The JDNews. To the entire East, you say! But what are you looking for in Eastern countries with such avidity that you no longer find in France?
Jean-Christophe Buisson. I didn’t go looking for emotion or strong sensations. Initially, I went there by chance for professional reasons. At the start of my career, I quickly felt that the Balkans were an area somewhat neglected by the press, particularly Serbia, seen then as a monstrous nation. I told myself that I wasn’t going to do like the others. I was going to be interested in these countries that no one is interested in. Was this a way to single me out…? Certainly. Once in Serbia for my first reports, I am captivated by what I see and what I feel. I am amazed to discover everything that we, French, have lost: national pride, an identity, the fact of assuming one’s history, one’s past, one’s memory. I step out of my Westernized comfort to share their daily life with all their excesses and their failings: the slightest conversation leads to the memory of a battle, an occupation, a historical drama.
In 1996, while covering the anti-Milosevic demonstrations, I was struck to see the students of the Belgrade faculty dismissing Jack Lang and BHL, who had supposedly come to support them, like trash. Anti-Milosevic as they were, the Serbian students could not stand the lessons on happy globalization from those they considered as purveyors of anti-Serb hatred. They were right before anyone else: three years later, the two applauded the bombing of their city by NATO. That day, I was amazed by these students who wanted to liberate themselves by getting rid of communism, without throwing themselves into the arms of the progressive West. They wanted to do it with their own history, their own memory, their own pride.
What do men of the East have more or less than men of the West?
I believe that what differentiates us above all is a form of sincerity and natural generosity. When you meet a Russian for the first time, for example, he scolds you! The man in the street never displays an ear-to-ear smile as a welcome. When you say hello, he crushes your hand. He’s testing you. He says to himself: “If we are called to experience something together, to be friends, it will not be about our mutual appearance, but we will live an experience together, a unique adventure. So, after our meeting, we will judge if we can smile at each other and appreciate each other. » It’s the opposite in the United States, where everything is “amazing”. What’s in your stomach? asks the Russian. Then he opens his heart to you. In Russia, you must first deserve to be loved.
“I have never set foot in the United States”you write out of bravado. “No west” ! What event could have triggered this radical decision in you?
I’m not stopping myself from going there one day but there’s no rush… There are still so many things to discover in the East. Indeed, I have never had a fascination for the United States, nor for its cinema, nor for its literature.
You are undoubtedly the only person in France who responded positively to comedian Gaspard Proust’s quip: “Do you know any people on the left who, when the Berlin Wall fell, fled to the East? »
The joke is funny but it doesn’t concern me. I have never been left-wing! On the contrary, I am from an anti-communist generation. As for the countries of Eastern Europe, it seemed to me that if we scratched, we would find something other than peoples completely subjugated and lobotomized by communism for eternity.
“ In France, we are in the reign of the individual king, of the frenzy of consumption and personal success »
These countries have experienced the red night for decades. When they emerged from communism, they kept this idea that collective destiny was more important than the individual. Maybe that’s what I want to look for there. In France, we are in the reign of the individual king, of the frenzy of consumption and personal success. There is no longer a collective destiny, except a little in sport, and then again. And then, there is also something in the Orthodox faith that interests me, its relationship to nature. It is a faith that has retained overtones of paganism. You have to go to deep Russia to discover it and not be satisfied with Moscow or Saint Petersburg.
Serbia played a crucial part in your life as a journalist. “All roads start from Belgrade,” you write. What have these people awakened in you?
My soul as a historian. This country is a historian’s paradise. Serbia has an incredibly rich, exciting and fascinating shared history with France for two centuries. A Constitution directly inspired by the July Monarchy, French ministers in Serbian governments. Victor Hugo, Lamartine… There is this story that interested me, especially since the image that was sent of this country because of the wars of 1991-1995 was that of a country populated by monsters. I wanted to dig deeper and I think it was more interesting to see what was happening in Belgrade during the 1999 bombings than to go and copy the NATO reports from Brussels.
There were few of us there. I was there when NATO planes “by mistake” bombed the Chinese embassy, killing a Chinese journalist I knew. I was devastated by his death. That’s why I stopped reporting on war. At some point, you wonder if it’s all worth it. I don’t have the temperament of a war reporter. I’ve covered some, but at heart I’m a historian who does reporting. I don’t have the taste for adrenaline that photographers can have. Nor their incredible courage.
Exiled in France, the Russian writer Wladimir Weidlé already lamented in the 1960s: “Basically, the Western reader knows only one Russian author, Leon-Fedor Tolstoyevsky, author of War and Punishments”. Has Russia become a lost cause in France?
And the worst is that the situation continues to deteriorate… I am very worried because I see clearly that the political decision has been taken to stop teaching Russian in France. National Education has not opened any teaching positions in Russian in 2026. The Russian language is no longer offered in the Capes and aggregation teaching competitions in both the public and private sectors. We are doing what was never even done with Nazi Germany: banning the German language. France is quietly erasing Russian culture, music and literature by boycotting or forbidding musicians, filmmakers, writers and painters from coming to France, unless they have expressly denounced the Russian government, and again… Structurally, there will be fewer and fewer young French people who will know Russia.
Russian culture has become something monstrous. The boycott is not only focused on Vladimir Putin, but on everything related to Russia. Russia, at the end of the day, are barbarians, period. It’s not discussed, even by people who have never set foot there.
Completely to the East! Stories, meetings and reports 1996-2026 Jean-Christophe Buisson, Perrin, 496 pages 12.50 euros.
