YouSaid · the spoken record

Marie Yovanovitch

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72

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2022-03-24

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2022-03-24

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1. “Opportunities come in all sorts of guises. You just have to be ready for them. Yeah, so I had been put in charge of the motorcade and the ambassador and his wife were supposed to travel back to their home with the Reagans. But Ambassador Price, he had a great relationship with Thatcher, Prime Minister Thatcher. He was a serious man, but he liked a party. And so, you know, they just stayed. And I'm like, hmm, what are we going to do? Because we had rented every vehicle in London for this enormous delegation that arrived from the United States. And so the last vehicle kind of pulled up and it's this sporty little MG. And Charlie Price was just a great guy when he comes out, he's expecting a limousine, right? A black limousine.”

   2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Yeah. Well, it was really challenging. And so I had joined the Ford Service because I wanted to do policy issues and the political work and so forth. And what I was doing in Mogadishu was administrative work. Embassies are little communities within a country. And if you're living in a place like London, obviously there are city services that work in the embassy uses as city services. But in a place like Mogadishu, where there was very spotty electricity, no trash pickup. Sometimes there was no water. The embassy had to provide all those services. It was often quite challenging because, as you mentioned, the corruption where people were trying to steal fuel or, you know, get a percentage on a particular contract. It was not the glamorous work one often thinks of when one thinks of diplomats.”

   2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “So it's actually the war in Grenada where I was reading the New York Times on the way to work on the subway. And I went into the office and I wanted to talk about it with my colleagues. And they wanted to talk about the Ad layout that was on somebody's desk. And it was just like this little epiphany that this is not what I should be doing. And so I went back to that original idea of the Foreign Service.”

   2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “So, I still didn't know what I wanted to do, but I took one of those personality tests and they said, you know, the test comes out that actually, you know, you'd be great in publishing, you would be great in advertising and marketing. So, you know, I went to New York, which is just a couple hours from my hometown and I interviewed and I ended up working in an ad agency. And here's the thing I would say. And I say that this not with any kind of sarcasm or anything, but that business is not so very different from some of the business of the United States government because whether you are trying to work a domestic policy or a foreign policy, you need to communicate with stakeholders and you need to be effective at it or else it's going to fail. And so that was actually pretty good. I learned a lot.”

   2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “And it was, it's hard to know how people can live that way. And I think we're seeing a return to that in Russia today as the outgrowth of Putin's policies, but also this war of choice against Ukraine.”

   2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Yeah, well, you know, it was 1980-81. The rest of the family didn't want to meet with me. I was just told it was not possible, which I understood as too dangerous. And so the aunt that met with me, I mean, she was in her 80s. And so I guess they felt that that was not going to compromise her or her future in any way. But even she, I mean, She lived in what was known as a communal apartment, which was an apartment that was cut up and a family would have each room. So she had this teeny, teeny little room and she rushed me through the common corridor and, you know, closed the door. And she said, you know, speak very softly because she didn't want anybody to know that a foreigner was in her apartment, much less a foreigner who was related to her, much less an American.”

   2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “An unfree world, but actually being there is much more educational because you can see it like right up front and viscerally. And I was still not truly in it, right? Because I had an American passport. I could always leave. Whereas, you know, the Russians and others that I met in what was then the Russian Republic in the Soviet Union, they were stuck and they somehow had to make the best of a very, very difficult situation. And seeing that was really important for me in terms of my later work.”

   2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “So, Alex Haley had just put out the book Roots, so there was this great flowering in America of Let's Find Out Our Ancestors and everything else. And, you know, again, being my parents' child where their Russian background was very important to them, I wanted to see what it was like. I wanted to see if I could meet the relatives that were still there. I wanted to find out more about, you know, the other superpower, right? Because I was interested in history and politics. And so, and of course the other thing is I didn't know what to do with my life. And so this seemed like a stopgap kind of a thing. I could kind of figure stuff out. And I'm really glad I went. Because it was, you know, book learning is important and you can learn the theory of how people can be repressed and what it's like to live.”

   2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “Yeah, I was there for about a year. So I went initially for a language course, and then I got, this was during the Cold War, so you couldn't just wash up in the Soviet Union and get a job. So I got employment with Canadian diplomats as the nanny to their children.”

   2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “It was terrible. I mean, the president of the United States is the most powerful person in the world, and that he would even be spending a minute thinking about me, much less trying to get me fired when he had that in his power to do. They didn't have to launch a smear campaign. They could just have recalled me. They didn't choose that path.”

    2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “No, and I tried, you know, I was a dutiful daughter, just as I was a rules following diplomat. And so I really tried to do my best. And yeah, not always with great success, but I tried. Because going back to the scars, my parents were always a little bit insecure and they passed that on to me. And they were always worried that maybe the job would go away and we needed to be careful and kind of they had a philosophy really of hoping for the best, but planning for the worst. And so there was always that feeling of tentativeness and maybe of being the other and not quite belonging in this very waspy kind of an environment.”

