[FIRST GULAG MEMOIR BY A WOMAN ? SAMIZDAT] Krutoi marshrut. Tom I [Steep journey. Vol. I. Published in English as: "Journey into the Whirlwind].

Ginzburg, Evgeniia Semenovna.

Published by

[Moscow, ca. late 1970s]. Quarto (31 × 22 cm). Original blue stab-sewn buckram binding with hand-written label to front board; 298 pp. of original and carbon copy typescript to rectos and versos. Occasional corrections in ink. Upper binding stitch loose; else very good. Evgeniia Ginzburg?s memoir of the Stalinist purges, ?Krutoi marshrut?, was the first GULAG memoir written by a woman to widely circulate in samizdat. A historian and journalist, Ginzburg (1904?1977) wrote for the ?Krasnaia Tatariia? (Red Tataria) newspaper prior to her arrest in 1937, with the then standard accusations of taking part in a Trotskyist plot. Separated from her husband (who would go on to serve his own term) and her children, the youngest of whom was placed in an orphanage, Ginzburg would go on to spend 18 years in Soviet prison camps and in exile. She started writing her memoir in 1959, after her rehabilitation and return to Moscow. First published in Milan and in Munich in 1967, followed by Paris, London, New York, Stockholm, the first Soviet volume would appear in Riga only in 1989. Initially writing for her children, by 1962 Ginzburg completed a draft of 400 typed pages. Encouraged by the publication of Solzhenitsyn?s "A day in the life of Ivan Denishovich" in 1962?1963, Ginzburg submitted her manuscript to the two top Soviet literary journals "Novy mir" and "Iunost?". Despite positive feedback from both journals, the manuscript was rejected for publication likely because of the reversal of some of the liberalism of the post-Stalinist Thaw. In the epilog to a later edition published abroad, Ginzburg writes: ?As soon as the manuscript found its way into the editorial rooms of two popular literary journals, its five-year journey across the waves of samizdat began. [?] When I started getting readers? letters from Leningrad, Krasnoyarsk, Saratov and Odessa, I understood that I completely lost control of the wonderous life of my unpublished book.? Ginzburg had mixed feelings about the samizdat versions, as well as the foreign publications, because she continued to rework the manuscript until her death in 1977. The first Soviet version published in the literary journal ?Iunost? was dated 1977 to reflect this work. The memoir would become one of the most popular samizdat volumes, circulating in up to 5000 copies, with two dog-eared copies held by the GULAG museum in Moscow.This attractively bound copy comes from the collection of Viktor Vladimirovich Redin (born 1934), a collector in Moscow, who was best known for amassing a huge collection of original photo and audio-documents of the Soviet ?bard? musical culture of the 1960-80s. Since the late 1950s, he devoted himself almost entirely to recording performances of bards. This printed samizdat was most likely created in Moscow, possibly by Redin or by a friend of his, presumably in the late 1970s, but possibly somewhat earlier. The text seems to be based on the first manuscript versions published abroad in 1967, rather than the later versions approved by the author. Seller Inventory # 54443

Bibliographic Details

Title: [FIRST GULAG MEMOIR BY A WOMAN ? SAMIZDAT] ...
Binding: Soft cover