{"product_id":"into-the-whirlwind","title":"Into the Whirlwind","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"picright\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 345px;\"\u003e\n\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/7642\/5795\/files\/russians.jpg?v=1593111976\u0026amp;width=700\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"redtext\"\u003eTRANSLATED BY PAUL STEVENSON AND MANYA HARARI\u003cbr\u003eAFTERWORD BY RODRIC BRAITHWAITE\u003cbr\u003e344pp\u003cbr\u003eISBN 9781903155967\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt is impossible not to cry when reading this \u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ememoir of Stalin’s Terror\u003c\/span\u003e – which means it is not for the faint-hearted – yet it is not merely a historical document: the dialogue is life-like and everything is portrayed with extraordinary realism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA teacher and Communist Party activist, Eugenia Ginzburg was married to the mayor of Kazan. In \u003cstrong\u003eInto the Whirlwhind\u003c\/strong\u003e, and in the 2009 film starring Emily Watson, the perfectly ‘normal’, bourgeois, seemingly stable nature of her life is heartrendingly portrayed. When a university colleague is arrested for alleged Trotskyist activities, the 30 year-old Eugenia is charged with not having denounced him. Soon she is expelled from the Party and interrogated. In 1937 she was imprisoned, then later she was sent to Kolyma, an enormous complex of labour camps in the Russian Far East. She always hoped to write about her experiences one day and seems to have had total recall.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the most beautiful prose (the translators were Paul Stevenson and the renowned Manya Harari, who translated \u003cem\u003eDr Zhivago\u003c\/em\u003e), Eugenia Ginzburg records her shock at being arrested, the unremitting cruelty of the ‘authorities’ and the agony of being in custody, forced labour and exile. She describes friends who helped orphaned children, prison guards who were sometimes kind but mostly cruel, reciting poetry in the freight cars (reminding us of Etty Hillesum, whose last postcard said ‘we left the camp singing’), felling trees at fifty degrees below zero. And yet through all this suffering she gained a deep insight into what it meant to be human. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eInto the Whirlwind\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e should have a place next to other classics such as Akhmatova’s \u003cem\u003eRequiem\u003c\/em\u003e and Mandelstam’s \u003cem\u003eHope against Hope\u003c\/em\u003e. And, as Barbara Evans Clements has written in her recent \u003cem\u003eA History of Women in Russia\u003c\/em\u003e, these three writers ‘did not participate directly in the dissident movement, but their works played an important part in the building criticism of the Soviet system. The quality of their writing also places them among the major authors of twentieth century Russian literature.’ \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEndpaper\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'The Five Year Plan in Four Years', a 1930 Russian textile by an unknown designer\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePicture Caption\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e'Young Communists' by Sergei Bogdanov, 1928\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Eugenia Ginzburg","offers":[{"title":"None","offer_id":54098783207731,"sku":"azk1789694666835","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Tissue\/Endpaper","offer_id":54098783240499,"sku":"sjr1789694666836","price":29.28,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Cambridge Imprint paper","offer_id":54098783273267,"sku":"wxz1789694666837","price":40.29,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Reusable fabric napkin","offer_id":54098783306035,"sku":"rca1789694666838","price":52.26,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0989\/0578\/4627\/files\/into-the-whirlwind_1.jpg?v=1789694671","url":"https:\/\/sandstepclad.shop\/products\/into-the-whirlwind","provider":"My Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}