    2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Much happier listening and kind of thinking a little bit about what people are saying. I'm much happier one-on-one than in a big crowd. And I think that does facilitate kind of learning more about the country that you're in. When you have perhaps some of those deeper connections with individuals and you're listening, it's not just the US on broadcast.”

    2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “Yeah. Well, that's an interesting question. I haven't really thought about it in quite that way, but I am an introvert. And so I am much happier kind of listening. You're not going to know this from this conversation.”

    2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Had so many other problems. They were just like, okay, well, whatever. And it's really a shame because I had to relearn Russian and I never learned German. And I could have just had it like as a birthright. But, you know, I think that feeling of wanting to fit in is so strong. And I was doing what all kids do.”

    2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “It was pretty white red there. And it was, you know, the early 1960s. It wasn't the greatest thing in the world to be. From a Russian family, my mom growing up in Nazi Germany, these were not great connections and even as a small child, you somehow understand that. We moved from Montreal where my parents had spoken French to each other, but my mom started speaking English to my father so that his English would get up to speed for this new job he was taking on in Kent, Connecticut as a teacher. And so we started that switch in Montreal, but I still spoke German to my mom and Fresh and to my father. And about a week into moving to the United States, I was living next to a family with eight kids. And they were like eight little teachers for me. And I came back to my home and I said to my parents. And I was three. I said, yeah, not speaking English, anything except English from now on. And I think my parents.”

    2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “German literature language, and I think it brought the memories back. And so she shared some of them with us, but it was difficult times”

    2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Definitely felt that. And in some ways, they passed it on to me. I don't know if you feel that way, about your father. But in some ways, I carry some of that. I mean, I'm not saying that I understand exactly what it was like to live during that time. But, you know, my parents also They wanted our childhood to be a carefree, happy childhood. They didn't want to talk about the past because A, it was painful for them, but they didn't want us to be, well, I'm going to use that word again, burdened by it. But whenever the regrets I have is that I didn't ask enough. And I really wish I knew more about my father's early years. I mean, he told some stories, but it was rare when we would get him talking. My mom was a little bit more of an extrovert. She spoke a little bit more, but not. Hugely so, and it was really more after I was in high school.”

    2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “To understand how important it was that we live in liberty, that you can prosper in the United States, that they were able to worship the way they wanted, that they could say whatever they wanted. These are things that I think we often take for granted. But if you've lived under an autocrat, you know how precious they are. And so they kind of instilled that in us. told us that we needed to get back because we were lucky.”

    2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “The Russian front. And when he said no, then they called in the whole family. I mean, really, there must have been some incredibly trying moments when you try to decide what is the right thing to do when you have a family and yet you do not want to fight against your compatriots, the Russians. So they were able eventually to make their way to England. My mom immigrated to Canada where she met my father. I was born there and pretty quickly we moved to the United States. And I think my parents kind of exhausted from all that upheaval were really thrilled to put down roots in Connecticut. And they were just grateful to the United States that the U.S. had provided safe haven to us as it has to so many immigrants and refugees over the centuries. And they brought my brother up and myself up to”

    2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “And yet my father persevered. He had great faith. He had lots of talent as a musician. And he was able to somehow survive and ultimately in the United States even thrive. So my mom, she grew up in Nazi Germany as a stateless person, which is not, I mean, it was better than being Jewish, but not much. And so they didn't have any protections. And her father was also Russian. He had left after the Civil War in Russia. And somehow managed to survive during the Nazi period, but it was touch and go, and they were hungry nights. And my grandfather was even called in to the Gestapo and asked to go to...”

    2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Orphaned very young, and his father died almost immediately when they got to Yugoslavia. He had his whole own tragic story. And his mother put him in a school for cadets, for Russian cadets. This was an expatriate community in Yugoslavia for Russians. And cadets were generally the sons of noblemen, not that I come from a noble family, who were the Tsar's own guard. And all of the people that were in this school, they were sort of in this Russian community and they thought that they were going to go back to the Soviet Union and liberate the country and recreate Russia. That obviously did not happen. Instead, he went on to the Yugoslav military academy and was captured by the Germans almost in”

    2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Yeah. So my parents were incredible in many ways and in other ways. Their journey was very typical. My father left the Soviet Union when he was very small, grew up in Yugoslavia, was a German prisoner of war, and then lived at the, he escaped and lived out the rest of the war in France and then ultimately ended up in Canada. And my mom. Let me just stop on.”

    2022-03-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 482 — Amb. Marie Yovanovitch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source