Preorder Now: "VZ: Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Making of a Nation" by Dmitry Bykov
A timely and important work of nonfiction from Open Letter
For reasons unfortunate and more unfortunate, Ukraine has been in the news a lot this past week. The three-year anniversary since Russia invaded just passed; meanwhile, Trump is trumpeting his own set of alternative facts about the war. It’s all sad, it all sucks.
Although this won’t change the material condition for Ukrainians, we are bringing out a book this June that will be of interest to anyone wanting more insight into Ukraine’s recent history: VZ: Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Making of a Nation by Dmitry Bykov, and brilliantly translated by John Freedman.
Dmitry Bykov—an incredibly prolific writer across many genres, who survived being poisoned in 2019 for his opposition to Putin, and who is currently a professor in exile at the University of Rochester—uses the incredible access he had to Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian figures to look at the arc of Zelenskyy’s life, difficult start to his presidency, and his transformation into a strong wartime leader. The final chapter of this book was written this past December, so this is about as up to date as a book of this magnitude could possibly be.
We won’t have finished copies of this for a bit (it’s being proofread as I type), but if you preorder now and use the code VZ at checkout, you’ll get 25% off.1
And to entice you with a peek into what this unique blend of journalism, cultural criticism, and philosophical musings is like, below is an excerpt about Zelenskyy’s characteristics.
Now let’s answer a fundamental question: can Zelenskyy be called the nation’s leader?
The question has baffled most of my Ukrainian interlocutors, and this indicates that it hits a nerve. For Zelenskyy is a new type of leader: not one who leads the nation somewhere, but one who embodies its main features.
This does not mean that a leader in the sense of “one who leads” has finally become an anachronism, no. That will not happen soon. But Ukraine is not a country that can be led anywhere. Perhaps, in some sense, this is a minus. It is difficult to unite it in peacetime, and it is difficult for it to achieve consensus even on basic values. In general, Russia has provided it a unique opportunity to unite in hatred. No matter what the latest history textbook tells us, Ukraine was never anti-Russian, even after the Maidan of 2014. But it has become totally anti-Russian thanks to Vladimir Putin, who always achieves the opposite of what he strives for, no matter what he undertakes. He wanted to see Russia as the most influential force in the world—and he turned it into a rogue state; he wanted to defeat Chechnya—and subjugated Russia to it; he wanted to make Ukraine totally dependent—but made it more independent of everything Russian than Stepan Bandera—no lover of the northern neighbor—could ever have dreamed.
Ukraine, as we have known it since 1991, is proud of its non-authoritarianism, its town-hall-like Maidans, its networked way of governance (corruption is one of the forms of this popular self-government). Zelenskyy is not leading the country to victory—he corresponds to its desire not to submit, he serves as an expression and symbol of this desire. The peculiarity of the narrator king is not in his formulating a strategy and pointing out paths of progress. His main role is to serve for the whole world as the embodiment of the qualities that the nation most values today. The question of what these features are in the case of Zelenskyy allows us to answer the question of what Ukraine is in general: Zelenskyy, in a very timely fashion, created the image of the modern Ukrainian for the whole world, and he has not compromised that in any way yet. And since Ukraine today is the spiritual leader of the Slavs, these features are very important for world history.
There are many, and each individual can emphasize their own. But I would prefer to focus on five.
1. Arestovych has said that Zelenskyy’s main quality is obstinacy. And this trait, which arises in many Ukrainian anecdotes, is truly part of his makeup. Zelenskyy is extremely proud and has always been exceptionally successful. As such it is easier for him to disappear than to retreat, it is easier for him to die than to lose. This vanity is not so much an actor’s trait as it is something becoming of a producer. The actor is expected to have a flexible psyche, but Zelenskyy has been rather harsh and rigid in recent years. He has the fanatical tenacity of a provincial conquering the capital, and the pride of the leader of a country that is accustomed to assuming secondary roles in geopolitical affairs. Today, the world talks about Ukraine more than about America and China, because ultimately Ukraine holds the key to whether the world survives or perishes. Some do not admit this, but, honestly, it doesn’t take great intelligence to see that.
2. Self-irony. For all the pathos that is inevitable in the present existential situation, Ukraine is perfectly capable of seeing itself from afar, of being aware of its shortcomings and vices. No one mocked its national complexes and self-delusions more persistently than Block 95, no one exposed Ukrainian folly more vividly than Zelenskyy. Obliged constantly to reinforce everyone’s belief in victory, he never gets on a high horse. Even now he is still ready to mock himself and his surroundings, although the situation is clearly not conducive to humor. His sense of humor has turned black, and his cheerfulness has departed him. But, still, rather than seeing the tragedy of the war, Zelenskyy sees its absurdity as well. This is probably a key source of his mental health.
3. Artistry. Ukraine possesses a rich folkloric heritage. Nothing is done in Ukraine without a song, which, once again, has become the butt of countless jokes. The hero in this folkloric world is almost always a performer, a jokester, a storyteller. In Russia one usually sings criminal chansons or songs from popular Soviet films at holiday gatherings. In Ukraine folk songs ranging from the lyrical to the salacious remain a living element of any feast. The Ukrainian character presupposes an artistic reinterpretation of any situation, and this is due partly to another national trait—ponty, which we may render as buffoonery. I do not know how to translate this into foreign languages, there is no such word anywhere else. Self-presentation? But that is not so expressive. Bombast? This is true, but it’s too negative. I think maybe it is a kind of aestheticization of life, which a priori assumes narcissism as a characteristic. But with such self-irony, “force is more expensive than money,” and victory is certainly more important than life.
