful, rather boring things like Proust or Shelley (there is no disputing taste; Golosovker gives some examples, you can pick others). Everything that is right and proper is ethical, but that is of little interest. Robert Sheckley confessed to me in an interview (I also talked to Sheckley!) that he would certainly go see a public execution. Is it good? No. But it’s interesting!
Ideology always depends on ethics and often on aesthetics. The narrator has nothing to do with either. He makes sure the population is entertained and engaged. This is the main task of the authorities in the postmodern era: modernity tries to put everything under the control of reason. Postmodernity, on the contrary, distracts from it. In postmodernism, the main thing is that a person never gets bored. And here is another important consideration expressed by Konstantin Ernst, the CEO of Russian TV’s Channel One, once again in conversation with the interesting author of these interesting lines: In modernism one wrote in words or colors, in postmodernism one writes in crowds. In modernism, art took to the streets; in postmodernism, it directly took on the organization of life, politics, and everyday life. Virtual reality replaced the tangible. Mankind has moved into the TV set. The main projects of writers of the postmodern era are the creation of narratives for readers. Zelenskyy achieved everything he wanted with his series, and then he wanted to take on the nation. I suspect this was not so much love of power, as it was a normal expansion of production.
It is another question that, by electing Zelenskyy, Ukrainians demonstrated a downright prescient intuition: any systemic politician in his place would soberly assess the prospects, estimate the chances of survival, and take advantage of the opportunities offered by the West. There is no doubt that if Zelenskyy had fled, it would not only have put an end to his political career, it would also, to a huge degree of probability, have undermined the Ukrainians’ faith in victory. An actor cares most about how he looks. Running away would have looked bad.
Moreover, an actor is the only one who truly believes the words he speaks. Without this faith, the actor’s performance will be unconvincing. It seems that this is the meaning the prophet puts in the words, “I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me.” A professional actor possesses more opportunities to believe than a theologian. Similarly, the chances of an actor reaching the top in any particular profession are higher than those of a true professional. Peter Ustinov said in an interview with the very same author of these lines: “I don’t know Russian words well, but I imitate the Russian intonation so well that I give the impression of a Russian aristocrat, no matter what nonsense I may utter.” Zelenskyy’s facial expressions, his intonations, his T-shirt all told Ukrainians more than any of his speeches. And the nation believed it had acquired a heroic president, while Europe called him “Churchill in a T-shirt.”
This is not the case of Ronald Reagan (who, when he was elected president, had not made a film in thirty years), and even less like the Arnold Schwarzenegger variant, who never claimed to have great acting talent. This is a fundamentally new emphasis in world politics: as everything in the world has diversified in recent years, so politics has increasingly divided into substantive and narrative aspects. The content is handled by the military (in whose affairs Zelenskyy does not interfere) and economists (Zelenskyy actually did not have an economic program, as discussed below). The president becomes a character who is interesting to watch, someone you want to look at, someone who can provide the voter a fascinating narrative. As such, the two main figures in Ukraine were the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces Vitalii Zaluzhnyi, and the head of the presidential administration Andrii Yermak, while the two faces of Ukrainian politics were the professional actor and showman Zelenskyy, and the professional PR man Oleksii Arestovych (he has many other professions, but this one turned out to be the most trendy; it was not by chance that a spa salon was named after him, a place where they professionally relieve stress. He was not offended at all. On the contrary, he was flattered).
I am convinced that world politics will follow this path precisely: talented artists or fascinating storytellers will become presidents, and managers will implement policy. The nation should care not about pragmatic matters, nor about “arguing over taxes,” as Pushkin put it, but rather about making life interesting. Zelenskyy is an indication of the brilliant prospects of the creative intelligentsia in the field of politics: the most successful leaders of the twenty-first century will be recruited from this setting.
Translated by John Freedman, 2025
VZ: Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Making of a Nation by Dmitry Bykov & John Freedman is available now from Open Letter Books, and better bookstores everywhere.
“I said, ‘President, maybe you're going to have to keep fighting and suffering a lot,’ because both sides are suffering before you pull them apart, before they're able to be pulled apart,” Trump said. "You see in hockey, you see it in sports. The referees let them go for a couple of seconds, let them go for a little while before you pull them apart." (NPR)