Rating: 
Summary: A Must-Read on Many Levels...
Review: For your own education, as much as for an unbelievably gripping read, you must pick up a copy of this book. I find that it is most often the personal account of adversity and tragedy is the one that makes the most lasting impression on me. Of everything I studied in my Russian history class in college almost ten years ago, this is the one text I still carry with me and will continue to fervently recommend, without reservation, to my friends.
Rating:
Summary: A Must-Read on Many Levels...
Review: For your own education, as much as for an unbelievably gripping read, you must pick up a copy of this book. I find that it is most often the personal account of adversity and tragedy is the one that makes the most lasting impression on me. Of everything I studied in my Russian history class in college almost ten years ago, this is the one text I still carry with me and will continue to fervently recommend, without reservation, to my friends.
Rating:
Summary: A Brutal Account of One Woman in the GULAG
Review: Ginzburg account of the Soviet GULAG during the 1930?s is one of the most descriptive accounts we have. Originally published in Italy in 1967 one can only wonder how politics affected this work. Ginzburg herself was a devout communist and was later ?rehabilitated? after serving her sentence. What is surprising in this book is not so much the torture and terrible circumstances that Ginzburg suffered both in solitary confinement and the labor camp, but the differences between the prisoners themselves. After being wrongfully accused, many communists were still fiercely loyal to their party refusing to talk to Mensheviks and even turning in their fellow prisoners for speaking against the great Stalin. This book is a brilliant insight in both the Gulag and the communist mind set.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing, stunning, and truly exhausting
Review: Ginzburg brings to vivid life the meaning of brutal, dehumanizing imprisonment. I was struck by the plaintive detail and sharp observation that explained what "it" was truly like. And "it" was truly a fascinating journey. She brings to life her efforts to resist forced confession, the trial, interactions with equally tragic and desperate figures, solitary confinement, movement by foot, train and boat, and ultimately the brutal expanse of the labor camp. Pithy and focused analysis of the human dynamics around her produces an irresistable tempo and fascinating glimpse into the human psyche. Unfortunately, the abrupt ending left several unfinished themes, and left me wanting more. Overall, a fascinating book into a real-life heart of darkness that leaves one exhausted, contemplating such inhumanity.
Rating: 
Summary: Great
Review: I first read this book for a Russian History Class in College and have read it again occasionally since then. Ginzburg does a wonderful job of describing her experiences of being arrested and then sent to the Gulag. Although, she describes a truly horrifying time of her own life, she does so often times in a candid demeanor.
Rating:
Summary: I am surprized beyond words!
Review: I have read this book many years ago in Russian, and now I wanted my husband, who doesn't speak Russian, to read it too. Nobody would be able to describe how upset I was when I actually received the book and found out that this was only the first part of it. Having looked through your site I realized that there is no second part sold here,and I am wondering who took the liberty of deciding how much of the original book is acceptable for the English speaking public to read.Can somebody enlighten me on that? This book is too precious to be cut!I'd rather think that it would be better not to sell it at all, then to offer a cut version of a misterpiece.
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Summary: Turn off your phones before you read this. . .
Review: I recieved my copy of this book and started to read it and I read it with one hand as I prepared dinner, cleaned up, got the kids off to bed, and decluttered the house. I made some tea and continued to read. At about midnight the phone rang-- my husband had to go in very late to help someone-- and I just about had a heart attact as I stammered into the phone, "Oh G--, who is this?"The book is THAT rivetting and THAT real. AS the other critiques indicate, this is about a women's arrest with trumped up charges that only got worse, and her survival in the gulags. I felt like I connected with her because she is a mother and a professor. She lost her profession and her children in the blinking of an eye. I couldn't read it without checking on my own children and thanking God that we live in a place that is not like what hers was. You realise that there was little way of surviving for someone who wanted to play sanely and defend herself in an insane system. When she was in isolation, I felt like I was there with her. She doesn't write in a frilly, dramatic manner; she writes with a simple, clear voice. She isn't asking the reader to feel sorry for her because she is only telling her story. I think the most movingpoint of the book was when she was in a camp helping out in the kitchen and she found out that one of her early accusers was in the camp and dying. Another prisoner came in and asked for rations as he was sharing with this man and she was about to tell him to relay to the dying man that Eugenia Semyonovna sent them to him, but then she stopped herself, "How could I poison this man's last meal?" You see how a person can get to the point of loosing thier sanity then save themselves from loosing it and how many lost it and never regained it.
Rating:
Summary: A Long Time Coming
Review: I was assigned this book in college as part of the reading list for a Russian History course. Out of sheer laziness, I didn't read it, although I remember the professor's admonishment that it was a book every human being should experience. It sat in my basement for 15 years...until recently. During a discussion at a party, I referred to the book as a "must read", but was too ashamed to admit that I had never read myself. My shame overwhelmed me and I rescued my old copy from its dusty box. All I can say after having finished it this very night is that I regret having spent the last 15 years of my life without having experienced its power and insight. It is an essential book for people who wish to understand how the limits of humanity can spin straw into gold. I place Mrs. Ginzburg highly on the list of those I most admire.
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Summary: A Courageous Woman Who Remained Loyal To Her Party
Review: In her work Journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Ginzburg gives a personal account of the first three years of her eighteen-year ordeal during the Stalin purges of the 1930s. Teacher and editor of the Communist paper "Red Tartary," Ginzburg was accused of being a Trotskyist counter-revolutionary by a colleague and was thrown in jail, interrogated, dragged from prison to prison, kept in solitary confinement, and finally sent to a labor camp in the Siberian taiga. Ginzburg's position reveals the fact that party members (especially of high rank) were the first victims of the purges. Also, her past camaraderie with such people as the daughter of the notorious Soviet jurist Andrey Vyshinsky allows Ginzburg to offer the reader information about the important players of the purges that other victims may not have been able to provide. Politically, it must be noted that this is not an anti-Communist book. The author remained loyal to her party. If anything, this book reveals how very strong party loyalties were to the men and women who were victimized as "enemies of the people." Throughout the book, Ginzburg refers to her cell mates by their party affiliation. Old party rivalries even persisted in the prisons. Communists often refused to believe that their government was arresting loyal party members and would never question the "conspirator" accounts in the Soviet newspapers. Ginzburg's husband, for example, remarked after seeing such a report: "Have you heard? Petrov has turned out to be an enemy of the people! How cunning he must have been to get away with it for so long." Out of this loyalty to the party came a loyalty to Stalin. One inmate still exhibited hope asserting "We must all of us write to Stalin so that he knows the truth, and when he does, how can he let such things happen to the people?" Historically, Ginzburg's book is a document of the Soviet tactics to extract confessions and force accusations to incriminate others. The book does not contain descriptions of overly heinous crimes. Most of the abuse Ginzburg received was psychological. She did not, for example, experience the "standing cell" at black Lake where prisoners were placed in a dark room so narrow as to permit the prisoner only to stand with his arms at his sides. What Ginzburg describes is the social and psychological adjustment of the prisoners. For example, the inmates learned to communicate be tapping messages on their cell walls. Socially speaking, Ginzburg reveals that prison life "developed the better sides of my personality." No, this is not an apologist's work, but this book is also not a condemnation of the Communist party.
Rating:
Summary: A solid autobiography
Review: Not a bad read, but hardly worthy of the comparison to Solzhenitsyn on the dust jacket. Although the writing style is very apt, the book seems to go flat at times nowhere coming near to the complexity of Solz' "Gulag," Dos' "Dead Souls" or the simple beauty of "Kolyma Tales" from Shalamov. A powerful tale, indeed, but not a powerful piece of Russian Lit.
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