VZ: Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Making of a Nation

by Dmitry Bykov, John Freedman (Translator)

How does a comedian become the face of a nation's fight for survival? In VZ, celebrated Russian author Dmitry Bykov unpacks the extraordinary rise of Vladimir Zelenskyi—from a TV star to a wartime leader defying a global superpower. With wit and razor-sharp insight, Bykov dives into the moments that shaped Zelenskyi's improbable journey, revealing the man behind the headlines.


This is not just a story of one leader but of a nation on the edge, and the power of resilience in the face of overwhelming odds. Bykov offers a fresh, compelling take on Zelenskyi’s leadership, Ukraine’s struggle for sovereignty, and what it truly means to fight for democracy in the modern world.



For anyone eager to understand the making of a modern hero and the fierce will of a nation under siege, VZ is essential reading.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction

520 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 2023

About the author

Dmitry Bykov (Russian: Дмитрий Быков) is a Russian writer, poet, literary critic and journalist. He is also known as biographer of Boris Pasternak, Bulat Okudzhava and Maxim Gorky.

Reviews

[VBV · Rating 5 out of 5]

"VZ" gives an literature interpretation to the events that are shaking the world since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In other words, author proposes a picture of the narrative according to which the modern history is developing, at almost theological perspective. This is an extremely reassuring book for a modern reader, as it is shown how seemingly unsutable and unqualified people that did not forget the basic desency end up being the only ones capable of actually making a difference in a world of morally grey certified professionals. Book like that gives a feeling that the world as a whole is being taken care of by an Absolute (to quote the author), which carefully assigns actors to the suitable roles.

Many thanks to Dmitry Bykov for another magnificent work.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

So first off: Dmitry Bykov is a Russian writing about Ukraine, which I was initially highly skeptical of as someone with Ukrainian heritage. Still, I chose this particular biography entirely because of publisher Open Letter Press, where I interned in college (the University of Rochester, where Bykov is currently a visiting professor). Bykov is in fact something of a persona non grata back in his homeland. The feeling is mutual, however, as Bykov makes his fury and frustration with Russia quite explicit, even devoting an entire chapter to his countrymen's historic tradition of shitting everywhere they occupy. Because all the raping just isn't bad enough, apparently.

In fact, one gets the impression that this project was basically Bykov trying to process this break with his native culture and possible sense of collective guilt for its current atrocities. The first half is standard biographical fare, outlining Zelenskyy's background and road to the presidency, together with relevant political and recent historical context. But by Bykov's own admission, everything we know about Zelenskyy can be told in about an hour. The real meat of this narrative is in the symbolism of a comic actor thrust into the ultimate mystery play: the proverbial clash between the forces of good and evil. "We are at present at a duel between the devil and a jester," Bykov says bluntly (p. 392). He sort of spirals from there into more an extended essay on historiography as mythmaking and the role of theological interpretation in a world that favors the secular and materialist. It actually ended up being way more interesting than what had theretofore been mostly a dry march of facts. We then end with a letter from an anonymous friend who characterizes the book as a new genre combining biography with creative imagination to form a kind of scheme that describes reality from within, like enacting The Odyssey on stage in-universe before Odysseus had even returned to Ithaca. To me it feels like we're drifting into postmodern hyperreality, where such distinctions between interpretation and the world as experienced through the senses destabilize entirely.

But this is all of course potentially quite problematic, as we risk losing sight of the very visceral human tragedy behind all this philosophizing. It's a fine line, but Bykov walks it. On the destruction of Mariupol:

Humanity has already decided how to talk about such things: prose doesn't work, fiction is offensive. The Soviet-Belarusian writer Ales Adamovich once suggested that what is needed is not prose, but super-prose, not writers' "speculation-imagination-condensation-standardization," but the voices of surviving witnesses, their documentary recordings. Nothing else will work. But here's a terrible paradox: these artless eyewitness stories don't work either, precisely because of their bare simplicity. A person who has experienced horror is, as it were, paralyzed, frozen. He observes without comprehending, and the result is a briefing rather than a narration. It might terrify you but it does not force you to imagine and experience it all as it was. Apparently, the only way to talk about war is to not be in a war. War destroys the ability to experience and empathize. One grows accustomed to it, it wears you thin. Otherwise, no one would survive. (p. 304)

It's all storytelling, really: not because it is "all made up" but because narrative is how we make sense of trauma, whether it's surviving invasion and genocide or coming to terms with your own people doing such things. And in an age of Trump and global fascism, lord knows the horror is coming for us all.

