Solovki prison camp

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File:Barents old.jpg
A 1570 map by Abraham Ortelius shows the location of "Salofki".
File:White Sea map.png
Solovetsky Islands on a map of the White Sea.

The Solovki special camp (later the Solovki special prison),Template:Efn was set up in 1923 on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea as a remote and inaccessible place of detention, primarily intended for socialist opponents of Soviet Russia's new Bolshevik regime. At first, the anarchists, Mensheviks, and Socialist Revolutionaries enjoyed a special status there and were not made to work. Gradually, prisoners from the old regime (priests, gentry, and White Army officers) joined them and the guards and the ordinary criminals worked together to keep the "politicals" in order.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

This was the nucleus from which the entire Gulag grew, thanks to its proximity to the first great construction project of the Five-Year Plans, the White Sea–Baltic Canal. In one way, Solovki and the White Sea Canal broke a basic rule of the Gulag: they were both far too close to the border.<ref>Dmitriev commentTemplate:Full citation needed</ref> This facilitated a number of daring escapes in the 1920s;<ref name="Malsagov, S.A. 1926">Template:Cite book</ref> as war loomed in the late 1930s, it led to the closure of the Solovki special prison. Its several thousand inmates were transferred elsewhere, or shot on the mainland and on Solovki.

In common parlance, the word "Solovki" initially referred to the Solovetsky Islands or the Solovetsky Monastery, but since these times it came to denote the Solovki prison camp.

The "mother of the Gulag"

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called Solovki the "mother of the GULAG".

From monastery to concentration camp

Historically, the Solovetsky Islands were the location of the famous Russian Orthodox Solovetsky Monastery complex. It was a centre of economic activity with over three hundred monks, and also a forepost of Russian naval power in the North, repelling foreign attacks during the Time of Troubles, the Crimean War, and the Russian Civil War. In the autumn of 1922 the process of transitioning from a monastery to concentration camp began. All wooden buildings were burned, and many of the monks were murdered, including the Igumen. The remaining monks were sent to forced labour camps in central Russia.<ref name="Malsagov, S.A. 1926"/>

The unpublished decree of 3 November 1923 led to the conversion of the monastery buildings into the Solovki "special" camp: the Solovetsky lager osobogo naznachenia or SLON in Russian<ref>Соловецкий лагерь особого назначения (СЛОН). Template:In lang (tr. "Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON)")</ref> (the acronym is a play on the Russian word for elephant). One of the first "forced labor camps", Solovki served as a prototype for the Gulag as a whole.<ref>Gulag by Anne Applebaum. New York: Anchor Book, 2003. p.20.</ref> In early 1924, it was sometimes given a double name, Severnye (Solovetskiye) Lagerya OGPU (Northern (Solovki) camps of OGPU).<ref>СОЛОВЕЦКИЙ ИТЛ ОГПУ (Соловецкие лагеря особого назначения, Соловецкий лагерь принудительных работ особого назначения ОГПУ, СЛОН, СЛАГ, Соловецкие и Карело-Мурманские лагеря, СКМИТЛ) (tr. "SOLOVETSKY ITL OGPU (Solovki camps for special purposes, Solovetsky forced labor camp for special purposes OGPU, SLON, SLAG, Solovetsky and Karelian-Murmansk camps, SKMITL)") Template:Cite web Memorial Template:In lang</ref>

File:Историко-культурный комплекс Соловецких островов.jpg
Solovetsky Monastery in 2013

Its remote situation made escape almost impossible and in Tsarist times the monastery had been used, on occasion, as a political prison by the Russian imperial administration. The treatment of the prisoners in the Soviet-era camp attracted much criticism in Western Europe and the United States after a book came out in England, An Island Hell, by S. A. Malsagoff.<ref name="Malsagov, S.A. 1926"/> After a thorough clean-up and careful staging, the Soviet government sent the proletarian writer Maxim Gorky there in an attempt to counter this negative publicity. He wrote a very favourable essay, which praised the beauty of nature on the islands, but some authors believe he understood the real conditions he was witnessing.<ref name="gorky Yale">Template:Cite book See pp. 242–243.</ref><ref name="gorky">Template:Cite book See p.188.</ref><ref name="gorky Solzhenitsyn">Template:Cite book See pp. 116-118.</ref>

