A rockstar-turned-fighter offers a lens on fame in Ukraine

Serhiy Zhadan (pictured) is not your average soldier. He is a poet, novelist and rockstar, who is used to performing in front of crowds of thousands. Anyone who claims poetry is dead has not been to his readings: some 4,000 people at a time have attended them in Kyiv. After Russia’s invasion in 2022, Mr Zhadan tried to help—evacuating children, securing medicine—but felt he could still do more. In 2024 he enlisted in the National Guard, joining a much feted brigade known as “Khartiia”. That cemented Mr Zhadan’s status as one of Ukraine’s most popular cultural figures, who embodies how the literary sphere has adapted to life at war.

Mr Zhadan, who is 51, came of age as the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine gained independence. His works capture the experience of this transitional generation, full of rough-and-ready characters confronting social upheaval, political revolution and economic hardship. His anarchic persona and promotion of Ukrainian culture have endeared him to a younger audience reckoning with Russian aggression. So, too, has his moonlighting as a frontman for “Zhadan i sobaky” (“Zhadan and the Dogs”), a popular ska-punk band.

His cult status reflects modern literary celebrity with a Ukrainian twist. In a country where supporting the armed forces is both essential and existential, Mr Zhadan uses social media expertly to spread his art and activism. He posts poems, clips from gigs and musings about intelligence networks on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Tapping into the growing popularity of video podcasts and hoping to boost the profile of his brigade, he set up Radio Khartiia, a website that hosts discussions on military life and Ukrainian culture. Mr Zhadan’s interviewees have included Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s former spy boss, and Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist.

But Mr Zhadan also celebrates the everyman. “Arabesques”, a collection of his short stories, will be published in English in February. It elegantly describes ordinary people enduring war and offers a poignant portrait of Kharkiv, his home town, which is only some 40km from Russia. His characters are civilians carrying on in eerily empty neighbourhoods, volunteers driving aid to forgotten villages and soldiers struggling to reconcile their lives at war with those they left behind.

Mr Zhadan does not describe any fighting, but the war permeates his pages and prose. Much is left unsaid: the dialogue is spare, the description of inner thoughts more detailed. The central theme of “Arabesques” is the fragility of intimacy and the struggle to protect it during war. That is true among husbands and wives, parents and children and old school friends who barely recognise each other because of the trauma of fighting. Many aspects of everyday life lose their significance at war, Mr Zhadan tells The Economist, but relationships become even more intensely important. The war has left Ukrainians highly sensitive, “as if we’ve been bared of our skin”, he says. 

The story collection points to the evolving nature of Ukrainian war writing. After the shock of the invasion, many Ukrainians turned to literature to cope with, and sometimes escape, reality. The number of bookshops rose rapidly: readers were drawn to poetry and non-fiction, which gave an immediate account of the war. Authors who volunteered as soldiers have gained prominence. Some, such as Maksym Kryvtsov, a poet turned machine-gunner, were killed in action.

Ukrainian publishers consider it essential to continue to support war literature, says Yuliya Orlova, boss of Vivat, one of the country’s biggest publishing houses, which has published more than 50 war-related titles since 2022. Mr Zhadan concedes that both creating and appreciating writing about war can be exhausting. When the invasion ends, he thinks Ukrainian readers may well seek out more lightness in their books. But for now, the fighting rages—and Mr Zhadan’s tales give the world a sense of the toll. ■