Meet Gina Ginzburg, a professor at University of Kazan. Happily married to a Red Party official, Ginzburg has it all in the Communist World: a spacious apartment, fashionable clothing, two children, a comfortable position in the Communist hierarchy. Her passion is Pushkin; She is entranced by the cadence of Pushkin's Nationalist poetry dedicated to celebrating Russia.
It's 1934; all that will change.
Kirov Red Party Boss in Leningrad (often mentioned as a potential successor to Joe Stalin) is assassinated, (likely on orders of Stalin). A purge of the party is in order to rid it of "Trotsky-ite and resurgent nationalist elements." Apparently the authors of the purge do not see the inherent contradiction between "Trotsky - ism" and "nationalism.."
Yet to deflect the purge away from themselves the party faithful, other than Ms Ginzburg, line up to confess "unsavory bourgeois tendencies." Locked up in the dragnet, Ms Ginzburg refuses to confess, even when she is harassed by Boykin, a notorious and vicious police official. Many of the people she knew and worked confessed under pressure. Their reward was the death penalty, but Ms Ginzburg who reiterates her innocence before a kangaroo court gets 10 years in Siberia.
The movie shows that some women en route in unheated cattle cars are singing songs to Stalin. Jailed with the real criminals, Ms Ginzburg wants to die and rebuffs the attention of the camp doctor until he gives her a book of Pushkin's poems.
Emily Watson renders a spectacular performance as Genia Ginzburg who is reduced from the splendor of the inner = party ranks to the squalor of the Soviet prison system.
Ms Ginzburg does get a joyous moment when her oppressor Boykin ends up in the gulag crying that he's innocent. Richard Wurmbrand and many other people imprisoned by the communists noted that often the police end up in jail with the people they've accused.
There is a Hollywood ending when Ms Ginzburg marries the camp doctor in a type of mismatched marriage that almost seems stamped made in America. Oh well as different as the US was from Russia of his time de Tocqueville saw many congruences.
It's 1934; all that will change.
Kirov Red Party Boss in Leningrad (often mentioned as a potential successor to Joe Stalin) is assassinated, (likely on orders of Stalin). A purge of the party is in order to rid it of "Trotsky-ite and resurgent nationalist elements." Apparently the authors of the purge do not see the inherent contradiction between "Trotsky - ism" and "nationalism.."
Yet to deflect the purge away from themselves the party faithful, other than Ms Ginzburg, line up to confess "unsavory bourgeois tendencies." Locked up in the dragnet, Ms Ginzburg refuses to confess, even when she is harassed by Boykin, a notorious and vicious police official. Many of the people she knew and worked confessed under pressure. Their reward was the death penalty, but Ms Ginzburg who reiterates her innocence before a kangaroo court gets 10 years in Siberia.
The movie shows that some women en route in unheated cattle cars are singing songs to Stalin. Jailed with the real criminals, Ms Ginzburg wants to die and rebuffs the attention of the camp doctor until he gives her a book of Pushkin's poems.
Emily Watson renders a spectacular performance as Genia Ginzburg who is reduced from the splendor of the inner = party ranks to the squalor of the Soviet prison system.
Ms Ginzburg does get a joyous moment when her oppressor Boykin ends up in the gulag crying that he's innocent. Richard Wurmbrand and many other people imprisoned by the communists noted that often the police end up in jail with the people they've accused.
There is a Hollywood ending when Ms Ginzburg marries the camp doctor in a type of mismatched marriage that almost seems stamped made in America. Oh well as different as the US was from Russia of his time de Tocqueville saw many congruences.