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Salomé Zourabichvili

5th president of Georgia

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Zourabichvili was born in Paris, France, into a family of Georgian political refugees. She joined the French diplomatic service in the 1970s and over three decades went on to occupy a variety of increasingly senior diplomatic positions. From 2003 to 2004, she served as the Ambassador of France to Georgia. In 2004, by mutual agreement between the presidents of France and Georgia, she accepted Georgian nationality and became the Foreign Minister of Georgia. During her tenure at the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), she negotiated a treaty that led to the withdrawal of Russian forces from the undisputed parts of the Georgian mainland.

Following disagreements with Georgia's then-ruling party United National Movement, in 2006 Zourabichvili launched her own political party, which she led until 2010. Ultimately, she was elected to the Georgian Parliament in 2016 as an independent. In 2018, Zourabichvili ran for president as an independent candidate and prevailed in a run-off vote against the UNM nominee Grigol Vashadze. During her presidential campaign, Zourabichvili was endorsed by the ruling Georgian Dream party; however, following the 2020–2021 Georgian political crisis, Zourabichvili became increasingly alienated from the GD-led Georgian government, a rift that worsened following the 2023 Georgian protests. As part of this inter-institutional conflict, the ruling party launched an impeachment proceeding against Zourabichvili in September 2023, but failed to gather sufficient votes to impeach her. Conflict with the ruling party has since developed into a political crisis in Georgia. When Mikheil Kavelashvili was elected as her successor, the validity of the election was contested, with Zourabichvili stating that she remains president until a legitimate replacement can be elected.

Family and personal life

Ancestry

Salome Zourabichvili was born into a family of Georgian emigrants that fled to France following the 1921 Red Army invasion of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. Her father, Levan Zourabichvili, a career engineer, served for many years as chairman of the Georgian Association of France (AGF). Levan is the maternal grandson of Niko Nikoladze (1843–1928), a businessman, philanthropist and Georgian politician of the late 19th century who served as a member of the Social-Democratic Party and was an influential leader of the Georgian liberal intelligentsia during the Russian Empire. Levan's brother, Georges Zourabichvili (1899-1944), was a philosopher and interpreter who was denounced for collaborating with the German occupiers in France and disappeared in 1944. Salome's mother, Zeïnab Kedia (1921–2016) was a daughter of Melkisedek Kedia, who served as the head of the Security Service of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, and the sister of Mikhail Kedia (1902–1954), a prominent member of the Wehrmacht's Georgian Legion during World War II.

Salome Zourabichvili has one brother, Othar Zourabichvili, a doctor, writer and chairman of the AGF since 2006. They are cousins of historian Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, who was a member of the Académie Française, and philosopher François Zourabichvili.

Youth

Salomé Zourabichvili was born in Paris on 18 March 1952 and was raised within the Georgian community in France, settled between Paris and Leuville-sur-Orge since the 1921 fall of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. Raised in a prominent emigrant family with close ties to the government-in-exile of Georgia, the diaspora was the only contact she had in her childhood with the country, once stating:

In the years before the Iron Curtain fell, there was no contact with Georgia–no letters, no newspapers, no visits. For us, it was a mythical country, which only existed in books.

At 8, she met her first visitor from Georgia during a visit to Paris by a Georgian ballet troupe, a meeting held in secret because of the repressive nature of the Soviet authorities organizing the visit. In an interview with The Washington Post, she said she felt comfortable "straddling the two cultures," attending French schools while going to the Georgian church of Paris on the weekends.

Higher education

At 17, Zourabichvili received baccalauréat results that allowed her "the privilege of a direct admission in the terrible preparatory year" of the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) in September 1969, a program out of which only half of its participants reach the Institute after a year. In May 1970, her final exam topic choice on "Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Europe between 1917 and 1923" guaranteed her a spot at the Institute. Later in 2019, the school would describe her results on the topics on the Rerum novarum, Kulturkampf and Alexander II's reforms as a "triumph", while a professor described her as a "very smart student who quickly learned the methodology and know-how of the program".

In 1970, Zourabichvili joined the International Section of Sciences Po, a path toward diplomatic service accessed only by a minority of the 4,000 students at the Institute, of which a third were women. She studied under a number of well-known French professors, such as historians Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, Louis Chevalier, her cousin Hélène Carrère d'Encausse and the international lawyer Suzanne Bastid, the latter two being the only women teaching at Sciences Po. Zourabichvili concentrated her studies on the Soviet world and graduated in July 1972.

In a letter of recommendation by Sciences Po Secretary-General René Henry-Gréard, the latter described her as a student who, despite her "shyness", possessed "exceptional qualities" and predicted a great future for her. She joined Columbia University in 1972–1973 where Zbigniew Brzezinski, at the time director of the Trilateral Commission, trained her on Soviet politics and Cold War diplomacy.

Zourabichvili has said that choosing a career in diplomacy she linked with hopes to one day being instrumental in helping Georgia.

Teaching career

Zourabichvili returned to Sciences Po in 2006, this time as a professor shortly after her departure as Georgian Minister of Foreign Affairs. She worked until 2014 at the Paris School of International Affairs, teaching the foreign policy of large powers, the post-Soviet world, the development of Eurasia since the fall of the USSR, and the causes for that fall. In that post, she academically analyzed the progress of the European Union in times of crisis. A student would later describe her classes as "encouraging important debates".

Family and private life

From her first marriage to a World Bank economist Nicolas Gorjestani, Zourabichvili has two children: Kéthévane (journalist for France 24) and Teymouraz (a French diplomat). In 1993, she married her second husband Janri Kashia, a Georgian writer and journalist who was a political refugee in France. Kashia died in 2012.

Besides French and Georgian, Zourabichvili speaks fluent English and conversational Italian. She has a dog named Gombora.

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