Koljós

Kolkhoz is Emmanuel Carrère's most intimate book: a captivating family history that begins with the state funeral of his mother, Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, a leading figure in French intellectual life, the first woman to head the Academy, and a renowned authority on Russian history. Her death in 2023 prompted the author to revisit a collection of archives, letters, and photographs his father had amassed throughout his life, which form the starting point of this investigation: a genealogy, deeply intertwined with some of the great conflicts of the 20th century, stretching from Tbilisi to Paris, from pre-revolutionary Russia to present-day Ukraine. Carrère thus reconstructs the journey of his great-grandparents, the Zurabishvilis, enlightened bourgeois who fled Georgia after the Bolshevik Revolution; his erratic grandfather Georges, marked by poverty, defeatism, and a collaboration with the German occupiers that has never been fully clarified; And, above all, the unstoppable rise of Hélène, brilliant, severe, rigorous, and often impenetrable; a legendary and controversial personality whose legacy and complexity influence those around her. She also rediscovers the discreet figure of her father, Louis, a gentle and humble character always in Hélène's shadow, who offers an affectionate counterpoint to her mother's austerity.