"A Mind Purified by Suffering": Evgenia Ginzburg’s "Whirlwind" Memoirs

Published by Academic Studies Press 2023

"A Mind Purified by Suffering"

Evgenia Ginzburg’s "Whirlwind" Memoirs

Edited by: Olga M. Cooke

In the series Russian Thought in Context

https://doi.org/10.1515/9798887191713

Overview
Contents

About this book

“A Mind Purified by Suffering:” Evgenia Ginzburg’s "Whirlwind" Memoirs is the first book on Ginzburg’s Journey into the Whirlwind and Within the Whirlwind, covering such topics as: memory, trauma, motherhood, love, survival strategies, and metafictional structures. It also provides a history of prison camp writings, her biography, and an interview with her son Vasily Aksenov.

Author / Editor information

Cooke Olga M. :

Olga M. Cooke is Associate Professor of Russian at Texas A&M University. She is the editor of Andrey Bely’s Petersburg: A Centennial Celebration (Academic Studies Press, 2017), and Gulag Studies. In addition to her publications on Ginzburg, Bely, and Gulag literature, she is completing a book on Bely’s correspondence.

Reviews

“Justifiably introduced by Barbara Heldt as comparable to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Evgenia Ginzburg’s landmark memoir of eighteen years in the Soviet Gulag system, Journey into the Whirlwind, has influenced generations of Gulag eyewitnesses as well as scholarship on Gulag writing, Soviet political repression, and the gendering of writing about repression. In this collection, Olga Cooke has brought together an impressive variety of approaches to Ginzburg’s and others’ writing by recognized scholars of Ginzburg’s work that will be required reading for future scholarship in the field. This thoroughly documented and elegantly edited volume serves the needs of both researcher and teacher, a welcome (and long-overdue) addition to our libraries.”

— Diane Nemec Ignashev, Class of 1941 Professor of Russian & the Liberal Arts, Carleton College (Northfield, MN)

“A timely multi-faceted collection of intra- and interdisciplinary research papers on the memoirs of the Gulag veteran Evgenia Ginzburg. Placing Ginzburg’s narrative in a number of contexts, tracing the author’s emotional and ideological arc, and offering unexpected insights, this volume fills in a gap in the scholarship and provides a basis and a stimulus for further academic conversation about one of the most impressive and influential accounts of life under Stalinist terror.”

— Leona Toker, author of Return from the Archipelago: Narratives of Gulag Survivors and of Gulag Literature of Nazi Camps: An Intercontextual Reading

“[This book] provide[s] important knowledge and insights into women’s experiences in the Gulag and as Gulag survivors. Cooke’s volume feeds the mind.”

—- Denise J. Youngblood, Association for Women in Slavic Studies

“This collection is an essential contribution to the literature on Evgenia Ginzburg, Krutoi marshrut, and the Soviet Gulag. These chapters offer a fresh look at a classic text, seeking to deepen and broaden our understanding of one of the most influential works in the Gulag literary canon. The collection reminds us of Ginzburg’s importance while offering new and productive ways to understand the richness of her work, relationships, and legacies.”

— Alan Barenberg, Texas Tech University, author of Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labor and its Legacy in Vorkuta and co-editor of Rethinking the Gulag: Identities, Sources, Legacies

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vi
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	viii
Foreword Barbara Heldt Publicly Available Download PDF	x
Introduction Olga M. Cooke Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Contributors Publicly Available Download PDF	xxxiii
1. A Cruel Journey of the Soul: The Initiation of Evgenia Ginzburg Dariusz Tołczyk Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Mimetic Resistance in Evgenia Ginzburg’s Krutoi marshrut Natasha Kolchevska Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
3. A Communist Woman in the Gulag: Gender, Ideology, and Limit-Experience in Ginzburg and Budzyńska Anna Artwińska Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
4. My Son, My Self: Reevaluating a Culture of Vulnerability Kathryn Duda Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
5. Vasily Aksenov and Evgenia Ginzburg in Magadan: Reconceiving Soviet Authorship through the Gulag Experience Ann Komaromi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
6. The Survival of the Sublime in a Universe of Malice: Testimonies by Evgenia Ginzburg and Other Gulag Writers Rimma Volynska Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	101
7. “Up to Their Old Tricks Again? Taking Mothers from Their Children?” Evgenia Ginzburg as a Mother in the Stalinist Gulag Elaine MacKinnon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	113
8. Ethics, Play, and Poetry in the Interval: Evgenia Ginzburg’s Struggle to Survive in the Whirlwind Oana Popescu-Sandu Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
9. A Winter Coat for Vasya: The Evgenia Ginzburg-Vasily Aksenov Correspondence (1948–1976) Rimma Volynska Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
10. Evgenia Ginzburg at the End of Krutoi marshrut Lev Kopelev and Raisa Orlova Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
11. Interview with Vasily Aksenov Rimma Volynska and Olga M. Cooke Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
Photographs Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	208

Language: English
Publisher: Academic Studies Press
Audience: College/higher education;Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 250
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 14
Keywords: Evgenia Ginzburg; Gulag; women’s studies; Russian literature; memoir; history; twentieth century; prison camps; Journey into the Whirlwind; Within the Whirlwind

eBook

Published: July 25, 2023
ISBN: 9798887191713