Wissenswertes

Rechtmäßiger Name: Ginzburg, Evgenia Semyonovna
Geburtstag: 1904-12-20
Todestag: 1977-05-25
Geschlecht: female
Nationalität: Russia
Geburtsort: Moscow, Russian Empire
Sterbeort: Moscow, Russia, USSR
Wohnorte: Kazan, Russia
Moscow, Russia
Kolyma Region, Soviet Union
Magadan, Soviet Union
Ausbildung: Kazan State University
Berufe: teacher
journalist
memoirist
Beziehungen: Aksyonov, Vasily (son)
Walter, Anton (husband)
Kurzbiographie: Evgenia Ginzburg was educated at Kazan State University. She married three times, first to Dmitriy Fedorov, a doctor; second to Pavel Aksyonov, the mayor of Kazan; and third to Anton Walter, a German-Russian doctor. She was appointed professor of history at Kazan State University in 1934 and was a Communist Party activist. Ginzburg was caught up in the Stalinist purges and was sent to labor camps in Siberia, where she spent 18 years (1937–1955) before being released and allowed to return to Moscow. She's best known for her two-volume autobiography and memoir of the camps, Journey Into the Whirlwind (1967) and Within the Whirlwind (1981).

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Into the Whirlwind von Eugenia Ginzburg

She was in Kazan at a teacher’s university when a friend, Nikolai Naumorich Elvov, and colleague was arrested for promulgating Trotskyist contraband and she was accused of not have denounced him. She never saw her husband, children, or parents again. She was in a world gone mad in which husband turned against wife, wife against husband, children denounced parents, parents denounced their children, and friends lied about friends. Her sentence was 10 years in solitary confinement which was eventually added to with years in a Kolyma workcamp in Siberia. It was a dreadful time on starvation rations, exhausting work felling trees, poor shelter, psychological torment, and constant fear. She would buoy her spirits by saying to herself, ‘no luck today lady Death.’ Oddly enough, she was, at the end of the book, still an avid communist who believed “the words of Lenin would come into their own again, and that the things that had happened to her would be made public to never happen again.”… (mehr)

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ShelleyAlberta | 13 weitere Rezensionen | Aug 28, 2023 |

Journey into the Whirlwind

This is the story of a teacher at a University who was sentenced to 10 years hard labor during Stalin's rule for the"crime" of being on the same faculty of a professor denounced for Anti-Party rhetoric. She actually ended up with a 17-year sentence. Her worst years are documented here.
My favorite part was on p.115: "Once, at the end of a stifling hot day, ...we heard a passable baritone singing the Toreador's Aria from 'Carmen' in the following unusual version:
"How many are you, pris'ners up there?
How many there? Please to declare!
Te-e-ell us who and what you are,
Tell us, tell us, we implore!
Our hearts are all aglow.
Your names, yes, yes, your names we want
to know.… (mehr)

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burritapal | 13 weitere Rezensionen | Oct 23, 2022 |

Within the Whirlwind (English and Russian Edition) von Eugenia Ginzburg

I found the first volume of Eugenia Ginzburg's work "Journey into the Whirlwhind," which is about Ginzburg's experience in Stalinist Russia as she was captured, tortured, and sentenced to a decade in a Siberian labor camp to be stunning and heartbreaking. I looked forward to reading "Within the Whirlwind," the second installment of her memoir.

I struggled a bit reading this book -- mostly because Ginzburg (probably due to necessity from the horrors she witnessed -- seems a much "flatter" writer in this volume. The story and the horrors of life in Siberian camps is just as striking, but it's told in a more matter-of-fact type style that made it a harder read.

Still, Ginzburg's observations are a solid (and heartbreaking) look at a terrible time in history.… (mehr)

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amerynth | 3 weitere Rezensionen | Feb 19, 2021 |

Journey into the Whirlwind von Eugenia Ginzburg

what a story. it's important and really gives me information into a period and travesty that i really hadn't learned much about. it's not particularly well written, and just ends abruptly - basically like, then there was 18 years of this and now I can look back - after giving so much detail throughout.

i was particularly struck by how so many people at that time memorized poetry and prose and could recite so much and for so long. this was obviously not the takeaway of this book but it was still something that really stood out.

maybe if i'd read this at another time i'd be surprised by the way we treat each other, by the cruelty we inflict (and the moments of humanity and generosity, too), but with the concentration camps at the border and the general state of the world, this is sadly not a surprise and not too exceptional right now..… (mehr)

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overlycriticalelisa | 13 weitere Rezensionen | Jul 9, 2019 |

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