| “ | …so that a simple teacher would live like a president, and the president would live like a teacher! | „ |
| ~ Vasily Goloborodko. |
| “ | Please explain why I, a simple voter, cannot afford even the cheapest apartment in Kiev on the salary of a history teacher when you, my subordinates, live in luxurious mansions… You are servants of the people! Where has it been seen that servants live better than their masters. Or maybe you've got it mixed up and are serving the wrong masters. Instead of serving the people, you serve the oligarchs. | „ |
| ~ Vasily to the many corrupted deputies of Verkhovna Rada. |
President Vasily Goloborodko is the titular main protagonist of the 2015 Ukrainian political satire comedy television series Servant of the People created and produced by Kvartal 95 and the current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was a comedian at that time.
He is a simple and modest high school history teacher who, by an amazing coincidence and surprise even for himself, becomes the new president of Ukraine. Vasily gets the opportunity he has always dreamed of: to finally change his country and the world for the better, which everybody of his predecessors failed to achieve to a sufficient extent. However, many obstacles stand in the way of Vasily: bloodthirsty oligarchs, dissatisfied with the layout of affairs, corrupt ministers and greedy judges. But, once a poor history teacher, and now the main person in the country is not afraid to face them in order to achieve his final goal.
Vasily Goloborodko was portrayed by a former Ukrainian comedian, actor, screenwriter, director, producer and showman and the sixth and current president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who also voiced Paddington Bear in the Ukrainian version of the Paddington and Red in the Ukrainian version of The Angry Birds Movie.
Personality[]
The character of Vasily Goloborodko changes greatly over the course of his story. At first, Vasily appears as a poor and unsuccessful high school history teacher, who lives with his parents after divorcing his wife. Goloborodko was a characterless person and did not react to the obvious lawlessness of the school and other state systems of Ukraine until his patience finally overflowed. Goloborodko's terrifying foul-mouthed tirade, denouncing the boundless and endless vices of the government of Ukraine and each of its members, which he broke out in the middle of the school day when his students were sent to build "booths" for voting instead of a history lesson, becomes famous on the Internet and in the whole country. It was this emotional explosion of pure uncensored honesty that became the primary reason why Goloborodko won the election.
At first, after becoming president of the country, Goloborodko feels uncomfortable, awkward, and even stunned when faced with a huge number of unnecessary assistants and luxury for the sake of the luxury. Fortunately, Vasily quickly comes to his senses and begins to implement his plan, despite the two-faced and cunning Prime Minister Yuriy Chuiko, who is desperately trying to corrupt him. President Goloborodko is learning to make important decisions and put up with misunderstandings of the electorate on the way to becoming a real strong ruler and a true servant of the people.
Since he is a history teacher by profession, when making any decision on the development of the country, Vasily is always referred by historical experience to both his predecessors and famous foreign rulers, philosophers and political figures. Moreover, one of the many artistic features of the show is the frequent visits to Vasily's imagination paid by the prominent historical figures, such as: Plutarch, Herodotus, Gaius Julius Caesar, Abraham Lincoln, Al Capone and Niccolo Machiavelli, who advise him what to do.
In his speech, Goloborodko often quotes other famous politicians and historical figures.
Biography[]
Servant of the People[]
Vasily's rampage speech.
After a simple history teacher Vasyliy Goloborodko becomes famous thanks to a viral video with his foul-mouthed tirade denouncing the corrupt government of Ukraine and the electoral contribution gained with the help of crowd funding organized by his own students, Vasily becomes the new president of Ukraine. Prime minister of the country Yuriy Chuiko arrives at Vasily's apartment to meet president and introduce him to the world of politics, in parallel, unsuccessfully trying to corrupt him, now and then advising "not to think much" and cooperate with the oligarchs.
Having taken his loyal team of friends to the posts of ministers, Goloborodko begins to investigate a large-scale corruption scheme with the theft of a huge amount of money from the country's budget.
Goloborodko and his team after they tricked the oligarchs.
Meanwhile, group of powerful oligarchs try to bribe the members of Goloborodko’s team to manipulate him, when they realize that the new president of Ukraine is not a puppet of any of them. Businessmen are convinced that they have succeeded when each of the Goloborodko’s team members takes a bribe. The process of taking bribes was captured on camera so that the oligarchs could blackmail Goloborodko, but it turns out that all this was Vasily's plan. Huge amounts of money transferred as bribes are sent to the budget of Ukraine and the oligarchs realize that they have been tricked. After Goloborodko refused a direct offer to cooperate with them for a huge sum of money, furious oligarchs decide to remove Vasily from their path, ordering his murder on the political talk show "Dialog". At this very show, to which, in addition to the president himself, Prime Minister Chuiko was invited, Vasily reveals his plan, which he, together with the head of the SBU, had been preparing for a long time in order to uncover and catch the organizer of the largest corruption scheme. It turns out to be the Prime Minister Chuiko and Yuriy is arrested live.
Meanwhile, the oligarchs' agent Savitsky, whom they hired to kill Goloborodko, is already aiming at the him from under the stands, but Tolik, the president's faithful bodyguard, saves Vasily at the very last moment, knocking out the assassin.
