Within the Whirlwind

Within The Whirlind Portrayal of Eugenia Ginzburg’s “Great Terror”

The book I have read, and am writing on, was written by Eugenia Ginzburg and is called Within the Whirlwind. This book is a sequel to her first book entitled- Journey into the Whirlwind. Within the Whirlwind was published in 1982 and translated by Ian Boland who personally knew Eugenia Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg (Yevgenia in Russian) tells the remarkable tale of her valiant struggle to stay alive in Siberian Gulag’s and prisons all the while separated from her family on the mainland for 18 years. Ginzburg describes with startling detail the horrors of daily life after the 1937 Stalinist purges. Also, during this time, World War II was being waged and Russia and Germany were in battle. Stalin was in power in the Soviet Union and ruled with an iron fist. He systematically eradicated all of his ideological enemies but exaggerating or flat out falsifying information that someone is a Trotyskist, counter revolutionary, terrorist or saboteur. Eugenia Ginzburg says Stalin and Hitler are the only 2 men “she has ever hated.” Eugenia was born on December 20th 1906 and died May 25th 1977 and was married to a high-ranking party official named Pavel Aksyonov. She was a loyal Communist until she began to doubt the “correctness” of Stalin’s teachings. Eugenia was accused of Counter-Revolutionary activity because she failed to denounce a former colleague who had now been shunned for Trotskyism. Eugenia was taken from her family and thrown into a high security prison with 17 years of corrective labor camps and prisons to follow. She was told her husband was dead and lost contact with him. Her first born son Aloysha died and she was separated from her second son for over 12 years. This is the remarkable story of a courageous woman who never gave up hope.

Within the Whirlind {continued from previous book, Journey into the Whirlind} It was 1938 and Eugenia Ginzburg was working at the children’s home at the...