Hélène Carrère d'Encausse

Hélène Carrère d'Encausse (born Hélène Zourabichvili; 6 July 1929) is a French political historian of Georgian origin, specializing in Russian history. Since 1999, she has served as the Perpetual Secretary of the Académie française, to which she was first elected in 1990.

Carrère d'Encausse was a member of the European Parliament between 1994 and 1999, representing the Gaullist-conservative party RPR. She was awarded the Lomonosov Gold Medal and Grand Cross with Star of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland in 2008 and 2011, respectively. She is a cousin of Salome Zourabichvili, the current President of Georgia. In 2023 she was awarded the Princess of Asturias Award in Social Sciences.

Carrère d'Encausse was born Hélène Zourabichvili in Paris into a family of Georgian émigrés. She is a cousin of Salome Zourabichvili, the current President of Georgia. Her son, Emmanuel Carrère (born 1957), is a French author, screenwriter and director. Carrère d'Encausse graduated from Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris and was elected to seat 14 of the Académie française in 1990, later becoming the Académie's Perpetual Secretary in 1999. Her academician's sword was made by a Franco-Georgian sculptor Goudji.

The bulk of Carrère d'Encausse's work has been on Russia and the Soviet Union. She has had over two dozen books published in French, many of which have been translated into English. Her 1978 work L'empire éclaté: La révolte des nations en U.R.S.S (English version, Decline of an Empire: The Soviet Socialist Republics in Revolt) predicted that the Soviet Union was destined to break up along the lines of its 15 constituent republics. In commenting on current Russian affairs, Carrère d'Encausse has warned against applying Western yardsticks to Russian democracy and has said that she regrets the "excessive diabolization" of the regime of Vladimir Putin.

In 2005, Carrère d'Encausse joined other French politicians in identifying polygamy as one of the causes of the 2005 civil unrest in France. 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." These and similar remarks by others, including Nicolas Sarkozy and Bernard Accoyer, were disputed by the antiracist group MRAP, which blamed the unrest on French racism.

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