Servant of the People 2. From love to impeachment[]
President Vasily Goloborodko has been in power for almost six months. To stabilize the situation in the country, Goloborodko needs to receive financial assistance from the IMF, which can be provided if reforms are introduced in Ukraine and anti-corruption laws. However, the Verkhovna Rada, which is secretly led by oligarchs, blocks the vote on the package of these laws.
Vasily and Yuriy Chuiko escapes from titushki in the costume of Verka Serdyuchka.
Vasily is forced to seek help from Yuriy Chuiko, whom he himself put behind bars after a corruption scandal. Chuiko is developing a clever strategy in which it is necessary to artificially create a conflict of interests among the oligarchs and force the Verkhovna Rada to adopt a package of unpopular anti-corruption laws among deputies. After staging Chuiko's death, as a result of the explosion of the truck that "transported" him from prison, Vasily and Yuriy go on a trip to Ukraine while the oligarchs try to stop them by hiring "titushky", the brute mercenary agents. The duo succeeds in carrying out their plans and Vasily allows Yuriy to escape from the country.
After the failed reforms carried out at the request of the IMF, Goloborodko resigns, but puts forward his candidacy for the next presidential election of Ukraine. The second half of the season is entirely devoted to his attempts to win back the love of the people with the help of a spectacular election program, while the oligarchs are trying to beat him in the election race with their puppet Dmitry Surikov. Villains are also trying to spoil Goloborodko's rating as much as possible, using his absolute double a fraudster Grigory Buryanenko to discredit Vasily.
Surikov freezes Yuriy Chuiko's accounts in order to lure him out of the shadows and give false testimony against Vasily on television. Surikov wins the election and imprisons Goloborodko.
Servant of the People 3. Choice[]
President Goloborodko's final speech.
Vasily meets Yuriy in prison when Chuiko saves him from an assassination attempt, organised by the oligarchs. While Goloborodko is behind bars the government of Ukraine is replaced many times. EU leaders react to the chaos in Ukraine and help Chuiko to be released from custody by making him EU Representative for Ukraine. After recounting the votes from Surikov's election, Vasily Goloborodko becomes president again, and Yuriy becomes his curator. Together, the duo is bringing together Ukraine, after it was split into a huge number of subjects.
With the help of Goloborodko's new state policy, the people of the newly united Ukraine are raising enough money to pay off the country's incredible external debt of $163 billion in just one week, finally giving Ukraine true independence.
Powers & Abilities[]
Knowledge of history.[]
| “ | A good teacher can only be someone who has been a good student himself. | „ |
| ~ Vasily quotes a Balkan saying. |
Vasily during his history lesson.
Vasily Goloborodko is a very good historian, able to quote a huge number of historical figures, philosophers and political figures verbatim. In fact, when Vasily was just getting a job as a history teacher, he managed to convince his predecessor that he was putting the class in good hands, surpassing him in the knowledge of such complex quotations.
Leadership.[]
Leadership qualities have been growing in Vasily since the very first day of being president. Gradually, Goloborodko turns from an awkward dilettante in politics into a real leader of the nation, whom people listen to and follow. The President's character was forged in a huge number of difficulties and dangers that he faced in the course of his own history.
Political power.[]
As president, Goloborodko undoubtedly had enormous political power to finally do what a simple and honest teacher had always dreamed of: to change the country for the better.
Indomitable Will.[]
Undoubtedly, Vasily's strongest ability is the willpower. In addition to the fact that he resisted countless attempts of being corrupted, despite the millions of dollars that the oligarchs offered him, in his youth Goloborodko often organized successful hunger strikes as part of public actions to help others. Also, when Dmitry Surikov illegally imprisoned him, purposefully trying to make his living conditions as unbearable as possible, Vasily did not break down, but on the contrary, forced the prison management to change the living conditions not only for him, but for all prisoners under the threat of exposing the criminal conditions to the Commission of the European Union.
Weaknesses[]
Vasily is not the most physically strong person and a completely inexperienced fighter, so when the titushki squad tried to kill him and Yuriy Chuiko, the two could do nothing but run. Also, especially during the first time of being president, Goloborodko is a very inexperienced politician and leader, however, this quality of his increases greatly over time.
Quotes[]
| “ | "Democracy" is translated from Greek as the power of the people. Demos-kratos – people-power. Not "kratodemicy" – the power over the people. | „ |
| ~ Vasily Goloborodko to the deputies. |
| “ | This is a kind of paradox: the more helpers there are in this country, the more this state needs help. | „ |
| ~ Vasily to Yuriy Chuiko |
| “ | What a vicious circle: if honest, then necessarily a fool, if smart — a thief. | „ |
| ~ Vasily on corrupting influence of the politics |
| “ | Those who buy power for money get used to making a profit from it. Who said that? (Aristotle). This phrase is more than two thousand years old, and we still don't want to learn history. | „ |
| ~ Vasily Goloborodko |
Trivia[]
- Vasily's last name is speaking. "Goloborodko" can be translated as "Naked-beard" or "Beardless", which is a metaphor for Vasily's inexperience as a politician and his purity as president.
- The actor who played and created Goloborodko, Volodymyr Zelenskyy ran for president of Ukraine in 2019 and won the election, just like his character.