[Vlad Gorski · Rating 2 out of 5]

А мог бы и полоснуть...

Я вспомнил, зачем взялся за эту книгу - меня впечатлила опубликованная на сайте «Новой газеты» ознакомительная глава «Актер». В ней Быков очень удачно сравнил Голобородько-Зеленского и украинский (и русский) национальный характер.   Однако, после прочтения всего «Портрета» кажется, что это был вовсе не ознакомительный фрагмент, а единственный. То есть лучший в книге, самый запальный и экспортный.

Вся книга, на минуту, имеет более 600 страниц, и, судя по всему, склеена из эссе, написанных в разное время, и на фоне разной обстановки на фронте. В результате, возникает ощущение «качельной” эмоциональной неровности. В начальных главах Зеленский объявляется «победившим в войне"; в конечных признается провальность активной обороны, усталость от войны и пр. В предисловии современность называется «эпохой Зеленского» - и это в августе 2023, после провала украинского контрнаступления. Когда представляешь себе, какой восторг фигура Зели вызывала у Быкова в первые месяцы войны, делается слегка неловко. Это мелочи, конечно, но Быков в 600 страниц биографии украинского президента умудрился запихнуть еще 40 страниц об Арестовиче, фельетон о холодце, автоцитату из собственного романа, и много еще чего. Вот это неловко.

Кажется, что Быкову нравится в Украине вообще всё; так автор романа A passage to India британец Форстер все прощал индусам. Вещи, от которых нормальных украинцев тошнит, вызывают у Дмитрия Львовича московское  колониальное умиление. Украинская коррупция - это изнанка народной смекалки; днепровская мафия - сплошь интеллектуалы и романтики; балаганность украинской политики есть ее лучшая черта.

Короче говоря, энигма Владимира Зеленского Быковым не раскрыта. Примечательно, что к энигме этой Быков подошел, что называется, within a hair's breadth - в главе о КВНе как социальном трамплине. Зеленский родом из семьи инженеров, учился на юриста, играл в КВН - но не стал никем из этого списка, а стал президентом Украины. Это роднит его чем-то с российскими олигархами, устраивавшими в советское время дискотеки по комсомольской линии, а позже скупивишими всю советскую т.н. «экономику». Возможно, разгадка зеленского феномена именно в этом - в его невероятном импровизацинном даровании, неважно в политике, актерстве или шоубизнесе. VZ - один из наших absolute beginners, появившихся когда на руинах совка пришлось начинать жизнь с нуля. В этом Зеленский тождественен, в перувую очередь, олигархату; но также и народу, и стране и всей постсоветской истории вообще.

Чего не скажешь о Дмитрии Быкове. Книга читается запоем, но в итоге не производит цельного впечатления, а если и производит, то совсем не о Зеленском. Быкову не нравится украинский национализм, зато нравится Украина как страна некоего нового проекта. Можно только догадываться, что это за проект, но массив аллюзий к советской культуре намекают на неспособность автора смириться с беловежской катастрофой. Возможно, быковский (очень доброжелательный) интерес к Украине имеет ту же природу, что и (куда более злокачественное по духу) программатическое высказывание на эту тему Иосифа Бродского, во время предыдущего русско-украинского развода. Бродский понял, что независимость Украины неизбывно приводит к провинциализации русской культуры, трегером которой он являлся. Судя по всему, Быков не может примириться с этим спустя 30 лет после советского краха. Зато книга неплохая. Ну хоть так, как говорится, спасибо что живой.

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: How does a comedian become the face of a nation's fight for survival?

In VZ, celebrated Russian author Dmitry Bykov unpacks the extraordinary rise of Vladimir Zelenskyi—from a TV star to a wartime leader defying a global superpower. With wit and razor-sharp insight, Bykov dives into the moments that shaped Zelenskyi's improbable journey, revealing the man behind the headlines.

