TRAGIC ‘JOURNEY’ THROUGH THE GULAG

Welcome to the Gulag.

During her 1937-55 imprisonment, Soviet journalist/historian Eugenia Ginsberg spent almost a dozen years in a Siberian slave labor camp, working as a nurse, a farmhand, a kindergarten teacher, a chicken tender, and a tree feller.

Inmates were excused from their jobs only when the temperature hit 50 below. Food rations were based on how many lengths of timber had been cut. Many died of disease, starvation and the cold. But Ginsberg survived--and lived to write about her experience.

That experience is brought to the stage in “Journey Into the Whirlwind,” a one-woman piece adapted and performed by Rebecca Schull. It opens Sunday at the Cast.

“Ginsberg was teaching at the University of Kazan when she was arrested,” explained Schull. “Her husband was a high-ranking Communist official, she had two sons and one stepdaughter--and was, from all accounts, an exceptional woman in terms of intellect, energy, wit, spirit. And she was an absolutely committed Communist. They were really political animals, these people; their devotion to the Communist Party was the center of their lives. So she toed the party line and was able to dismiss any injustices done in terms of the importance of their goals.”

But somewhere along the line, Ginsberg associated with the wrong person, and when the government began its purges in 1937, she was one of its first victims.

“They were show trials,” shrugged Schull, founder/artistic director of the New York-based Open World Theatre Co. “It was a pure fabrication on the part of Stalin, invented to purge the party of certain elements he imagined were opposed to him, looking to overthrow him. And yet most of these people were supporters, even idolaters of Stalin. That’s what was so unbelievable.”

Ginsberg was convicted of “membership in a terrorist group.” Both her husband and parents were tainted by association and later arrested. Her children were sent to a foster home for children of political prisoners, where the eldest died of starvation. Ginsberg herself served two years in solitary confinement before her internment in the labor camp, followed by many years of “internal exile” (in residence in the community, but under the government’s watchful eye).

With the physical abuses came psychic ones: Ginsberg’s ongoing anxiety of not knowing what was happening to her children, and the denial of any form of self-expression. “In the camp, they weren’t given writing implements,” said Schull (whose stage credits include “Golda,” “Herzl” and “Fefu and Her Friends” in New York, and recently, “The Matchmaker” at the La Jolla Playhouse). “They were allowed to write two letters a month to relatives. So she’d write poetry of her own, memorize it, erase it--then write the letters.”

After her release, Ginsberg wrote “Journey,” fully expecting to see it published. “So she was quite circumspect talking about the things that happened, the motivation of the party leaders. But when it became clear it would never be published, she wrote a second book--’Within the Whirlwind’ -- which takes off where the other left off. It’s much more detailed, straightforward, pulls no punches in terms of the torture, the brutality, the killing; it’s all there.

“It reads like a novel,” Schull added. “That’s the genius of this woman. It’s written in first person, a documentary account. But it really has the sweep of a novel, the journey from one point to another. And, unlike most historians, she writes scene after scene of encounters between people: a guard and a prisoner, people working together--and always, a description of her own feelings and responses, which are so detailed and rich.”

In spite of a reverence for her subject, the actress admitted to some editorial adjustments: “The words are hers; they come from her text. And I haven’t made anything up, our chronology is the same. But I have changed the language. She’s a marvelous writer--but it’s writing done for the printed page. So there’s probably not a single line that hasn’t been changed to make it sound like natural speech.”

The result, Schull hopes, will serve a couple of purposes. “This was a remarkable woman--I want audiences to know her,” she said firmly. “And what happened didn’t just happen to her, but to millions of others. It’s important that people know these things exist.”