Premio Princes of Asturias | Mother Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, primera mujer secretary of the Academia francesa

2023-08-05 21:07:34

the historian Helene Carrere d’Encaussefirst woman to hold the position of perpetual secretary of the French Academy, He passed away this Saturday at the age of 94.as announced by his family.

A specialist in tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, Carrère d’Encausse, awarded this year with the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, was one of the great references in the contemporary history of that country.

Arrive at the head of the Academy in 1999 to break the masculine tradition that had been maintained since the creation in 1635 of that institution, which it had entered in 1990.

Last May she was distinguished with el Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences 2023but will not receive it, since the delivery ceremony will take place next October.

So, he told EFE that he felt “extremely honoured” with the award. “It’s a reward that I didn’t expect, but it honors me a lot,” she added.

The writer and filmmaker Emmanuel Carrère, one of his three children, also received the Princess of Asturias, in his case in the Literature category, in 2021.

The historian and academic had been born stateless in Paris in 1929 as Hélène Zourabichvili, the daughter of a wealthy family of Russian exiles, of Georgian origin on her father’s side, making her a Russophone and Russophile scholar practically from the cradle.

He wrote more than thirty books, the vast majority on Russian and Soviet history. One of his most prominent was “The Empire Explodes”, published in 1978 and in which he already predicted the collapse of the former USSR due to nationalism.

At an international level, his image went around the world on February 9, with the entry into the academy of the Spanish-Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who invited the Spanish king emeritus Juan Carlos I to the ceremony.

Then, he greeted the new academic and his guest effusively, and despite his advanced age, He moved safely to lead the ceremony with ease.

French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to the “immortal” legacy left by Carrère d’Encausse and recalled that she accepted French nationality at the age of 21 out of attachment “to the country that saw her grow, to the language and her heritage.”

“Important historian, she was the first woman general secretary of the French Academy. Like her, his legacy is immortal“, Macron said in a message on the social network X (formerly Twitter).