Yevgenia Ginzburg (November 20, 1896 - May 25, 1977) (
Russian languageRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
: Евгения Соломонова Гинзбург) was a
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n author who served a 18-year sentence in the
GulagThe Gulag or GULAG was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. The term is infamous for its association with remote places where prisoners were kept and sometimes disappeared...
. Her given name is often
latinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
ized to Eugenia.
Born in
MoscowMoscow is the capital and the largest city of Russia. It is also the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world, a...
, her parents were Solomon Natanovich Ginzburg (a Jewish
pharmacistPharmacists are health professionals who practice the science of pharmacy. In their traditional role, pharmacists typically take a request for medicines from a prescribing health care provider in the form of a medical prescription, evaluate the appropriateness of the prescription, dispense the...
) and Revekka Markovna Ginzburg. The family moved to
KazanKazan is the capital city of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia, and one of Russia's largest cities. It is a major industrial, commercial and cultural center, and remains the most important center of Tatar culture. Since April 2009 Kazan has the legal right to brand itself as the "Third Capital" of...
in 1909.
In 1920, she began to study
social sciencesThe social sciences are the fields of scientific knowledge and academic scholarship that study social groups and, more generally, human society. The social sciences initially were constituted of five fields: Jurisprudence and Amendment of the Law; Education; Health; Economy and Trade; Art...
at
Kazan State UniversityKazan State University is located in Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia. It was founded in 1804. The famous Russian mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky was its rector from 1827 until 1846...
, later switching to
pedagogyPedagogy is the study of being a teacher. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction.Pedagogy is also sometimes referred to as the correct use of teaching strategies . For example, Paulo Freire referred to his method of teaching adults as "critical pedagogy"...
.
Yevgenia Ginzburg (November 20, 1896 - May 25, 1977) (
Russian languageRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
: Евгения Соломонова Гинзбург) was a
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n author who served a 18-year sentence in the
GulagThe Gulag or GULAG was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. The term is infamous for its association with remote places where prisoners were kept and sometimes disappeared...
. Her given name is often
latinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
ized to Eugenia.
Born in
MoscowMoscow is the capital and the largest city of Russia. It is also the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world, a...
, her parents were Solomon Natanovich Ginzburg (a Jewish
pharmacistPharmacists are health professionals who practice the science of pharmacy. In their traditional role, pharmacists typically take a request for medicines from a prescribing health care provider in the form of a medical prescription, evaluate the appropriateness of the prescription, dispense the...
) and Revekka Markovna Ginzburg. The family moved to
KazanKazan is the capital city of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia, and one of Russia's largest cities. It is a major industrial, commercial and cultural center, and remains the most important center of Tatar culture. Since April 2009 Kazan has the legal right to brand itself as the "Third Capital" of...
in 1909.
Early career
In 1920, she began to study
social sciencesThe social sciences are the fields of scientific knowledge and academic scholarship that study social groups and, more generally, human society. The social sciences initially were constituted of five fields: Jurisprudence and Amendment of the Law; Education; Health; Economy and Trade; Art...
at
Kazan State UniversityKazan State University is located in Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia. It was founded in 1804. The famous Russian mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky was its rector from 1827 until 1846...
, later switching to
pedagogyPedagogy is the study of being a teacher. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction.Pedagogy is also sometimes referred to as the correct use of teaching strategies . For example, Paulo Freire referred to his method of teaching adults as "critical pedagogy"...
. She worked as a
rabfak (рабфак, рабочий факультет, workers' faculty) teacher. In April 1934, Ginzburg was officially confirmed as a
docentDocent is a title at some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks below professor...
(approximately equivalent to an associate professor in western universities), specializing in the history of the Communist Party. Shortly thereafter, on May 25, she was named head of the newly created department of the history of Leninism. However, by the fall of 1935, she was forced to quit the university.
She first married a doctor Dmitriy Fedorov, by whom she had a son, Alexei Fedorov, born in 1926. He died in 1941 during the
siege of LeningradThe Siege of Leningrad, also known as The Leningrad Blockade was an unsuccessful military operation by the Axis powers to capture Leningrad during World War II. The siege started at 8 September 1941, when the last land connection to the city was severed...
. Around 1930, she married Pavel Aksyonov, the mayor (председатель горсовета) of Kazan and a member of the Central Executive Committee (ЦИК) of the USSR. Her son by this marriage,
Vasily AksyonovVasily Pavlovich Aksyonov was a Soviet and Russian novelist. He is known in the West as the author of The Burn and Generations of Winter , a family saga depicting three generations of the Gradov family between 1925 and 1953.-Early life:Vasily Aksyonov...
