Poet and soldier Liza Zharikova: Ideally, my collection should be presented while I’m still alive

Originally from temporarily Russian-occupied Luhansk Oblast, Liza studied in Kharkiv and later in Kyiv. After playing an active role in the Revolution of Dignity, she signed up with the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) at the start of the full-scale war.

Yelyzaveta Zharikova is a philologist by trade who cannot live without music. She is also a poet, songwriter, singer and teacher. She is the author of two poetry collections: “Ants of Johann Sebastian” and “Between Love and Love.” A combat medic who, whenever possible, carries an electronic keyboard with her, she fears that we will have to pass this war on to future generations.

As part of the special project “Words and Bullets” (page in Ukrainian) launched by “Chytomo” and PEN Ukraine, Liza and I spoke about her transformation as a person, about creativity on the front lines, and whether Ukrainian culture is really growing in popularity.

Chytomo: You were an active participant in the Revolution of Dignity. Would you have ever thought then that the Maidan would evolve into a war?

Liza Zharikova: At the time, no. During the Maidan period, I still believed in good Russians. And that it was possible to have a dialogue with the country’s opposition and, together, destroy the criminal regime of Putin and Yanukovych. At that time, I hadn’t yet cut off ties with Russian poets. I still read their art websites and listened to Russian music — niche, underground – but nevertheless. I had no idea that it would be not so much Putin’s regime, but the entire Russian people – or at least the majority – that would wage war on us.

Unfortunately, until missiles began raining down all across Ukraine, many believed that the only people [in Ukraine] who took an interest in war were those who were marginalized from civilian life. It was probably thanks to these “outcasts” who had been preparing for an entire decade that we survived the first days of the great invasion.

Now I regret that I paid so little attention to preparing myself for this or raising public awareness, and until the last minute I didn’t believe that I would eventually have to join the war myself — not as a volunteer, but as a woman in uniform.

Chytomo: You joined the military at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Do you remember how you made this decision and how you decided on your area of specialty?

Liza Zharikova: As a matter of fact, I made the decision earlier when I started gathering documents toward the end of 2021. I was influenced by my friend and classmate Pavlo Shchybrya, who is also a writer. He was a reservist and actively campaigned for people to join the Territorial Defense in the event of broader Russian aggression.

I received the last certificate required for enrollment on Feb. 23, 2022, and the next day I was supposed to have a final interview and sign the reservist contract, which I already had in my hands. But on Feb. 24, I went not to the interview, but to the military recruitment office.

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Chytomo: You said in one of your interviews that being a combat medic is a daily routine. How does one prepare for such a routine?

Liza Zharikova: Unfortunately, every individual has a finite amount of strength. I think that my psyche did not completely collapse because we have long rotations away from the front lines. Had I remained in combat the entire time, every day I would have witnessed the death of people with whom I drank coffee the day before, and I would have burned out and fallen into a state of apathy and depression much faster. I know people who continue to push their limits to the point that there is no spark left in their eyes. I understand their mood, their hopelessness, their despair. Perhaps my fate simply has not yet been so fraught with adversity for me to completely lose the strength to continue.

Chytomo: You are from the Luhansk region, more specifically the town of Novopskov [now Aidar], which is currently occupied. Tell us about the environment in which you grew up and were educated.

Liza Zharikova: I grew up in Novopskov and Severodonetsk in the Luhansk region. Both of these settlements were occupied after the full-scale invasion. My interests, education, and cultural environment were once very eclectic. I studied at practically the only Ukrainian-language school in the entire region, where there were both patriotic teachers and those who were supporters of the “Russian world.” In general, they were good people who treated children with love, raised them in a respectful manner and with certain universal human values. But in one lesson I might listen to something pro-Ukrainian, and then in another classroom I would hear that the history of Ukraine and Russia should be that of two of the closest and most fraternal of nations. I might take part in a Ukrainian poetry competition organized by a Ukrainian language club in Luhansk, and then attend a choir competition where they sang Soviet-era songs that were incompatible with Ukrainian discourse. I grasped these contradictions and understood that the picture was incomplete.

People in Novopskov spoke mostly Ukrainian, but when I came to Severodonetsk in 2004 to study music, it was a completely different picture. A Russified city completely dominated by Russian narratives, where you could hear something about Ukrainian culture only in Ukrainian language and literature classes, and even then with the emphasis that everything Russian is more grand and more meaningful. There was a cult-like following of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy; we discussed the adventures of Natasha Rostova.

I don’t know why my unformed psyche needed this immersion in some kind of chthonic abyss of unhealthy human passions, this suffering of deeply traumatized, mentally ill heroes of Russian literature.

But during my four years of studies in Severodonetsk, I turned into a poster child for “Homo sovieticus” and the notion that Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus were Slavic nations that should be friends, while evil NATO and the evil West wanted to pit us against each other.

