When Alexandra Szacka speaks of Russia, of the Russians, one has the impression of seeing her heart racing, her tension rising. As if she were talking about a recent breakup.
“I have an uncontrollable love for Russia, but it’s a disappointed love,” said the former Radio-Canada journalist as she finished her dessert at the restaurant of the Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec in rue Saint-Denis, in Montreal.
We’ve been talking about his first great passion, journalism and, particularly, international journalism for well over an hour, when the subject of the war in Ukraine comes to mind with what was to be our last sip of coffee.
The fascination for Russia, we have it in common. I lived there for two years, I studied there and I returned there many times with a notebook and a pencil. Alexandra Szacka, she inherited the love of this country and its culture long before setting foot there as a journalist and spending three years there as a correspondent from 2007 to 2010. family history. My mother spent World War II there. My father, Julian, studied there. His first wife was Russian. We were raised in it, my sisters [Agnès et Joanna Gruda] and me. I love this language, literature, theatre. But politically, I can no longer feel this country, the delusions of grandeur and unbridled imperialism,” says the one who has just published her memoirs, I will travel around the world.
In this biography, Alexandra Szacka looks back on the reports that have marked her the most during her rich journalistic career which has spanned more than 30 years. We revisit the Tiananmen Spring of 1989 as much as the Ukrainian uprising on Maïdan Square in 2014. But long before talking about her career, the adopted Quebecer recounts the exile of her native Poland when she was a teenager. A forced exile caused by hints of anti-Semitism. An exile that broke her heart, but which quickly allowed her to understand what mattered most to her: freedom.
Freedom is being able to say no, to say yes, to choose your leaders. It was writing my book that made me realize how much it played a central role in my life. And this is where we come back to Russia. I hate the Russians for choosing servitude.
Alexandra Szacka
Servitude. The word is strong, but Alexandra Szacka persists and signs. “I understand that historically Russians have had little freedom. They went from being serfs [pendant la période des tsars] to Stalin’s slaves. I understand their story, but I do not forgive them. »
The Russia she was able to survey, she says, is not only the native land of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy and Modest Mussorgsky, the cultural heroes of the past, it is also a country full of wealth and possibilities. There are indeed, she recalls, a few exceptional figures who fought for democratization and openly opposed the fratricidal aims of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Mourza are now imprisoned. Boris Nemtsov was assassinated in front of the Kremlin. “But how do you explain that most Russians have tied themselves hand and foot to Vladimir Putin, a kleptocrat who will lead them to their death? I see it as a tragedy. A double tragedy. »
The second tragedy is, of course, the one suffered by the Ukrainians, attacked by the neighboring country, the enemy brother. But in their regard, Alexandra Szacka makes the opposite observation. “The Ukrainians, I find them so courageous, so far-sighted. And that’s what I saw in 2014 in Maïdan. What I saw were people taking charge, wanting to get out of it, wanting to be democrats. Yes, among them there were extremists, but there are also some in the United States, ”says the one who lives the current conflict with her guts as much as with her head. “I knew this war would happen. And I know that Poland or the Baltic countries are next on the list if Putin wins this war. »
If she has long refrained from expressing her opinions – duty of reserve obliges –, Alexandra Szacka speaks today with a disarming frankness. In I will travel around the worldshe does not fail to speak of the boys’ club and the other pitfalls she had to overcome to practice her profession to the height of her skills. “But let’s be clear, I am not a victim in life. There are things about my ride that I didn’t like, but I just pedaled harder to get where I wanted to go. I had the career I wanted. I just wish it was earlier, ”she argues, once again bluntly. She is proud – with good reason – to be one of the first allophone journalists to have acceded to a position of correspondent abroad.
Having worked in fifty countries, often far from her two children, she has also experienced her share of heartbreak. “When I worked for the show North South, my children were very small and we were leaving for several weeks. I left presents for the children all over the house. I have already recorded an entire book by Jacques Prévert so that my daughter, who was 7 or 8 years old, could hear my voice every evening. I put a lot of emphasis on my career, but having children was the best experience of my life,” she says.
I served as a role model for my children, but they missed things. My daughter used to tell me that her friends’ moms made muffins. Not me.
Alexandra Szacka
Today, her two children, grown up, travel to the four corners of the world. Like their mom.
Even if she is retired from Radio-Canada since 2019, she lives a dream life in the Tuscan city of Lucca, Alexandra Szacka still has to face her share of tears today. When the war in Ukraine started, she was dying to get back into the field. To use his knowledge and experience to report on this double tragedy that is transforming our world. “I have long been unbearable. I was only talking about that, she said, laughing. The job we practice, there is no cure. It’s way too interesting,” she told me. I will not contradict her.
Questionnaire without filter
Coffee and me: I love Italian cappuccino in Italy. Nowhere else is it so good and inexpensive.
The people I would like to gather at the table, dead or alive: Anton Chekhov, Marie Curie, Leonard Cohen and Elsa Morante, my favorite writer. My mother, Ilona Gruda, would also be there.
People who inspire me: My daughter Léa-Catherine, who has been a fighter since she was little, and my son Thomas, who has a beautiful soul, the soul of an artist and a thinker.
The last book I read: live fastby Brigitte Giraud, the Goncourt 2022.
Who is Alexandra Szacka?
- Born in Poland in 1953, Alexandra Szacka arrived in Quebec at the end of adolescence.
- A graduate in anthropology, she was a journalist on the show North South of Radio-Québec (today Télé-Québec) then at Radio-Canada, where she notably worked for public affairs programs Challenges And Free zone before joining the news department.
- She was also a Radio-Canada correspondent in Moscow and Paris.
- By the time she retired in 2019, she had reported from around 50 countries and won numerous awards. his memoirs, I will travel around the worldhave just been published by Boréal.