4. Independence. The love for exercising free will is the most stable trait in self-characterizations of Ukrainians. Zelenskyy does not tolerate being controlled. He is increasingly becoming his own director, his own producer, and his own image adviser (although not inmatters of economics or military issues, which is important). Highly self-critical since he was a child, Zelenskyy has never been particularly tolerant of third-party criticism. And in light of the Soviet tradition of self-abuse and self-oppression, I tend to appreciate that. Mayakovsky formulated it wonderfully in a letter to a woman he loved: “I can do anything with pleasure if it’s of my own free will, even if I burn my hand, but under compulsion, even if it’s carrying some kind of purchase, the smallest chain of beads makes me feel sick.” Ukraine can do whatever it pleases with itself, it can endure hunger and mortal danger on its own whim. But the slightest discomfort suffered at someone else’s will seriously offends any Ukrainian, especially now, when first the Maidan, then Crimea and Donbas, and then the full-scale war escalated this sense of independence to intolerance. And intolerance, to tell the truth, is much better than tolerance of anything and everything.
5. Quick wits. Ukrainians are improvisational. They don’t like the slow-witted, and, themselves, are quick to act—you can’t say about them that they take a long time to harness the horse, but drive fast. I suspect that slow-mindedness is somehow connected with prudence and stinginess—traits that are especially often attributed to Ukrainians. “What are you eating, good sir?”—“Bacon fat.” “Oh, no you won’t!”—“And why is that?” “Because I’ll give you none.” I have observed in my experience that Ukrainians part with money almost too easily, it’s an understanding they have of money’s irrational nature: money comes not to those who are economical and thrifty, but to those who love it. Again, the folklore is especially frank here: “Money is not the main thing: profit is.” “Pennilessness precedes profit, wealth precedes death.” “Cling to a penny, lose two.” You can also find examples of the opposite—that God loves faith, and money loves to be counted—but the prevailing attitude toward property is flippant, and almost disdainful, again because putting up a good show is more valued. And you can understand the attitude of Ukrainians living a life in debt, for example, their notorious ingratitude when it comes to Western financial and weapons aid: “If you don’t want to be associated with someone, lend them money.” Zelenskyy has tried all his life never to borrow. Arestovych says that the leitmotif of what the Ukrainian philosopher Andrii Baumeister was writing in the early period of the full-scale invasion has been repeated by many Ukrainian bloggers: dependence on Europe is shameful, it must be overcome as soon as possible. Although, hand on heart, how could Ukraine, whose economy has been catastrophically undermined by the war, maintain independence? Here you can only choose what your dependence will be—to borrow ammunition, or to flee to European territory. Zelenskyy here made the perfect choice.
It goes without saying that Zelenskyy has his wits about him. He confides in no one. You can hear that from his friends (who accept this trait of his), his colleagues in the studio, and from politicians. I would go even further: He is more likely to be frank in his public speaking—which is acting, of course—than in a one-on-one conversation. Perhaps there is a special kind of spiritual chastity in this aversion to confessions, something natural in an actor: His life is already too public and therefore he demands that his inner world be left untouched. Zelenskyy can be outspoken in his televised speeches, he does not always hold back his emotions when speaking to the nation. But in one-on-one interviews, and even more so in friendly communication, he says precisely as much as he wants to say, and does not tolerate mental lack of discipline at all. Everyone knows he does not tolerate screaming: Screaming causes him pure physical pain.
The director of Servant of the People, Kiriushchenko, recalls once breaking down on set in a tense moment, threatening to beat up an actor for arriving late on the set. Zelenskyy literally hung over him, demanding that he calm down.
No, he doesn’t like people waving their arms about. It is said that the war has changed him. And that is just another bit of proof that war can only improve a president’s rating, although one suspects Zelenskyy would willingly give his life if only the war and this rating would not be part of his biography.
As is well known, the Yandex portal is not merely Russian, but has long been in Putin’s back pocket, which is quite obvious from the triumphant newsfeed it offers. Google is American, and as such courts the possibility of being banned in Russia. The first thing Yandex tells you is that Ukrainians are traitors, greedy, and nationalists by nature, while Google will tell you that independence, irony, and entrepreneurship dominate the Ukrainian character.
Strictly speaking, Zelenskyy is an ethnic Jew whose Jewish roots can be traced back five generations, but we are not talking about ethnic identity now. The President of Ukraine is, in a sense, the face of the nation, and in this sense it is most symbolic that Zelenskyy is not Ukrainian. Let’s venture to say that today Ukrainians are the world’s team, in about the same sense that the Spaniards were in 1936–1938 during the first armed struggle with fascism. Everyone who opposes the new incarnation of fascism put forth by Russia is fighting on the side of Ukraine—on the front lines, in diplomacy, in ideology—to the point that the ethnic Englishman Boris Johnson becomes an honorary citizen of Odesa, and soldiers from all over Europe go to Ukraine as volunteers (not to mention the international journalistic teams covering Ukraine’s life and struggles in all their details). In this sense, Ukrainians are an emerging nation, which, so far, willingly includes everyone prepared to prove their friendliness and usefulness to Ukraine. Today this country is under attack, and tomorrow it will be an ideal place to invest money, an economy that will be restored literally by the whole world. I dare to hope that this social and psychological rehabilitation that will restore Ukrainian enterprises will be provided for Russians too.
Again: 25% off all preorders (U.S.-only) of VZ: Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Making of a Nation if you use the code “VZ” at checkout.
This applies to orders within the U.S. only and expires at 3 a.m. EST on April 1st.