This is not just a story of one leader but of a nation on the edge, and the power of resilience in the face of overwhelming odds. Bykov offers a fresh, compelling take on Zelenskyi’s leadership, Ukraine’s struggle for sovereignty, and what it truly means to fight for democracy in the modern world.

For anyone eager to understand the making of a modern hero and the fierce will of a nation under siege, VZ is essential reading.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Ukraine's president, a former performer who took on a mantle of identity formation for the ancient land of Ukraine, gets a hagiography. Bykov is a prolific writer, twelve novels and a slew of other biographies in his pocket, but until Open Letter brought this book out, nothing in English either in the UK or US markets. As translated by John Freedman, a prolific translator into English, the Bykov touch seems to serve a need to balance uncritical praise and honest assessment.

Everything starts for the Anglophone with the competing systems of Romanizing Russian and Ukrainian. They are as different as English and American, or Portuguese and Brazilian. This means they need to be transliterated differently. It will strike US readers as weird, and feel "wrong" to many who, like me, lived our entire lives accepting "USSR" and "Russia" as synonyms, "The Ukraine" being uncritically assumed to be part of both.

Volodymyr Zelenskyi (a usage common in the text; I'll use it here as I prefer it to double-y which breaks my brain) is the president of Ukraine's name. Learn it. We're not dictating anymore, old white guys, we're learning what to call people, how to spell it, when to say it. The fascism our fathers, their grandfathers, fought a war to defeat is cultural as well as political. We need to shed our old assumptions.

Accustoming myself to Author Bykov's code-switching between transliterations was as challenging as learning when to use "tu" versus the formal third person. It got to be automatic, and served as effective signposting of a source's sympathies. It's going to take effort from the deeply acculturated to the Cold War's polarities. In a multipolar world, people like Zelenskyi are the feared and/or anticipated breezes from outside certainty. There's a lot in Zelenskyi's past that makes him a good stand-in for global changes to get the old certainties to unclench: he's charismatic, he's deeply convinced of his cause's rightness not simply clinging to his power; his government, unsurprisingly, faces a lot of bad press with accusations of corruption and self-dealing that ring false and hollow, so don't stick. Reading this rather-too-long book demonstrates why: This is a man of integrity and convictions accusing by his existence those who embody other "values."

What you gain by reading this biography is a clear sense of *WHY* Ukraine unites behind the figure of Zelenskyi: He represents them, he says the words they want to hear, he makes the sacrifices they make. This is Leadership 101, folks, it's either the best stage-managed con job in political history (in which case the world's leaders would unite to kill him as fast as possible) or he's sure he's Right.

Guess which one the invaders' ruler, too scared of his people to allow them elections that are free of thumbscaling determinism, wants us all to believe. I think I'm finally understanding the Slavic concept of "the holy fool" (bozhevilyi in Ukrainian) the longer I stew over the facts of Zelenskyi's choice to stand in Putin's way. It's that real belief that the way will be made for that soul who simply does not accept the world's verdict about reality. Any sane person would've taken the ride offered to evacuate him, not demanded the weapons to fight, the invaders of a major army with a dictator at its head who needn't fear election losses or civil unrest unseating him. (It says here...watch this space.)

I will say I can't offer all five stars because, absence of footnotes and all, there's simply an overwhelming amount of detail to absorb and not a lot of framing to do it within. It's not possible to give that without a lot more history; that's not what this book's about; so it's a little unfair but I'm a reader-response reviewer not a literary critic. I'm resolutely anti-christian and find a lot of the apocalypticism around the battles of this war framed in Holy War terms unpleasantly alien, when I think the humanity on each side is more than capable of doing their worst of their own volition.

I could simply be not "getting" these references inside the proper framework. I acknowledge this...and still slice off the remaining bits of a fifth star. So four thoroughly impressed, urgently motivated "buy me now" stars.

[Arista]

I actually liked the style of this a lot but it presupposes a working familiarity with Ukrainian and Russian politicians and public figures. I could have limped through it, or spent a lot of time on Google, but life’s too short and my TBR stack is too high for that.

[Elena]

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