Yevgenia Ginzburg
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Yevgenia Ginzburg (December 20, 1904 - May 25, 1977) (Russian language: Евгения Семёновна Гинзбург) was a Russian historian and writer. Frequently, her latinized name Eugenia is used in the West.
Soon after Yevgenia Ginzburg was born into a family of Jewish pharmacist in Moscow, her family moved to Kazan. In 1920 she entered Kazan State University, Social science department, later switched to pedagogy.
She worked as a rabfak (рабфак, рабочий факультет, worker's faculty) teacher, then as an assistant at the University. Soon she married Pavel Aksyonov, the mayor (председатель горсовета) of Kazan and a member of Central Executive Committee (ЦИК) of USSR. After becoming a Communist Party member, Ginzburg continued her successful career of educator, journalist and administrator. She gave birth to two sons, Aleksey Aksyonov (1926, died in Great Patriotic War) and Vasily Aksyonov (1932, to become a famous writer).
In February 1937, she was expelled from the party ranks and soon arrested for alleged connection with the Trotskyists. (See also Great Purge). Her parents were also arrested but released in two months. Her husband was arrested in July and convicted for 15 years of "corrective labor" with the confiscation of belongings. (Articles 58-7 and 11). In August, Yevgenia was also convicted for ten years.
Yevgenia experienced first hand infamous Moscow Lefortovo, Butyrka prisons, Yaroslavl "Korovniki", then dangerous journey in wagon-zek across the country to Vladivostok, and finally to Kolyma in cargo hold of the steamer Jurma (Джурма). At Magadan zone, she worked at a camp hospital, but soon she was sent into cold depths of Gulag and assigned to so called common jobs where she quickly became an emaciated "dokhodyaga". A Crimea Germans doctor Anton Walter probably saved her life by recommending her for a nurse position. Anton had been deported due to his German heritage, Yevgenia due to her allegedly critical attitude to the Soviet system. They married later.[1]
In February 1949, Ginzburg was formally released but had to stay in Magadan for five more years. She found a position at a kindergarten and secretly started to work on her memoirs. In October 1950 she was arrested again and exiled to Krasnoyarsk region but before she left, her destination was changed to Kolyma. After Stalin's death in 1953, Ginzburg was able to visit Moscow and was fully rehabilitated in 1955, as were millions of wrongly convicted, many posthumously.
She returned to Moscow, worked as a reporter and continued her work on her magnum opus memoir novel, Journey into the Whirlwind (English title). After the book was completed (1967), all attempts to publish it in the USSR failed for political reasons and the manuscript was smuggled abroad where it was widely published. Eventually, her book included 2 parts, in original Russian named "Krutoi marshrut I" and "Krutoi marshrut II" -- "Harsh Route" or "Steep Route."
[edit] See also
[edit] Bibliography
- "Крутой маршрут" Journey into the Whirlwind
- Eyvgenia Ginzburg's works at Lib.ru (in original Russian)
- Evgenia Ginzburg background information
