Decline of an Empire: The Soviet Socialist Republics in Revolt
Russia Between Two Worlds
Hélène Carrère d'Encausse (French pronunciation:[elɛnkaʁɛːʁdɑ̃kos]; née Zourabichvili; 6 July 1929 – 5 August 2023) was a French political historian who specialised in Russian history. From 1999 until her death in 2023, she served as the Perpetual Secretary of the Académie Française, to which she was first elected in 1990.
Hélène Zourabichvili was born in the 16th arrondissement of Paris to Georges Zourabichvili, a Georgian émigré of educated middle class background, and Nathalie von Pelken, a penniless descendant of Prussian barons and Russian counts.[1][2] Both parents arrived in Paris in 1925. Her mother had grown up in Tuscany, where the remainder of her Russian family fortune was lost through misinvestment.[3] Of her two maternal great-uncles, the Counts Komarovskii, Viktor was in 1905–1907 the vice-governor of Vyatka, notorious for defenestrating Muslims, and Georgii a veteran of the Second Boer War, Russian invasion of Manchuria and Russo-Japanese War executed in 1920 by the revolutionaries.[4][5] Hélène's father, son of a Tiflis lawyer and a translator, had fled the Bolshevik takeover of the briefly independent Georgia in 1921 and studied philosophy and political economy in Berlin before re-joining his exiled family in Paris;[6][7] he spoke five languages, as did his wife-to-be.[8][9] In contrast to his family's fervent Georgian patriotism, however, he embraced Russian. Both families had been financially affected by the October Revolution, but unlike his brothers, Hélène's father did not have a successful career in France. He worked as a cab driver and a stall trader in provincial towns, while Hélène and her mother lived with distant relatives in Meudon, in an ethnic enclave of white Russian émigrés. By 1936 her father became a salesman at Vilmorin and the family moved to a small flat in Vanves. As a child, Hélène spoke Russian at home and only learned French at age four while on holiday in Brittany with an upper class French acquaintance of the family.[10][11]
Due to her interest in her family history,[11] the bulk of Carrère d'Encausse's work focused on Russia and the Soviet Union. She had over two dozen books published in French, many of which have been translated into English.[23] Her 1978 work L'Empire éclaté [fr] (English version, Decline of an Empire: The Soviet Socialist Republics in Revolt)[24] predicted that the Soviet Union was destined to break up along the lines of its 15 constituent republics, although she was incorrect in foreseeing that demographic pressures from the Muslim-majority republics of Central Asia would be the trigger.[25]
In commenting on current Russian affairs, Carrère d'Encausse warned against applying Western yardsticks to Russian democracy and said she regretted the excessive demonisation of the government of Vladimir Putin.[26] Up until the final days before Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine she refused to countenance such an eventuality, although her opinion of Putin changed after the start of hostilities.[27][28] After she died, Putin paid homage to Carrère d'Encausse as "a great friend of our country" and expressed the hope that her legacy would help improve French–Russian relations.[29]
European and domestic politics
In 1992, Carrère d'Encausse was invited by Culture Minister Jack Lang to chair the committee he had founded to promote a "yes" vote in that year's referendum on the Maastricht Treaty,[30] a task that Lang said she performed with "fervour and enthusiasm".[31]
In 2005, she controversially identified polygamy as one of the causes of France's 2005 civil unrest. During an interview given to the Russian television channel NTV, she claimed: "Why can't their parents buy an apartment? It's clear why. Many of these Africans, I tell you, are polygamous. In an apartment, there are three or four wives and 25 children."[34][35] She also said that political correctness on French television was "a nightmare" and was almost comparable to media censorship in Russia.[34]
As a member of the Academy, Carrère d'Encausse opposed both the feminisation of language, insisting that she be styled Madame le secrétaire perpétuel, and gender-inclusive language, describing the use of the interpunct to accommodate both genders (as in les auteur·rice·s) as "stupid" because of its impact on the musicality of a text.[38] Her 2020 ruling that Covid be considered a feminine noun was also fiercely criticised, including by fellow members of the Academy.[39]
Personal life
Born stateless, Hélène Zourabichvili acquired French citizenship in 1950.[40] In 1952 she married Louis Édouard Carrère d'Encausse, with whom she had three children: Emmanuel (born 1957), an author, screenwriter and director; Nathalie (1959), a lawyer; and Marina (1961), a physician and broadcast journalist.[41][2][42] Her brother was the composer Nicolas Zourabichvili,[9] and she was a cousin of Salome Zourabichvili, the current President of Georgia.[43]
Carrère d'Encausse died in Paris on 5 August 2023, at age 94.[42] President Emmanuel Macron announced that he would lead a national homage in her honour at the Hôtel des Invalides before the end of the summer.[28][44]
Carrère d'Encausse's page on the website of the Académie Française provides the following list of her publications.[37]
1966: Réforme et révolution chez les musulmans de l'Empire russe (Armand Colin), in English: Islam and the Russian Empire: Reform and Revolution in Central Asia (University of California Press, 1988)
1966: Le Marxisme et l'Asie (with Stuart R. Schram), 1853–1964 (Armand Colin)
1967: Central Asia, a century of Russian rule, Columbia Univ., réédition 1990 (Duke Univ. publication)
1969: L'URSS et la Chine devant la révolution des sociétés pré-industrielles (avec Stuart R. Schram) (Armand Colin)
1972: L'Union soviétique de Lénine à Staline (Éd. Richelieu), in English: History of the Soviet Union, 1917–1953. (Longman, New York 1981, 1982)
1975: La Politique soviétique au Moyen-Orient, 1955–1975 (Presses de la F.N.S.P.)
^The Second Bureau continued its counterespionage activities under the Vichy regime, which included surveillance of collaborationists and the underworld. Like the other secret services, it was highly concerned with countering German influence despite the occupation, although it could no longer execute German spies after 1942. Kitson 2008, p. 103, 159–162.
^Noiville, Florence (1 March 2007), "Emmanuel Carrère : « J'avais l'impression d'être enfermé »", Le Monde “Il est, dit Emmanuel Carrère, “le secret de ma mère. ... Ce livre était une chose que ma mère m’avait demandé de ne pas faire et que j’estimais ne pas pouvoir ne pas faire”.”
^Parker, Ian (4 July 2022), "Emmanuel Carrère Writes His Way Through a Breakdown", New Yorker “By making all this public, Carrère opened a rift with his mother. “For more than two years, there were very, very cold relations,” he told me. In time, they reconciled, he said, “but ‘reconciled’ means never talking about it”.”