And I also remember the books that one could buy at the market. For example, fantasy literature in some modern setting, as if the Donbas is rebelling against the fascist regime in Ukraine. I came across a book with similar content at a market in 2006 or 2007, leafed through it, and was shocked, thinking to myself, “Is the Donbas supposed to go to war against Kyiv?” How can this be?” Unfortunately, I don’t remember the author, but it would be interesting to find this book now. Maybe it’s some marginal local publication, but it seems that such things were funded and used en masse to brainwash us.

Chytomo: So how did you manage to change so much, from a young girl who was schooled in an eclectic environment where not everything is so clear-cut, to who you are now, not just a person with patriotic convictions, but a member of the AFU?

Liza Zharikova: It all started in Kharkiv, before the Maidan. I graduated from music school and wanted to continue my studies at the conservatory, but I had to leave because of a conflict with a teacher. And since I only had EIT certificates [Editor’s note: External Independent Testing certificate, issued by Ukraine for high school graduates pursuing post-secondary education] in Ukrainian language, literature and history, my options were somewhat limited. So I enrolled in Ukrainian philology at V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. My mother cringed. I remember when I applied, I was told that only fanatics or losers take up Ukrainian philology.

Prior to that, I wrote poetry … in Russian, of course. I had four thick notebooks filled with Russian-language poems. And with this as my background, I took up Ukrainian philology, from where the long path of transformation began. I gained access to a huge library and the Internet, and I realized that there was definitely something wrong with my picture of the world.

My meeting with composer Levko Kolodub at the Kyiv Academy of Music also had a major influence on me. When I came to speak to him, he asked me whether I felt more Russian or Ukrainian (my parents are Russian, but I was born in Ukraine). And I started thinking, reading a lot, trying to understand who I was and where I was. It was 2008, whereas I didn’t switch to Ukrainian for good until 2011.

While defending Ukrainian in a completely Russian-speaking Kharkiv, I was simultaneously learning to stand up for myself and my own rights, like, “This is how I choose to and will speak.” It was a good school for setting personal boundaries.

Chytomo: Your two poetry collections were published not so long ago. “Ants of Johann Sebastian” was published in 2021, and “Between Love and Love” was published in 2023, though it was written before the full-scale invasion. If you have been writing ever since you were young, didn’t you think about publishing your work earlier?

Liza Zharikova: This is because I started writing in Ukrainian quite late and began to take myself seriously as a poet around the age of 25, when I was already studying in Kyiv. Before that, I saw myself more as a music teacher and a songwriter, and I didn’t consider my dabblings in poetry as worthy of serious attention. The fact that I was in the process of switching from Russian to Ukrainian also played a role. Along with the language, I cleared a lot of things out of my traumatic childhood. But in terms of creativity, this transition was quite difficult for me.

The [Ukrainian] language is like a squirming creature that I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around. Automated translations sounded somewhat stiff and unnatural. I didn’t even start posting my poetry online until I managed to get rid of this feeling and the poems began to meet my aesthetic criteria.

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And that also took several years. That’s why I came to professional literary circles so late, at an age when some young poets are already publishing their third book.

Chytomo: Do you talk to your peers about literature or poetry? Do they read your poems? Do they understand them?

Liza Zharikova: For the last two and a half years, I have often heard the question: “What is your poetry about?” Especially from my comrades. When they found out I wrote poetry, they were curious. They would say: “Read something.” And I read. “What’s that about?” And I try to explain, and they’re like: “Oh, cool.”

Once I had an argument with my comrades about whether free verse can even be considered a poem.

We were shouting at each other, and our commanding officer came in and asked what was going on. And the guys and I are arguing over whether a poem without rhyme is really a poem.

Everyone chimed in on the discussion. It was really funny: It was like being a teacher again, explaining the same thing I once explained to ninth- or tenth-graders, who would say: “No, this is not a poem, it cannot be a poem!” I tell the same thing to adults. And what conclusion did we reach? We concluded that some free verse can be considered poetry. They took Vasyl Stus’ “Tell me, was Modigliani an idiot?” to be a poem, and something else from Wisława Szymborska, I think. But all that my friends and I write are just words in a column that anyone can write [laughs].

Chytomo: In one of your interviews, you said that your husband predicted the war would go on for seven or eight years, while you predicted it would last two or three. We’re now in our third year of war. What are you thinking now?

Liza Zharikova: Nothing good comes of war: Sometimes it brings out our strengths; sometimes the negative creeps to the surface. It reveals people’s true inner nature; it turns them inside out. Yes, war gives us new encounters, but it takes away disproportionately more. That’s why I don’t even want to think about another six or seven or eight years of war. But if we have no other alternative, we must defend ourselves.

