“Suddenly, the world around me remembered that I had Russian origins. It was February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin’s army invaded Ukraine and disrupted the life of Diana Filippova.
Born in Moscow, France since the age of 8, she felt perfectly French, always nourished by French literature, speaking French with her young son. And suddenly, Russia reminded her: “At the beginning, she tells us, it was an extremely strong emotion, difficult to grasp, embarrassing, sometimes depressing, with a note of fatality. »
“Nancy and Vandoeuvre seemed so peaceful to me! »
From this emotion arose a moving, powerful and subtle book, The Downside of Being Russian
. Or, as she writes, “the story of a Russian woman who from her earliest childhood decided not to be, the story of a disunity and the beginning of reconciliation”.
The story begins on Christmas Day 1993. Diana is 8 years old, her parents flee the chaos of post-Soviet Russia and land in Lorraine, in Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy. “I came from a megalopolis, Moscow, which at the time looked more like Bombay than New York,” she recalls. Next door, Nancy and Vandoeuvre seemed so peaceful to me, people were smiling, they were kind-hearted – another world! »
Integration is not easy, however. His parents, top scientists, have to start all over again. And Diana discovers the hardships of being an immigrant, “an experience of extreme otherness that suddenly upsets absolutely everything, and forever,” she explains, an experience that she compares to a change in social class. “It’s an eternal break, we’ll never forget this feeling of being rejected when we change environment or country, this feeling of being out of step, of lack of familiarity, which I was able to make a strength of, but which can bring you down. »
“When your country becomes an assassin…”
Russia therefore returns with the war, in February 2022. And inevitably, the French ask her what she thinks of it… “It is a rather rough moment. Since I’m French, I think badly of it, but since I’m also Russian, I’m flabbergasted. When your country becomes an assassin… It’s as if you were asked: what do you think of your father who killed 20 people? In fact, we don’t think, we suffer, we are overwhelmed by contradictory emotions, revolt and helplessness. »
Today, she publicly claims to wish the defeat of her native country. “It’s easier for me, I may not set foot in Russia. The conversation ends naturally with the writing: “I don’t think I will ever write in Russian,” says Diana Filippova, now 37 years old. “English, yes, French, infinitely, but Russian… There is still a rupture which has been consummated, definitively. »
On the inconvenience of being Russian, by Diana Filippova (ed. Albin Michel).
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