The Baltic-White Sea Canal

The exact number of prisoners sent to Solovki from 1923 to the closure of its penitentiary facilities in 1939 is unknown. Estimates range between tens and hundreds of thousands.<ref>"Forced Labor Camps" Template:Webarchive, on-line exhibition at the Blinken Open Society Archives.</ref>

In 1923, Soloviki contained "no more than 3,000" prisoners; by 1930, the number had jumped to "about 50,000", with another 30,000 held on the mainland at the nearest railhead of Kem.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In the early 1930s, many of the prisoners from the camp were transferred to the newly established Belbaltlag to man the construction of the White Sea – Baltic Canal.<ref name="gorky Yale"/>

A Special Prison, 1936–1939

In 1936, the Solovki camp was renamed a "special" prison (SLON, an acronym that means "Elephant" in Russian) and from then until its closure in 1939 it served as a holding area for many prisoners subsequently executed, there or on the mainland, during the Great Terror of 1937–1938.<ref>"The Victims at Sandarmokh", The Dmitriev Affair website Template:In lang.</ref>

Until documents confirming their execution were found in 1996, it was long thought that a transport of over one thousand prisoners, a quota for "1st category arrests" (executions), died from drowning after the barges on which they were travelling were deliberately sunk in the White Sea.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It is now known that they were shot on the mainland in late October and early November 1937; subsequent quotas for execution came too late in the year to sail across the White Sea and were shot on the islands, near Sekirnaya Hill.<ref>A 12 October 2017 news item by Meduza, includes footage of Yury Dmitriev supervising work to clear the burial pits at Sekirnaya gora. Template:In lang</ref>

All but five of the 1,116 prisoners sent from Solovki across the White Sea on 27 October 1937 were executed by NKVD Captain and senior executioner Mikhail Matveyev at Sandarmokh between that date and 10 November 1937, when he reported his task complete.<ref name="MT">Template:Cite web</ref> Among those killed were 289 members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, the Executed Renaissance.

A further transport was prepared to sail to the mainland for execution, but it was too late in the year to cross the frozen sea. Instead, between 200 and 300 prisoners were shot on Solovki itself, near the Sekirnaya Hill.<ref>A. Razumov (n.d.), Skorbny put, pp. 13-14 Template:In lang</ref> One of the many victims was Yelizaveta Katz, an engineer, who was 8 months pregnant. She was due to be shot with the others on 17 February 1938, but was allowed to give birth, then shot three months later on 16 May, aged 28.<ref>A. Razumov (n.d.), Skorbny put, pp. 14-16 Template:In lang</ref>

In 1939, the prison was closed. It was situated too close to the border with Finland, and the Second World War was imminent. The buildings were transformed into a naval base and a cadet corps was deployed there. (One of its students was the future author Valentin Pikul.)

World Heritage and a disputed legacy

In 1989, a permanent exhibition, "The Solovki special camp", was added to the museum on the islands, the first anywhere in the USSR to be devoted to the Gulag. In June of that year, the first Days of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression were held on the islands; in subsequent years this event would take place in August.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The Orthodox Church reestablished the monastery in 1992, and that year the ensemble was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List.

Between 1989 and 2014 a memorial square including memorials to different victims who were imprisoned in the special camp and prison was created.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2015, human rights activists expressed disquiet that the authorities were "gradually removing all traces of the labor camp".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In January 2016 the Gulag section in the Solovki Museum was closed by its new director, Vladimir Shutov who, as Archimandrite Porfiry, was head of the monastery.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In August 2017, the local authorities asked police to investigate the 29th annual Days of Remembrance as an "unauthorised" gathering.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Early in 2018, a court in the Arkhangelsk Region heard an unsuccessful plea by Archimandrite Porfiry to annul a contract concluded in 2011 with the head of the now disbanded Gulag section of the museum and evict its former head, Olga Bochkaryova, and her daughter from their two-room apartment.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The author of several books about Solovki, Yury Brodsky, was accused by an Orthodox website of displaying "religious hatred" in his latest publication.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Notable prisoners

File:Loubianka square memorial.jpg
Memorial to the victims of political repression in the USSR, on Lubyanka Square, Moscow, next to FSB headquarters, made of a boulder from the Solovetsky Islands
File:GulagMemorial.jpg
Memorial to the victims of political repression in the USSR, in St. Petersburg, made of a boulder from the Solovetsky Islands

Members of the intelligentsia, representing both Tsarist Russia and the post-revolutionary USSR, were prominent among the prisoners on Solovki.<ref>Application for UNESCO World Heritage Site Template:Webarchive, 1991, p. 11.</ref>

The 1920s

In the 1920s many of those sent to Solovki were released, but often arrested and imprisoned (or exiled) a second time.

