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History Teacher of the People: Volodymyr Zelensky, Vasyl Holoborodko and his displaced colleagues

By Viktoria Sereda

When Volodymyr Zelensky won the Ukrainian presidential elections in April 2019, I was invited to participate in a discussion organized by Harvard University, “No Kidding, Let’s Get Serious: Ukraine’s Presidential Election.” The title ironically pointed to widespread anxieties about the rise of the popular comedian Zelensky to become the political leader of a war-torn country. The newly born politician Zelensky seemed to repeat in real life the trajectory of a character that he had played since 2015 in a popular TV series, “Servant of the people”: Vasyl Holoborodko, a history teacher who also “accidentally” wins the Ukrainian presidential elections. In the actual election results in April 2019, Zelensky won with 73% of the vote, thereby succeeding in bridging the great differences between Ukraine’s regions, ethnic groups, and linguistic groups. What led to such unity among the voters?

Zelensky in conversation with “Ivan the Terrible” in “The Servant of the People”.
© Screenshot by Viktoria Sereda. Courtesy of the The Presidential Office of Ukraine.

A possible key to his success in the 2019 presidential elections was his avoidance of potentially divisive historical issues. In contrast to the elites of the neighboring countries, both to the west and to the east of Ukraine, where historical narratives and commemorative practices belong to the systematic core of official rhetoric, neither the fictitious “Servant of the People” nor the real Volodymyr Zelensky mobilized the established narratives glorifying national memory. Contrary to what would be expected from a history teacher in the region, Holoborodko/Zelensky did not preach the glorious national past. One of the few references to historical topics in the TV series was a short scene in the first episode, in which Holoborodko stresses the need to learn from history to his students. His figure thus takes up the Soviet film tradition of representing history teachers as a little naïve, but as providing a moral role model to their students – for example, in  films like “Dozhivem do ponedelnika” (Let’s live until Monday, 1968) and “Bolshaia Peremena” (Long Break, 1973). But the content of history classes in Ukrainian schools has obviously changed since late Soviet times: Holoborodko considers it important to correct some inaccurate statements about Mykhailo Hrushevsky, the Ukrainian historian who became the leader of the Ukrainian Movement after the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, but who in the Stalinist period was erased from Soviet history textbooks. Judging from this short encounter, Holoborodko’s attitude toward Hrushevsky, a symbolic figure for Ukrainian nationalism, seemed critical and reserved. As election campaigner, Zelensky, a native of the predominantly Russian-speaking East Ukrainian industrial city of Kryvyi Rih, positioned himself critically toward the traditional nationalist rhetoric of his election opponent Poroshenko. Instead, like Holoborodko in “Servant of the People,” the real politician Zelensky applied populist anti-establishment and anti-corruption rhetoric.

Moreover, Zelensky came to power in 2019 with a promise to make peace. After the election, he called for new meetings in the Normandy format and ordered a withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the demarcation line and the creation of demilitarization zones in the Donbas – and was criticized for this by the new Ukrainian opposition. In his New Year’s Eve speech of 2020, President Zelensky tried to outline his more inclusive concept of Ukrainian identity, omitting any direct references to the Ukrainian national historical narrative or linguistic identity.  He repeatedly stressed the need for a more inclusive historic and linguistic policy in the country: “It does not matter who you are […], whose monument it is when you wait there for your beloved… [and] what the name of the street is, if it is lighted.” Zelensky’s populism thus downplayed nationalistic mobilization: “There is no line in our passport stating whether you are ‘patriot,’ ‘Maloros,’ [pejorative for Ukrainians affiliated with Russian culture], ‘Vatnik’ [pejorative for the politically pro-Russian/pro-Soviet Ukrainians] or ‘Banderite’ [a follower of the radical nationalist leader during and after World War II, Stepan Bandera]”.[1]

Staged reenactment of the year 1949, when Ukraine officially became a republic of the Soviet Union.
© Screenshot by Viktoria Sereda. Courtesy of the The Presidential Office of Ukraine.

