A national tribute will be paid to the historian Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, who died on Saturday in Paris at the age of 94, “before the end of the summer” at the Invalides, announced the Elysée.
In a statement released Sunday evening, President Emmanuel Macron and his wife salute “an exceptional destiny, driven by love for our country, its language and its culture”.
The Head of State had already hired a “major historian” on Saturday. “She was the first female Permanent Secretary of the French Academy. Like her, her legacy is immortal”, he had developed in a message on the X platform (ex-Twitter).
Born in Paris on July 6, 1929, Hélène Carrère d’Encausse was the daughter of an Italian and a Georgian philosopher who emigrated to France, Georges Zourabichvili, who would later be assassinated. She acquired French nationality in 1950 and two years later married Louis Carrère, dit Carrère d’Encausse.
A specialist in Russia, she is the author of several biographies including those of Lenin, Stalin and Catherine II. A member of the French Academy since 1990, Hélène Carrère d’Encausse opposed the feminization of the French language and more generally inclusive writing.
She also had a political career and was notably elected to the European Parliament in June 1994. The Élysée pays tribute in its press release to “a woman who crossed her century, marked the era, managed to transmit its history to thousands of readers.