We must understand that giving in to Russia is tantamount to destruction. As a nation, as a people, and as a state. It happened in the ’30s and again in the ’70s, and now they are trying to do it again. Only this time, it’s not through repression, but with weapons: physically and literally.

When I read interviews with people who have already lost their lives, I think about how our paths might have crossed. Under different circumstances, we might have met and talked about many things, worked on new books, songs, performances, films.

There are so many things that will never come to pass. Russia has killed many of our artists.

For example, Alla Pushkarchuk a.k.a. “Ruta.” I didn’t know her, I just followed her on social networks, but what a profound person she was! Russians killed the writer Volodymyr Vakulenko. They killed the writer and journalist Victoria Amelina. They killed the combat medic Ihor Mysiak, the author of wonderful poems who should be more widely known and whose first novel was published shortly before he died for his country. Maksym Kryvtsov, whom everyone started talking about only after the irreparable event happened. Ilya Chernilevsky whose collection of poems was published posthumously. And the list goes on … Some [artists] didn’t even have the time to really make a name for themselves, and their ascent has already come to a permanent halt.

Olena Herasymiuk and Yevhen Lir created the project “Unwritten” in which they compiled a list of artists whose lives were taken by Russia. If you take a name from the list every day and get acquainted with that person’s work, it becomes clear that an entire world has perished — unwritten, undeveloped, unfilmed, unplayed works of art. And they continue to kill us, and the only way we can stop it is to shoot back.

Chytomo: You organize fundraisers for your unit and support those of other military personnel. Many volunteers say that now people have distanced themselves a little and that it has become more difficult to reach targets.

Liza Zharikova: As a matter of fact, sometimes I do notice a certain tendency for people to distance themselves. There was an instance where I was undergoing treatment and was about to arrive at the unit. I called for a taxi, and the driver, seeing that I was in uniform, turned around and sped off. I don’t write about such things on Facebook. I don’t care for social bashing as an art form. I don’t want to ruin someone else’s life. I don’t know his reasons for doing what he did. If I could, I would talk to him. I wonder what the motivation for such behavior could be: fear, hostility, personal circumstances?

It’s important to me that people stop being afraid to participate in repelling Russian aggression. That’s why I try to talk to those who distance themselves or are afraid, and even to those who didn’t go so far as to “tell me off.”

This rift between civilians and military personnel that everyone is talking about now shouldn’t be made deeper.

The army is in need of people. I’m not saying that joining the army or going to fight is an easy path, or that the AFU will pamper you by providing you with a job and giving you a position according to your skill set. You will most likely have to perform complex tasks every day, perhaps things you don’t even want to do. Those who are used to managing their own lives will find it difficult there due to many things that are illogical. But if there is no influx of new recruits and if they are not proactive, we might not win this war in the short term.

Chytomo: How do you feel about life in the rear?

Liza Zharikova: The rear, which lives its own life, hasn’t yet come to annoy me. Maybe because it’s been more than six months since I’ve seen direct combat. It’s not a very widely held opinion, and you can even be publicly shamed for such views [laughs], but military personnel should also be trying to narrow the gulf that exists between the army and civil society.

In the rear, you can’t always tell by a person’s appearance what path they have taken or what or whom they have lost in or because of the war. Just because you wear a uniform doesn’t give you entitlement.

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Chytomo: You had an article about the fact that you weren’t able to present any of your books due to the war. Do you have material for your next collection? Supposing such an opportunity were to present itself, what would your ideal presentation look like?

Liza Zharikova: It would take place while I’m still alive [laughs]. Ideally, it should not be done posthumously, and I will be in a dress, not in military fatigues. Everything else we will figure out. It would be best to survive this war with two arms and two legs and two eyes … My colleagues and I were recently joking about popularity. I asked: “How should I present my next video clip?” And someone as cynical as I am replied: “You need to get wounded in battle again; then everyone will write about you. Because music with fragments is more interesting than just plain music.” Hopefully this will remain nothing more than a twisted joke.

I’ve thought about the book — I already have a lot of poems — but I haven’t contacted any publishers yet, and I haven’t collected the poems into a structured whole. But I’ve already come up with a hashtag for the collection: #song_accounting_journal, or #poem_accounting_journal. I hope I’ll have time to think about the publication first, and later about the presentation.

In the framework of “Words and Bullets,” a project implemented by Chytomo media and PEN Ukraine, we speak about Ukrainian writers and journalists who joined the ranks of the armed forces or became volunteers after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion. The name of the media project is symbolic of the weapons used by the project’s heroes and heroines before February 24, and which they were forced to take up after the outbreak of a full-scale war with Russia. The special project is being implemented with the support of the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM Vienna).

Translation: David Soares 

Copy editing: Ben Angel and Joy Tataryn