In his presidential addresses between 2019 and 2020, Zelensky carefully avoided both Soviet rhetorical formulas about the past and glorification of the Ukrainian nationalist underground from the times of World War II. In contrast to the previous President, Poroshenko, Zelensky stopped calling Russia an aggressor and the Soviet Union a totalitarian regime comparable to the Nazis. Thus, even if Zelensky had started in the fictitious role of a history teacher, as President he didn’t present  any sharply contoured historical narrative to his fellow Ukrainians. Instead, his speeches were filled with reconciliation rhetoric. In this way, he followed the example of Leonid Kuchma, Ukrainian President from 1994 to 2005, who counted on amnesia and left tensions about the national past as unarticulated as possible.[2]

But even if Zelensky took a new tack, the practice of Ukrainian policy toward history did not radically change, despite widespread expectations. The new Head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, Anton Drobovych, argued against glorifying controversial figures from Ukrainian history, but stated that, with some corrections, the Institute would continue its previous course. New accents included “decommunization”, i.e., distancing the country from the communist legacy; efforts to secure international recognition of the Great Famine (the Holodomor) as genocide on the Ukrainian nation; and strengthening the Institute’s role in counteracting Russian aggression.[3] The latter goal became especially urgent in the atmosphere of Russia’s intensified weaponization of history and identity narratives.

Since the summer of 2021, Zelensky had to react to President Putin’s increasingly aggressive speeches that used historical arguments to legitimize the Kremlin’s expansionist plans. Thus, Zelensky was finally pushed into the role of the “nation’s history teacher” that he had initially tried to avoid. Like his political rival and predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, Zelensky had to combine two often contradictory tasks: to build an ethnically inclusive narrative for the Ukrainian nation, on the one hand, and, on the other, to respond to the Russian propaganda that employed historical myths. In August 2021, during the official celebration of the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, Zelensky’s version of Ukrainian history was even re-enacted on Kyiv’s main street, Khreshchatyk Boulevard. The staging carefully juggled national and Soviet Ukrainian narratives. Observers noticed that there were no references either to the Ukrainian nationalist underground from the times of World War II nor to the Stalinist deportation of Crimean Tatars and other ethnic groups. In spite of that,  many other important elements of the Ukrainian national narrative were present. Besides the Great Famine, which became a central component of the national victimization narrative after 1991, there were also references to the Holocaust. The Soviet period after World War II was presented ambivalently: as bright, cheerful, and peaceful, but overshadowed by the persecutions of dissidents and by deadly mistakes such as the Chernobyl explosion. Finally, the post-independence period was depicted in athletic achievements, scientific breakthroughs, and revolutions ­– the “Revolution on Granite” of 1990, 2004’s “Orange Revolution”, and the “Euromaidan” of 2013-2014. Although Zelensky had not taken active part in any of the recent Ukrainian protests, he was willing to build on their democratic legacy.  In spite of some experts’ criticism, the television broadcast was a big public success.  In its final scene, a small girl symbolizing Ukraine made her way through the chaos and smoke of the Maidan, annexed Crimea, and the battlefields of the Donbas to a peaceful, happy present in which soldiers no longer had to fight, but were reunited with their families.

Staged reenactment of the year 1980.
© Screenshot by Viktoria Sereda. Courtesy of the The Presidential Office of Ukraine.

But instead of opening new bright pages in Ukrainian history, Ukrainian society soon had to deal with the grave challenges that people had thought were gone forever and remained in  the twentieth century. After Russia’s attack, Zelensky had no choice but to respond to Putin’s jingoistic rhetoric and to embrace, as President, the role of a Ukrainian history teacher that he played before the elections on television.

The Russian military aggression that began in 2014 and turned into full-scale invasion in 2022 forced many other Ukrainian history teachers to search for new lessons from the past – especially those teachers who had to flee from the regions of Crimea and Donbas. In 2016, as a part of the project “Displaced Memories”, colleagues and I interviewed two displaced middle-aged history teachers: Irina, who had to leave Crimea after Russia occupied it in 2014, and Anna, who had to escape the military conflict in the Donbas, her home region, a few months later.[4]

Before the war, Anna taught at a Ukrainian-speaking school. However, she preferred to speak Russian during the interview in 2016, although she identifies herself as Ukrainian and bilingual. Anna spoke little about her previous teaching experiences, but explained her decision to move with the danger imposed by the pro-Russian separatists: “You know, at our school the director and I had to take down pro-Ukrainian posters when the DPR [the quasi-state entity “Donetsk Peoples Republic”] people came into the school. In their teenage maximalism, these kids drew and hung up pro-Ukrainian posters. And we, to avoid provoking, because it was not clear who and with what type of gun… anything could go wrong. We had to explain to them – let’s take care of our safety. And that’s why… I even have goosebumps now. I feel very sorry for those children whose motherland has really been taken!”

