Journey into the Whirlwind

Journey into the Whirlwind

Introduction

Journey into the Whirlwind is the memoir of the imprisonment of Eugenia Ginzburg during the period of removal of Stalin. This memoir is divided into two parts. The first part is about the details of her arrestment, assessment, and two years of introverted imprisonment. The second part is about the dealings with her relocation to Kolyma which is a group of Gulag prison located in the depth of Siberia, at the easternmost edge of the country (Ginzburg, 2002).

Discussion

Part One

The first part starts with a phone call. Ginzburg was informed on the call that the secretary of the General Committee of the Communist Party Kirov is murdered. This information of the assassination created a fear about the rebel political constituents within the party, and the government constricts its hold on the social order. Ginzburg is individually strained into the dispute when her old companion, Professor Elvov, is detained, for having in black and white a chapter of a history book with ostensible Trotskyist suggestions. Her friendship with Elvov seats her under extreme distrust. The party administrators in Kazan are rapid to blame her of deteriorating to denounce Elvov's unfaithfulness to the party. Ginzburg declines to confess her guiltiness and is called in for inquiring by Comrade Beylin. Beylin and his colleague Malyuta at first let her off with a slighter accuse of caution, but shortly she finds herself in front of more and more vindictive interrogators.

As part of the ongoing cross-examination, Ginzburg's previous contemporaries from the magazine Red Tartary are called in to deal with her. She is disappointed to learn that both Volodya Dyakonov and Nalya Kozlova have decided to sign the interrogators' documents. Later on, she is taken to a different prison, which is filthier but less stern (Ginzburg, 2002). Ginzburg meets her ...