Historian Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, first woman to hold the position of perpetual secretary of the French Academy.
the historian Helene Carrere d’Encaussethe first woman to hold the position of perpetual secretary of the French Academy, died this Saturday at the age of 94, her family announced.
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.
He came to 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 he had entered in 1990.
Last May she was distinguished with the 2023 Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, but she will not receive it, since the award ceremony will take place next October.
Then, she told EFE that she felt “extremely honored” with the award. “It is a reward that I did not expect, but it honors me a lot,” she added.
Mother of the writer Emmanuel Carrère, she was born 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 studious Russophone and Russophile 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 Llosawho 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 confidently to lead the ceremony with ease. EFE