, born in 1932, became a well-known writer. After becoming a Communist Party member, Ginzburg continued her successful career as educator, journalist and administrator.
Persecution
Following the assassination of Sergei Mironovich Kirov on December 1, 1934, Ginzburg, like many communists (see the
Great PurgeGreat Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1937–1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and Government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of...
), was accused of participating in a "counter-revolutionary Trotskyist group," this one led by Professor N. N. El'vov and concentrated in the editorial board of the newspaper
Krasnaya Tatariia [Red Tataria]. After a long fight to keep her party card, she was expelled from the party (officially, she was excluded on February 8, 1937). Then, on February 15, 1937, she was arrested, accused of engaging in counter-revolutionary activity in El'vov's group and concealing this activity. Because she was a party member throughout this alleged activity, she was also accused of "playing a double game." Perhaps, what is most remarkable about the ordeal Ginzburg was then forced to endure is that she never gave in. From the day of her arrest, and unlike most of those around her, she forcefully denied the NKVD's accusations and never accepted any role in the supposed "counter-revolutionary Trotskyist organization."
Her parents were also arrested but released two months later. Her husband was arrested in July, sentenced to 15 years of "corrective labor," and his property was confiscated, under Articles 58-7 and 11 of the
RSFSR Penal CodeArticle 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on February 25, 1927 to arrest those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. It was revised several times...
.
Trial
On August 1, 1937, although Ginzburg still did not recognize her supposed guilt (despite the NKVD's repeated, ruthless interrogations), a closed meeting of the Military College of the Supreme Court of the USSR (in Moscow) sentenced her to 10 years imprisonment with deprivation of political rights for five years and confiscation of all her personal property. The judgement was declared to be final with no possibility of appeal. Ginzburg later wrote, in a letter to the chairman of the Presidium of the USSR's Supreme Soviet, that her entire "trial" took six minutes, including the questioning and reading of the judgement: "My judges were in such a hurry that they did not answer any of my questions and declarations." Interestingly, in one of the most revealing chapters of her autobiography, Ginzburg expressed great
relief upon hearing the verdict, because she had feared up to that very moment that she would be condemned to death:
"To live! Without property, but what was that to me? Let them confiscate it -- they were brigands anyway, confiscating was their business. They wouldn't get much good out of mine, a few books and clothes -- why, we didn't even have a radio. My husband was a loyal Communist of the old stamp, not the kind who had to have a Buick or a Mercedes... Ten years! ...Do you [the judges], with your codfish faces, really think you can go on robbing and murdering for another ten years, that there aren't people in the Party who will stop you sooner or later? I knew there were -- and in order to see that day, I must live. In prison, if needs be, but I must at all costs live! ... I looked at the guards, whose hands were still clasped behind my back. Every nerve in my body was quivering with the joy of being alive. What nice faces the guards had! Peasant boys from Ryazan or Kursk, most likely. They couldn't help being warders -- no doubt they were conscripts. And they had joined hands to save me from falling. But they needn't have -- I wasn't going to fall. I shook back my hair curled so carefully before facing the court, so as not to disgrace the memory of Charlotte Corday. Then I gave the guards a friendly smile. They looked at me in astonishment."
Imprisonment and exile
Yevgenia experienced at first-hand the infamous
LefortovoLefortovo prison is a prison in Moscow, Russia, since 2005 in the command of the Ministry of Justice of Russia. It was constructed in 1881. It was named after the Lefortovo District of Moscow where it is located, which in turn took its name from Franz Lefort, a close associate of Tsar Peter I the...
and
ButyrkaButyrka prison was the central transit prison in pre-Revolutionary Russia, located in Moscow.The first references to Butyrka prison may be traced back to the 17th century...
prisons in Moscow, and the
YaroslavlYaroslavl is a city in Russia, the administrative center of Yaroslavl Oblast, located north-east of Moscow. The historical part of the city, a World Heritage Site, is located at the confluence of the Volga and the Kotorosl Rivers. Population:...
"Korovniki". She crossed the USSR on a prison train to
VladivostokVladivostok is Russia's largest port city on the Pacific Ocean and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai. It is situated at the head of the Golden Horn Bay not far from Russia's border with China and North Korea...
and was put in the cargo hold of the steamer
Jurma (Джурма) whose destination was
MagadanMagadan is a port town on the Sea of Okhotsk and gateway to the Kolyma region. It is the administrative center of Magadan Oblast , in the Russian Far East. Founded in 1929 on the site of an earlier settlement from the 1920s, it was granted the status of town in 1939...