The First Five-Year Plan, 1928–1932

Naftaly Frenkel was a prisoner on Solovki who became a leading cadre in the security services during the First Five-Year Plan.

Arrested by the OGPU in 1923, he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment and sent to Solovki. There his sentence was reduced and in 1927, he was released and appointed head of production at SLON before being sent as representative of the camp to Moscow in 1929. Soon he was in charge of production throughout the Gulag and oversaw work on the White Sea Canal.<ref>N.V. Petrov and K.V. Skorin, The leading cadres of the NKVD, 1934-1941, Memorial: Moscow, 1999 Template:In lang Entry for Naftaly Aronovich Frenkel (1883-1960).</ref> His activities in the Gulag paralleled the forced industrialisation and collectivisation of agriculture throughout the Soviet Union.

The mass shooting on Solovki in 1929 described by Dmitry Sergeyevich Likhachov (it forms a key episode in Marina Goldovskaya's 1987 film, Solovki Power) was a sign of the harshening regime.

The mid- to late 1930s

Many of those on Solovki later in the 1930s fell victim to Stalin's Great Purge and were shot, either in autumn 1937 at Sandarmokh or on Solovki in February 1938.

Camp commanders

Source:<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

  • October 13, 1923 to November 13, 1925 – Alexander Nogtev
  • November 13, 1925  to May 20, 1929 – Fedor Eichmans
  • May 20, 1929 to May 19, 1930 ‌– Alexander Nogtev
  • May 19, 1930 to September 25, 1931 – Andrei Ivanchenko
  • September 25, 1931 to November 6, 1931 – K. Y. Dukis (acting)
  • November 6-16, 1931 – E. I. Senkevich
  • November 16, 1931 to January 1, 1932 the camp was closed due to the organization of the Belbaltlag on its base
  • January 1932 to March 1933 – E. I. Senkevich
  • August 27, 1932 – P. A. Boyar (mentioned as temporarily acting chief)
  • January 28, 1933 to no later than August 13, 1933 (mentioned) – Yakov Bukhband
  • October 8, 1933 – Levlev (mentioned as temporary acting chief)
  • December 4, 1933 – the camp as an independent unit is closed

The prison on Solovki in art and literature

File:Горький на Соловках.jpg
Maxim Gorky visiting Solovki. To his right stands leading NKVD officer Gleb Boky

Émigré and samizdat literature, 1926-1974

Perestroika and Glasnost, 1985-1991

  • Marina Goldovskaya's 1988 documentary film The Solovki Regime («Власть Соловецкая») tells the story of the first, permanent camp in Soviet Russia, from its founding in 1923 to the closure of the prison in 1939. It includes interviews with former prisoners, among them mediaevalist Dmitry Likhachyov, writer Oleg Volkov and long-term Gulag inmate Olga Adamova-Sliozberg (one of the four named sources in Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, the rest were anonymous until 1994).
  • Template:Cite book Abridged version of the 1989 Soviet original («Доднесь тяготеет. т. 1. Записки Вашей современницы»). Includes two key memoirs describing the early and final stages of the camp's existence (see Memoirs, below).
  • Yugoslav communist Karlo Štajner served a part of his sentence on Solovki. He recounts his experiences there in 7,000 days in Siberia (English edn. 1989).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Post-Perestroika

  • Zakhar Prilepin's The Abode is a 2014 novel reconstructing life in the Solovki labor camp of the 1920s. In 2020, it inspired an eight-part television adaptation.

Notes

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References

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Further reading (in order of publication)

Memoirs

Novels

Studies

  • Template:Cite journal
  • Michael Jakobson (1993), Origins of the GULAG: The Soviet Prison Camp System, 1917–1934. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.
  • Galina Mikhaĭlovna Ivanova, Carol Apollonio Flath, and Donald J. Raleigh (2000), Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System. New York: M.E. Sharpe.
  • Template:Cite journalTemplate:Dead link
  • Roy P. Robson (2004), Solovki: The Story of Russia Told Through its Most Remarkable Islands. Cambridge, MA: Yale University Press.
  • Shubin, Daniel H. Monastery Prisons, Template:ISBN

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