62-year-old lawyer and political scientist shares her experience as a diplomat acquired while working in the US, Canada, and the Balkan countries.
“I became interested in international politics very early, when I was 10 or 12 years old. In lycée, I conclusively decided that studying lives of other nations was my calling,” she says.
- Did the way you were brought up by your family contribute to your future career choice?
- I'm offspring of a simple French family of modest means, raised on high moral standards. I was born and grew up in a small village with less than one thousand people. My parents did not have the opportunity to go to university, so for a while they had to live off a small farm and work in a farming cooperative. This was where they met, got married, and, two years later, had me, their only daughter. I was the only child because there occurred complications while giving birth and my mother could not have any more babies.
As a person with peasant roots, I still worship work as my biggest god.
They saved up a little and bought a small business in the village. And when I was seven, my parents moved to Paris. They were working fourteen hours a day and did their best to provide me with a good education, so I could pursue my dreams. For instance, I was having trouble with Maths at one point, so my parents paid a teacher to help me fill the gaps. In short, the house was always permeated with the spirit of work.
As a person with peasant roots, I still worship work as my biggest god. And I'm thankful to my parents for that – they are already in their late years, but still very energetic. Still, I feel anxiety and concern being so far from them and not being able to see them more often.
- What impression did Paris make to a seven-year-old girl?
- We settled in the 13th arrondissement that one can hardly recognise today. Back then, it looked like a big village to me, where you'd always meet a familiar hairdresser, baker, sweet or fruit seller, antique shop owner, where you'd always walk to school in several minutes. I did not experience a big city shock, nor surprise at great contrasts.
I went to Lycée Claude Monet for girls, quite well-known among French, and it brought me up on what is often called the French education: respect for tradition, good manners, impeccable knowledge of my country's history and culture... I first experienced what it was like being in a mixed boys-and-girls company when I went to university – I studied law at first and then political science.
- The image of France is shaped by certain stereotypes – high fashion, impressionist painting, le Louvre as well as wine, snails, blue cheese. Which of such stereotypes would you like to dispel?
- Why dispel them if they make my country famous? (Laughs) Yes, Paris gave the world haute couture and put the phrase into everyone's lips, even though today many fashion houses have non-Frenchmen as their artistic directors. It was fashion that turned my city into the capital of elegance in the widest sense of the word.
Immigration from Africa, Asia, Latin America has greatly and irreversibly changed the face of Paris, not to mention frequent explosions in the suburbs.
Gastronomically Paris is true backwoods – most gourmet dishes and the entire French cuisine were brought to the capital from provinces – the ten-million-big city owes them a great deal. For perfumery too – its Mecca is the village of Gras in Provence.
- How is today's Paris different from Paris of your youth?
- It has turned into a multicultural megalopolis that seems to be on the verge of exploding from so many people. True, it is not Tokyo or Mexico City yet, but such a huge surge of people does not only strain airports and the metro, but also architecture of past centuries – the city seems to need constant repair.
In my youth, when the capital looked like a big village, an opening of a Chinese restaurant would be met with much curiosity. Now, it is even hard to keep track of such changes. Immigration from Africa, Asia, Latin America has greatly and irreversibly changed the face of Paris. Not to mention frequent explosions in the suburbs.
- Has the portrait of a French woman undergo comparably radical changes?
- What a difficult question! I was witness to huge changes of women's world: the fact that my female compatriots were granted suffrage only after World War Two – much later than in other civilized Western European states – caused considerable tension and, later, an explosion; and still, it wasn't until the sixties that French women could open a personal bank account; that women attained full age at 18 and not 21; and that they were given the right to terminate pregnancy and use contraception.
When I was a student, a strong feminist movement emerged. True, I myself – a girl educated on good manners – did not go to any rallies. I can remember very well the events of May 1968 in Paris – frenzy of rising barricades, burning posters, and braking windows of chic boutiques. I was in my first year of a political science degree. Our institute – as well as two boulevards, Saint Germain and Saint Michel – and Odeon theatre and Sorbonne University – were all occupied by students. A highly unusual spectacle. All exams cancelled...
The fact that my female compatriots were granted suffrage only after World War Two – much later than in other civilized Western European states – caused considerable tension and later an explosion.
These events coincided with the hippie movement which, it must be said, was rather marginal in France and not quite as pronounced as in, say, the US or Great Britain. When in 1981 I started a job as cultural attaché in the French General Consulate in San Francisco, I had the chance to get to know better the hippie wave that started there.
- The most remarkable stage of your career was spent in the Balkan countries (Belgrade 1985-1988; Sarajevo 2006-2010). Between 1998 and 2001 you were EU expert in Sarajevo.
- Fate had it that I was to witness major political turning-points of Yugoslavia: from former communist leader Josip Broz Tito to current heads that replaced him as the regime broke apart and the Balkan states separated and declared independence.
It wasn't easy helping those countries preserve democracy and sovereignty, reconciling Serbs, Bosnians, and Croatians, but it was a very interesting and meaningful mission. It was the biggest professional challenge for me as a diplomat. History and lives of separate nations were so disordered in the Balkans that people's mentality, decisions, and actions were completely unpredictable in the face of war.
- Would you agree that Lithuanian national character is the exact opposite of that of Southern Slavs?
- Before coming to your country, I studied Lithuanian history in some detail – it is, by the way, also very complicated. There aren't many nations that could have survive such historic challenges. It seems even more surprising, once you meet actual Lithuanians and see how timid, austere, a little stern, and reserved they are.
Vilnius and Lithuania are two different worlds, just like Paris and France.
For a Lithuanian to open up, it takes time and opportunities for longer conversations, one must create atmosphere of complete trust. I sensed that particularly clearly when I went to the provinces with francophone projects: Anykščiai, Pasvalys, Alytus, Marijampolė. People are very warm there, but timid, they have great ideas, but hesitate to say them outright.
By the way, Vilnius and Lithuania are two different worlds, just like Paris and France. They say that in order to experience a country's authentic colours, you must go to a marketplace. I haven't been to a market in Vilnius yet, but what I saw here on the first weekend of March, during St Casimir, impressed me a lot.