. There she worked at a camp hospital, but was soon sent to the harsh camps of the
KolymaThe Kolyma region is located in the far north-eastern area of Russia in what is commonly known as Siberia but is actually part of the Russian Far East. It is bounded by the East Siberian Sea and the Arctic Ocean in the north and the Sea of Okhotsk to the south...
valley, where she was assigned to so-called "common jobs" and quickly became an emaciated
dokhodyaga ("goner"). A Crimean German doctor, Anton Walter, probably saved her life by recommending her for a nursing position; they eventually married. Anton had been deported because of his German heritage.
In February 1949, Ginzburg was released from the
GULAGThe Gulag or GULAG was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. The term is infamous for its association with remote places where prisoners were kept and sometimes disappeared...
system, but had to remain in
MagadanMagadan is a port town on the Sea of Okhotsk and gateway to the Kolyma region. It is the administrative center of Magadan Oblast , in the Russian Far East. Founded in 1929 on the site of an earlier settlement from the 1920s, it was granted the status of town in 1939...
for five years. She found a position at a kindergarten and began to write her memoirs in secret. However, in October 1949, she was arrested again and exiled to the
KrasnoyarskKrasnoyarsk a city on the Yenisei River in central Russia. It is the capital of Krasnoyarsk Krai and the third largest city in Siberia with population of 948,500...
region, but (at her request) her destination was changed to Kolyma at the last minute. No reason was ever given for this second arrest and exile.
Rehabilitation and later life
After Stalin's death in 1953 and following Ginzburg's repeated, vigorous appeals to various authorities to have her case reconsidered, she was released from the
GULAGThe Gulag or GULAG was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. The term is infamous for its association with remote places where prisoners were kept and sometimes disappeared...
(on 25 June 1955) and allowed to return to Moscow. She was rehabilitated in 1955, as were millions of those wrongly convicted under Stalin's rule, many posthumously.
She returned to
MoscowMoscow is the capital and the largest city of Russia. It is also the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world, a...
, worked as a reporter and continued her work on her
magnum opusMagnum opus , from the Latin meaning great work, refers to the largest, and perhaps the best, greatest, most popular, or most renowned achievement of an author, artist, or composer.The term Great Work is also used in several...
, her memoir
Journey into the WhirlwindJourney into the Whirlwind is the English title of the critically acclaimed memoir by Eugenia Ginzburg in 1967, some thirty years after the novel takes place....
(English title). She finished the book in 1967 but was unable to publish it in the USSR. The manuscript was then smuggled abroad and translated into many languages. Eventually, her memoir was divided into two parts, whose Russian titles are "Krutoi marshrut I" and "Krutoi marshrut II" -- "Harsh Route" or "Steep Route." She died in Moscow, aged 72.
Movie
A biographic movie, Within the Whirlwind (movie) is in
post-productionPost-production is part of the filmmaking process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, videos, audio recordings, photography and digital art...
. Featuring actress
Emily WatsonEmily Anita Watson is an English actress. She made an acclaimed debut film performance in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves.-Personal life:...
as Yevgenia Ginzburg, with
Pam FerrisPam Ferris is a German-born British actress. She is best known for her starring roles on television as Ma Larkin in The Darling Buds of May and Laura Thyme in Rosemary & Thyme, and for playing Miss Trunchbull in the movie Matilda, and Aunt Marge in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of...
and
Ben MillerBen Miller, is an English comedian, director and actor.-Career:Miller's career began while studying for a PhD in solid-state physics at St Catharine's College, Cambridge when a friend asked him to help ferry around some judges for an arts festival...
in other roles. It is slated for a 2009 release.
See also
- Samizdat
Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet-bloc; individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader, thus building a foundation for the successful resistance of the 1980s...
- Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code)
Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on February 25, 1927 to arrest those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. It was revised several times...
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Soviet and Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his writings he made the world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system — particularly The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, his two...
- Khrushchev Thaw
The Khrushchev Thaw refers to the period from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s, when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were partially reversed and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released from Gulag labor camps, due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinisation and...
- Vasily Aksyonov
Vasily Pavlovich Aksyonov was a Soviet and Russian novelist. He is known in the West as the author of The Burn and Generations of Winter , a family saga depicting three generations of the Gradov family between 1925 and 1953.-Early life:Vasily Aksyonov...
(her son)
Excerpts from Ginsburg's "Journey into the whirlwind" (translated into English) can be found in Section 4.2 of L. Kowalski's book on Stalinism:
http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/stalinism.html
Books by Ginzburg
- 1982. Within the Whirlwind. Harvest/HBJ Book. ISBN 0156976498.
- 2002. Journey into the Whirlwind. Harvest/HBJ Book. ISBN 0156027518.
External links