Eugenia Ginzburg (second row, second from left) at the Tartarstan Communist University

 CAROLINE BECKENHAUPT writes:

After reading your post on Eugenia Ginzburg and Soviet Womanhood, I had to read her memoirs. I finally got Into the Whirlwind from the library. I started it last night, and I couldn’t stop reading. I finally forced myself to go to sleep at 1 a.m. –unusual for me. I’m still reading today, in between kids’ activities and vet appointments. She writes so evocatively, the tears always well up.

I can’t help comparing today with those wretched times. Of course, there are many things different, but one thing strikes me as being similar: scared people lying to themselves, to each other, in the name of a messiah figure, and what was assumed to be “normal” everyday life is turned upside down, and freakish things become mundane.

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