Solovetsky Islands

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Solovetsky Islands
The Solovetsky Monastery (2004)
The Solovetsky Monastery (2004)
Waters White sea
Geographical location 65 ° 4 ′  N , 35 ° 44 ′  E Coordinates: 65 ° 4 ′  N , 35 ° 44 ′  E
Solovetsky Islands (Russia)
Solovetsky Islands
Number of islands 6th
Main island Solovetsky
Total land area 313 km²
Residents 968 (2002)
Map of the White Sea with the Solovetsky Islands
Map of the White Sea with the Solovetsky Islands

The Solowezki Islands ( Russian Соловецкие острова / Solowezkije ostrowa ), also known as the Solovki Islands or Solowki , are a group of Russian islands in the White Sea consisting of six larger inhabited and several smaller uninhabited islands . Administratively, the islands belong to the Arkhangelsk Oblast . When Alexander Solzhenitsyn coined the term Gulag Archipelago , he also thought of the Solovki Archipelago . The Solovki camp was Russia's first large prison camp, the model of the Soviet camp system .

location

The islands are located in the White Sea 530 kilometers north of St. Petersburg and 160 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle . The Kola Peninsula is 150 kilometers further north. Coming from the Russian mainland in the small town of Kem , the first thing you see of the Solovki is an outline with many small offshore islands. The closer the boat gets to the islands, the larger the Kremlin, visible from afar, becomes . The Solovetsky Monastery was founded on the main island in 1429 by the monks Sawwati, German and Sossima; it was one of the most important economic, political, cultural and military centers in the area.

Islands

The archipelago consists of the following six larger and a number of smaller islands:

  • Anserski (47 km²)
  • Bolshoi Solowezki (Gross Solowezki) (246 km²)
  • Bolshaya Muksalma (17 km²)
  • Malaja Muksalma (0.57 km²)
  • Bolshoi Sayatsky (1.25 km²)
  • Maly Sajazki (1.02 km²)

history

In the 13th century monks settled on the islands and built a monastery . This was expanded by the Russian tsars in the 18th century into a fortress and a state prison , in which mostly political prisoners were imprisoned for over two and a half centuries .

Gulag prison camp

In the 20th century, the Solovetsky Islands became a symbol of Russian history, the epitome of the Red Terror in Soviet Russia and, subsequently, of the Great Terror . Soon after the establishment of the Soviet Union , Lenin had a labor camp set up here, which in 1923 housed over 3,000 prisoners. The special-purpose Solowezki camp formed the nucleus for the infamous Gulag and housed around 71,800 prisoners at its peak in 1931.

Maxim Gorki (fourth from right) visits the Solovetsky Islands with Gleb Boki (left from Gorki) and officials of the OGPU secret police (1929)

The geographical location of the Solovetsky archipelago, as well as the fact that there was already a prison in the monastery, played a role in the formation of the camps. All monasteries and hermitages on the island were converted into storage facilities by the Soviet authorities. As early as May 1920, a labor camp was established in the monastery, which from 1923 was placed under the administration of the northern camps. In October 1923, the “Solowezki Camp for Special Use” (SLON) and USLON, the “Administration of Solowezki Camp for Special Use”, were established with the first 130 inmates. Both were subordinate to the OGPU in Moscow . A “special department” within the OGPU was responsible for the camps. The administration was in Arkhangelsk until it was moved to Moscow in 1923. The actual powers were held by the camp commandant, who was provided by SLON. From 1923 to 1925 Alexander Nogtew (1892–1947) was the first camp commandant, then until 1929 Fyodor Eichmans (1897–1938), from 1929 to 1930 again Nogtew. Naftali Frenkel (1883–1960) played an essential role as the organizer of the Solovetsky penal camp as a model for the entire Gulag . The motto above the entrance gate of the camp was: "Let us drive mankind towards happiness with an iron hand."

The special purpose of the camps was to isolate them from political opponents of the new system and to exploit their labor . These included political opponents, members of unpopular bourgeois strata (so-called " class enemies ", priests , monks, White Guards , Mensheviks , Social Revolutionaries and anarchists ). Several 10,000 people were murdered in the island's forests, including the meteorologist Alexei Wangenheim (1881–1937). The camp was characterized by poor medical care, abuse to the point of torture and insufficient food for the inmates. Many of the detainees suffered from depression from the short summer months and the cold winter. The poor medical care was particularly devastating. In an epidemic in the summer of 1925/26, a third of the 6,000 prisoners died of typhus .

today

Aerial view of the Solovetsky Monastery (2017)

In the meantime the monastery complexes are again inhabited by Russian Orthodox monks; there is no longer a prison on the islands. The most important buildings have been protected by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site since 1992 . The islands and their historical buildings can be visited by tourists as part of guided excursions.

Memorials in Moscow , St. Petersburg and Arkhangelsk are made of stones taken from the islands. The social historian Gabor T. Larkspur pointed out - without naming the intended President Vladimir Putin - that the official Russian remembrance emphasizes the Christian tradition for "Holy Russia" and the hardly documented history of the Solovetsk camp during the days of the Red and Don't think about great terror.

See also

literature

  • Joel Kotek , Pierre Rigoulot: The Century of Camps. Captivity, forced labor, extermination. Propylaen, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-549-07143-4 (Original edition: Le siècle des camps. Détention, concentration, extermination. Cent ans de mal radical. Éditions Lattès, Paris 2000, ISBN 2-7096-1884-2 ).

documentary

Web links

Commons : Solovetsky Islands  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sergei Krivenko: Solovetsky camp special use. Memorial.de, accessed November 4, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b Karl Schlögel : Solowki - Laboratorium der Extremes (accessed on June 17, 2015)
  3. ↑ Olivier Rolin : The Meteorologist . Novel. Translation by Holger Fock and Sabine Müller. Munich: Liebeskind, 2015, ISBN 978-3-95438-049-7 . (first French 2014)
  4. ^ "Solovetsky Stone" monument in the St. Petersburg Encyclopedia
  5. ^ Gabor T. Rittersporn: The undocumented history of the Soloveck camp