One day a couple of weeks ago I entered the word Persephone into Fife libraries’ catalogue and it seems they only have a handful of Persephone publications. I had already read most of them, so I decided to request Into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg. I must admit I had never even heard of the author, but the book is her autobiography, telling of her horrendous experiences when she was a victim of one of Stalin’s purges in the early 1930s.
As a member of the Communist Party and a writer and university teacher she had led a comfortable life, especially as she was married to a Party official. Holidays in luxury Communist Party hotels had been normal for them although they weren’t quite as well off as some others. They only had a Ford car whereas the wealthier officials had Buicks and Lincolns. That information in itself proves that real Communism has never been tried, when you consider how abject was the poverty that most ordinary Soviet citizens suffered.
Ginzburg may have been an intellectual but she lacked street-wise commonsense, and when questions began to be asked about a work colleague Ginzburg assumed that as she hadn’t done anything wrong then she couldn’t be in any trouble. Her old mother-in-law knew differently though, she had the experience of living through Tsarist reigns of terror and understood that things were much the same with Joseph Stalin in power. Ginzburg’s mother-in-law advised her to disappear to the country until things cooled down and the authorities got tired of looking for her, a ploy that apparently did work for many, but Ginzburg knew better and the result was she was eventually sentenced to ten years in prison for terrorism. She actually ended up serving a sentence of eighteen years.
This was the beginning of Stalin’s purges of the Communist Party. He was getting rid of anybody he thought might be a rival to him and the prisons and camps were jam packed with innocent people – Communists, religious people, foreigners including ballet dancers and film stars.
Obviously this isn’t a comfy read, but it is fascinating and it makes you wonder how people could survive such terrible treatment, starvation and punishment cells, being constantly freezing and frostbitten in winter and sweltering in summer and having to do heavy work like tree felling in 60 degrees of frost, wearing just rags. It’s hard to feel that those people were the lucky ones but millions were shot immediately and I’m sure a lot of prisoners must have wished that they had been too.
There is an afterword by Rodric Braithwaite, he was the British Ambassador to the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 80s, and in it he explains that Eugenia Ginzburg actually had more favourable treatment than most prisoners as she had been in the Communist party and was seen as being a member of ‘the intelligentsia’.
These purges started in 1934 and the really depressing thing is that they continued until Stalin’s death in 1953. It’s just as well that those incarcerated in 1934 didn’t know that, many of them lived in hope of their god Stalin coming to their rescue, never being able to believe that it was Stalin who was at the back of their misfortune. After Stalin’s death Nikita Khrushchev set about releasing political prisoners and ‘rehabilitating’ the reputations of those who had been vilified by Stalin.
This book is an account of Ginzburg’s first three years of imprisonment and I think she wrote another book years after that, I’ll have to see if I can get a hold of that one.
This book sounds fascinating, but I’m not sure if I can handle the subject matter or not. The evils that have perpetrated against humanity are beyond my comprehension, and many of us in our generation have no first hand knowledge of such atrocities. It certainly can raise a lot of questions about the meaning and purpose of all of the suffering.
Paula
Paula,
It sounds like a hard task to read this but I think as I knew that she survived it all I knew that there would be some kind of a happy ending – eventually. Also the brutality was not as bad as it would have been if the prisoners had had to deal with something as bad as the Gestapo. Also the prisoners didn’t have to partake in WW2, when times were as awful for ordinary Soviet citizens.
I just read this and it was horrifying. What really stuck with me is that Ginzburg was determined to survive out of sheer spite. I was also struck by the incredible kindness many of the prisoners showed to one another, and some of the prison workers who risked their own safety to show kindness in small ways.
Karen K,
You’re right, it was those acts of kindness that made life bearable in really intolerable circumstances.
Wow, grim stuff. I continue to be appalled at the number and scale of atrocities man is capable of inflicting on fellow man (and woman). And I’m embarrassed by my own ignorance. A reminder of how fortunate we are, despite the prevailing political shenanigans – and a welcome reminder too, from Karen K, that in the darkest and bleakest of times there are always those who choose kindness and courage over cowardice and terror.
Sandra,
The worrying thing nowadays is that some countries seem to be going backwards with torture being allowed, something that even Stalin didn’t allow at the beginning of his purges.
I think it’s very interesting that she was a loyal Communist Party member and towed the line, yet all that didn’t keep her safe from the Purges. It seems that in most of the books (fiction) I’ve read that the characters have the belief that if only they had been Party members, they would have been okay. I suppose membership provided some immunity, but how horrible to have that hanging over one’s head all the time. This is a must-read for me.
Judith,
I think that the Party members were in more danger of being arrested as Stalin became suspicious of everyone around him. Even the man who interrogated Ginzburg ended up in the same camp as her. The best thing to be back then was anonymous, if that was possible – keep your head down and THEY might not notice you! You’ll find this book really interesting.
You’re absolutely right on with that, about keeping one’s head down. How hard that must’ve been while still trying to perform well at a job. Maybe it was better to just be a mediocre job performer. How stultifying!
Judith,
The Russian/Soviet people must be the most abused by their so-called betters over the centuries, what a hellish time they’ve had, and they seem to be such nice friendly people too, going by John Steinbeck’s book about his travels in Russia.