Anna did not stress her personal identification with Ukraine or Donbas, but rather emphasized her Soviet identity: “I worked at the school for fifteen years. And my child, born there, is in the Donbas. Yes, in the Donetsk region, and he is already Ukrainian. I am still a child of the Soviet Union, because I lived most of my life, well, I lived a part of it in the Soviet Union. And my child and my pupils were already born in Ukraine, and they grew up under the conditions of the establishment of statehood, and they really love Ukraine.”

In our talk, Anna underscored how alien and downright inferior she feels in Poland. Her efforts to find her place in her new environments confronted her with the Polish national historiography, in which Polish-Ukrainian hostilities and the ethnic cleansings in the Volhynian region play a central role. Moving to Poland led her to view Ukrainian history from a new perspective: “And when you come here, it’s a complete black hole and you don’t understand it, it’s incomprehensible. I have to admit, until this year I didn’t even know what Volhynia is […] although I taught history in Ukraine for four years. At school, it was just a couple of lines in the history book: it was silenced. When you arrive here, you understand that history can be interpreted in different ways […] And when you come here, you see people’s pain. I see the reason for the conflict with Ukraine. I know many Poles, and one is a historian. They explained their position to me, because I had blind spots.”

Irina, who used to teach history in a Russian school in Crimea, chose to speak Ukrainian during the interview, although at the end of the interview she admitted that her nationality and native language were Russian. Like Anna, she came to Poland with her family and had little exposure to Polish society before 2014. Like Anna, she also spoke very little about her previous teaching experiences, but explained that she decided to move because she didn’t want to teach according to the newly imposed Russian school program: “I don’t understand how you can build a life on a lie! I’m sorry. How it is possible? I would not have been able to continue working there at the school. So, I said to everyone: ‘How can we tell children the lie that it’s so and so?’”

“Soviet nostalgia” disturbed her in particular, i.e.,  “the fanatics – these babushkas who hope that the Soviet Union will return” and the “feeling of national superiority and intolerance of my opinions”. However, she admitted that it took her some time to realized how problematic this Russian patriotism is. “I thought this is an expression of love for our city. We love history. And the children were brought up to respected it. It seemed very good to me.” Only later did she understand that it was impossible to express other opinions. During the commemoration of the birthday of Taras Shevchenko, the greatest Ukrainian poet, who was also a part of the Soviet literary canon, she was attacked by a pro-Russian mob. “They came with whips and metal rods. We are with words, and they are at us with their whips. And then they also reproached us that the Banderites had come.” After this, Irina’s family demanded that she leave Crimea.

Irina recalled that when she arrived in Poland she immediately felt attached to the community. “I felt that this is my city, this is my country, only for some reason people speak a different language!” To make it easier to obtain a visa, Irina’s family used a strategy of “discovering” a forgotten ethnic origin: “My husband reported on the war in 1939. Life for his family was difficult. He had a stepmother. And he also knows that his father’s mother was Polish. But we couldn’t find any papers yet and don’t know where to look.” This story served as an argument that the family belonged to the Polish community, but Irina maintained contact with the local Ukrainian community. “There is the Ukrainian house; it holds events to which our Ukrainians and Poles are invited. I belong to this; that’s what interests me”.

Surprisingly, my two interlocutors hardly mentioned historical events or figures and did not lecture me about history or assign blame. What they said was almost entirely about the “now” or the “future”, which they imagined outside their native country and region. To navigate their way in Polish society, they both had to learn an unfamiliar history and culture. After February 2022, when millions of Ukrainians had to flee abroad, many realized how little they knew about their European neighbors and, vice versa, how little people abroad know about Ukraine.

Although both came from Ukrainian regions that are often labelled especially “pro-Russian,” they do not confirm the idea of a sharp ethnic and linguistic divide. Their identities are multilayered and intertwined with no clear-cut boundaries between transnational (Soviet), national (Russian and Ukrainian), regional, and local patriotism. Their study of Soviet history clearly did not lead to a pro-Russian political orientation. Nor could the Soviet-Ukrainian narrative familiar to them since childhood offer a plausible explanation of what was happening in Crimea or the Donbas, either. They neither reject nor completely accept the increasingly dominant Ukrainian-nationalist view of history, but regard it more as an option for the next generation of Ukrainians from the industrial East and South.

