Journey into the Whirlwind: The Critically Acclaimed Memoir of Stalin's Reign of Terror

by Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg

Overview

A woman’s true account of eighteen years as a Soviet prisoner: “Not even Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich matches it.”—The New York Times Book Review

In the late 1930s, Eugenia Ginzburg was a wife and mother, a schoolteacher and writer, and a longtime loyal Communist Party member. But like millions of others during Stalin’s reign of terror, she was arrested—on trumped-up charges of being a Trotskyist terrorist counter-revolutionary—and sentenced to prison.

With sharp detail and an indefatigable spirit, Ginzburg recounts her arrest and the eighteen harrowing years she endured in Soviet prisons and labor camps, including two in solitary confinement. Her memoir is “a compelling personal narrative of survival” (The New York Times Book Review)—and one of the most important documents of Stalin’s brutal regime.

“Deeply significant…intensely personal and passionately felt.”—Time

“Probably the best account that has ever been published of…the prison and camp empire of the Stalin era.”—Book World

Translated by Paul Stevenson and Max Hayward

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780547541013
Publisher:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date:	06/11/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	140,500
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

By the late 1930s, Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg (1896-1977) had been a loyal and very active member of the Communist Party for many years. Yet like the millions of others who suffered during Stalin's reign of terror, she was arrested (on trumped-up charges of being a Trotskyist terrorist counter-revolutionary) and sentenced to prison. With an amazing eye for detail and profound strength and an indefatigable spirit, Ginzburg recounts the years, days, and minutes she endured in prisons and labor camps, including two years of solitary confinement.

Editorial Reviews

Probably the best account that has ever published of... the Stalin era... extends the imagination and involves us all in the bewildering inhumanity of the Russian camps. Bookworld

James Billington