Journey into the Whirlwind (SparkNotes Literature Guide)

By SparkNotes

Journey into the Whirlwind (SparkNotes Literature Guide) by Eugenia Ginzburg
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Created by Harvard students for students everywhere, SparkNotes is a new breed of study guide: smarter, better, faster.   Geared to what today's students need to know, SparkNotes provides:   *Chapter-by-chapter analysis
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• Language: English
• Publisher: SparkNotes
• Release date: Aug 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781411475991

Book preview

Cover of SparkNotes Guide to Journey into the Whirlwind by SparkNotes Editors

Journey into the Whirlwind

Eugenia Ginzburg

© 2003, 2007 by Spark Publishing

This Spark Publishing edition 2014 by SparkNotes LLC, an Affiliate of Barnes & Noble

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ISBN-13: 978-1-4114-7599-1

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Contents

Context

Plot Overview

Character List

Analysis of Major Characters

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

Important Quotations Explained

Key Facts

Context

An understanding of Eugenia Ginzburg’s memoir, Journey into the Whirlwind, begins with an understanding of the fallout from the Russian Revolution of 1917. After the revolution, the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin spoke up about the presence of enemies of the people within the government. These class enemies, he said, were no better than criminals and therefore must be imprisoned. Thousands of state officials were accused of corruption, and both political dissidents and innocent people were carted off to labor camps and prisons. By 1930, this system of labor camps was known as the Gulag, a name that has since sent chills up and down the spines of millions of people in Russia and beyond. The Gulag was both the government’s answer to the question of how to punish its political criminals and a solution to the nation’s growing need for cheap labor. Prisoners of the Gulag were sent into exile in Siberia and put to work, toiling in backbreaking and often fatal conditions. Meanwhile, the rest of the population lived in a state of terror, afraid to make the slightest criticism of a government that was perpetuating such atrocities.

The Gulag peaked in intensity during the late 1930s, when Journey into the Whirlwind is set. During this time, the Soviet Union, under the rule of the Communist leader Joseph Stalin, underwent a period of intense repression, mass imprisonment, and penal executions known as the Great Purge. By