© Фото Миколи Лазаренка / The Presidential Office of Ukraine. / Wikimedia Commons [URL] / Volodymyr Zelenskyy voted in parliamentary elections (2019-07-21).

                In the last episode of the first season of “Servant of the People”, the history teacher who has become President appears in a talk show in the frightening costume of the 16th century. Ivan the Terrible assures Holoborodko, “Remain brave, blood brother, we will soon liberate you!” Holoborodko replies, “No thank you, we don’t need to be liberated […] We belong to Europe […] You are taking one path, we are taking another. Let’s go our separate ways and talk again in 300 years.” Today, the scene seems almost prophetic.

Unlike Anna and Irina, Volodomyr Zelensky not only remained in Ukraine, but also took on an immense political challenge. While their flight seemingly took the two history teachers out of the established historical narratives, the television history teacher had to become a national history teacher. After February 24, 2022, Zelensky began to move away from his earlier historical-political standpoints.

Extreme events such as war and displacement create ruptures in sense-making narratives and, tend to strip people of identity.  People need plausible accounts of events to understand what is going on and how to respond through both individual and collective action. Sense-making is an ongoing retrospective process grounded in personal past experiences and often linked to identity construction. In this process, history/the past turns into an important interpretive resource for one’s attachment or alienation. The imagined past may consist of the memory of recently experienced events (e.g., ‘after the beginning of the war’), which is later linked to selected symbolic markers, events, or figures from the past that help explain current events or legitimize individuals or their actions.

The shock of disruption turned history back into Ukrainians’ discussions about sense of belonging, especially for those who, under the brutal Russian threat, increasingly identify with the Ukrainian cause. Mass displacement also exposed millions of Ukrainians to new challenges that triggered intensive reinterpretations of the past – both the distant and the very recent – and a reevaluation of their memory through new experiences. It is difficult to predict how Ukrainian history will be taught after the war, because even if the war constitutes an extremely formative experience for the young generation of Ukrainians, it is not the same experience for all. Ultimately, the war’s outcome will determine what lessons they draw from their country’s past.


This is the original English version of the essay “Geschichtslehrer des Volkes … und Vasyl Holoborodkos Kolleginnen auf der Flucht” by Viktoria Sereda, which was published in German (translation by Daniel Schönpflug) in “Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte, XVI/4 Winter 2022″

References:

[1] https://tsn.ua/politika/davayte-kozhen-chesno-vidpovist-na-vazhlive-pitannya-hto-ya-novorichne-privitannya-prezidenta-zelenskogo-1468050.html

[2] For more on a comparative perspective on Ukrainian and Russian Presidential speeches, see: Sereda, V. (2007). Istoricheskiy diskurs i natsionalʹnoye proshloye v ofitsialʹnykh rechakh prezidentov Ukrainy i Rossii. In Natsionalʹno-grazhdan skiye identichnosti i tole rant nostʹ. Opyt Rossii i Ukrainy v period transformatsii pod red. L. Drobizhevoy i Ye. Golovakhi. K. Institut sotsiologii NAN Ukrainy; Institut sotsiologii RAN.

[3] https://p.dw.com/p/3UyXm?maca=uk-EMail-sharing

[4] Both names have been changed to preserve anonymity.


Viktoria Sereda is a sociologist and since 2020 has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and a professor at the Ukrainian Catholic University. She is currently working as Senior Fellow and Director of the Prisma Ukraina researcher group “War, Migration, and Memory” at the Forum Transregional Studies in Berlin. She most recently published two essays: “In Search of Belonging: Rethinking the Other in the Historical Memory of Ukrainian IDPs”, in: The Ideology and Politics Journal 2,6 (2020), pp. 83–107, and “‘Social Distancing’ and Hierarchies of Belonging: The Case of Displaced Population from Donbas and Crimea”, in Europe-Asia Studies 72,3 (2020), pp. 404–31. Her forthcoming in 2023 book: “Displacement in War-Torn Ukraine: State, Displacement and Belonging”, Cambridge Elements. Series: Global Development Studies. Cambridge University press.


Citation: Viktoria Sereda, History Teacher of the People: Volodymyr Zelensky, Vasyl Holoborodko and his displaced colleagues, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 21.02.2023, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/45375


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Forum Transregionale Studien (February 21, 2023). History Teacher of the People: Volodymyr Zelensky, Vasyl Holoborodko and his displaced colleagues. TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research. Retrieved March 24, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/ut68


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