Address by Ambassador Alexander Darchiev at the reception on the occasion of Diplomats’ Day

Your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, friends and comrades,

It gives me true pleasure to wholeheartedly welcome you to the Russian Embassy for what has already become a good tradition to celebrate Diplomats’ Day, observed in Russia and in few other countries, so far.

I hope you will join me in campaigning for a globally celebrated Diplomats’ Day, on which ambassadors, senior and junior staff, even administrative personnel could legally stay home, with offices closed and salaries paid for an extra holiday.

To be serious, I do believe that we, diplomats, deserve such encouragement for a hard work, for a boring and sometimes dull routine which is needed to be done, after all, with diligence and creativity.

Diplomacy in itself, however hard and demanding is the job of being a diplomat, and especially a spouse of a diplomat who have to change homes and occupations, proves, nonetheless, to be indispensable and rewarding, promoting dialogue and mutual understanding between nations, bringing countries and their leaders together, despite disagreements and animosities.

It’s a primary commandment of any Ambassador to make bilateral relations with a host country better; there are many others who would like to spoil these relations, but a Mission Chief’s duty and fate are to promote mutual engagement against all odds.

Russian diplomacy dates back at least to the times of Ivan the Terrible, and it has its martyrs; among them is Russian poet and classic Alexander Griboyedov, killed in 1829 by a mob in Tehran; our colleague and bright personality Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov who was cowardly shot in the back in Ankara just a few months ago.

Still, diplomats are optimists by definition, and not only due to our professional abilities to send someone to hell so tactfully that he or she would look forward to the trip; it’s because we are informed pessimists, still reading books sometimes and knowing history first hand.

Being informed and willing to hear and listen, doing best to the utmost to have all sides of the story heard, are part and parcel nowadays of responsible diplomacy; with so many formidable challenges on the rise, including that of international terrorism, it’s an imperative to join efforts instead of setting new division lines and fomenting old phobias anew.

So, I’m positive that seemingly insurmountable roadblocks will be bypassed, and, at the end of the day, diplomacy will prevail over enmity, discord and various value gaps.

I would better stop here, but before we move to the more encouraging part of our reception, let me ask for your enthusiastic support of far-reaching initiative to lobby our respective governments and legislatures to enact a fully and globally observed International Diplomats’ Day.

Let me propose a toast to new beginnings and old friends, to pragmatic discussions and beneficial cooperation, to Russia and Canada, to us, diplomats. Cheers!

Thank you.