In 1920 Solovetsky Monastery was closed. May 20, 1920 on Solovki a labor camp was organized "For prisoners of war of the civil war and persons sentenced to forced labor" and a state farm " Solovki».
By autumn, according to the census, the population Solovkov was 320 men and 5 women. In 1920–23 Soviet organizations appeared in the village: the authority is the Administration of the Islands, headed by the Plenipotentiary of the Archgubernia Executive Committee for Solovki, police, medical center, club them. Karl Marx, two schools - for the children of state farm employees and for former homeless children held in the Solovetsky children's colony.
The first stage of the existence of the Soviet settlement on Solovki ended in May 1923 with the fire of the Kremlin (as the new owners began to call the monastery) and the economic collapse of the Solovki state farm.
On October 13, 1923, USLON - the Administration of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camps (1923-1939) became the new sole owner of the archipelago. During this tragic period of life Solovkov up to 4-5 thousand (in some years - up to 20 thousand) prisoners were at the same time on the archipelago. In addition, camp guards and civilians lived in the military camp.
This period is characterized by the tightening of the regime of detention of prisoners. The punitive machine was launched, and flowed on Solovki thousands of "enemies". The lists of the repressed (dispossessed kulaks, "spies" and "terrorists", ordinary party members and senior officials, security officers) were continuously updated with new victims. Solovki turned into a testing ground, where norms and methods were developed, later widely applied in Gulag. The organization of the work and life of prisoners, types of punishment, sophisticated methods of interrogation and psychological suppression, security regimes, methods of execution and mass burial of corpses - all this was invented there. From 1920 to 1939, until it was disbanded by order of Beria, through Solovetsky camp special purpose and the Karelian camps connected with it nearly a million people passed. Only a select few were lucky enough to return ... "(Alexander Rapoport. Secrets of the harem and a rail on the shoulder. Chronicle of the Solovetsky training ground. Nezavisimaya gazeta. 27.02.2003). The camp guards were no exception. They were recruited from imprisoned Red Army soldiers and Chekists. With each new stage new candidates for the guards were arriving, so the old ones had to be disposed of.Almost all the camp commanders were shot.
Demonstrative mass executions and torture were practiced more and more often. People were driven up to their necks into the lakeside swamp and kept in it. The prisoner was undressed and left to die in the forest in the summer to be eaten by mosquitoes, in the winter in the cold. They froze people and massively 150 people each. They tied a man to a log and lowered him down the steps of a steep staircase. Sekirnaya mountain(300 steps). All that was left of the man was a bloody bag of bones. A punishment cell (SHIZO) was set up in the temple on Sekirnaya Gora. The guards there were criminals who were forbidden to go outside the ShIZO. The horse was harnessed to empty shafts, and the legs of the guilty were tied to the shafts, a guard sat on the horse and drove it through the forest clearing until the unfortunate man uttered his last breath. Gang rape of prisoners was practiced.
There were many children among the prisoners, mostly from homeless children. One of the barracks housed the "Children's Department ELEPHANT».
From the Solovetsky fugitives, who fled from the camps on the mainland and on foot to Finland, and on ships carrying timber, rumors spread in the West about the extreme cruelty in our logging. In the spring of 1929, on Solovki I arrived Maksim Gorky.
Bitter was supposed to calm world public opinion. He interacted a lot with the prisoners. For forty minutes one boy told him about what was going on in the camp. The Petrel of the Revolution could not hold back her tears. In 3 days Bitter left. The boy was never seen afterwards.
After visiting Solovkov in 1930 in the magazine "Our Achievements" (!) Bitter published an enthusiastic essay on the Solovki Chekists ...
After the visit Gorky a special commission was sent to the camp under the leadership of the secretary of the Collegium of the OGPU A.M. Shanin. Information about torture was confirmed. A number of assistants to the camp administration from among the former Chekists were shot, some representatives of the authorities received terms. Later, when the noise subsided, the lawlessness continued.
Execution sentences were carried out by a brigade led by an executioner who had twenty years of work experience. In the fall of 1937, he personally killed from 180 to 265 Solovki prisoners daily. His name is known - the captain of the NKVD Mikhail Matveev - "lower education, participant in the storming of the Winter Palace." For the performance of the Solovetsky special operation M.R. Matveev was awarded a valuable gift and a silver badge "Honorary Worker of the Cheka-OGPU".
“The award “Honorary Worker of the Cheka-OGPU” is a sign of mutual responsibility of all who wear it,” the head of the Chekist department, Genrikh Yagoda, proclaimed even before the maelstrom of the Great Terror dragged Yagoda himself, and the Leningrad brigade of executioners, and the local security officers who helped them.
At the foot Sekirnaya mountain- the most terrible punishment cell of the concentration camp, a cross was erected in memory of the victims of repressions.
In connection with the change in the camp regime and the transformation of the SLON into Solovetsky prison Main Directorate state security NKVD in the area of ​​the former monastery brick factory, in record time (1938-39) a three-story prison was built. This building has never been used for its intended purpose. After the emergency evacuation of the camp in November-December 1939 to the mainland (in connection with the Soviet-Finnish war), it housed the services of the Training Detachment of the Northern Fleet. Later, the building was converted into warehouses for the military unit. It is currently empty.

Solovetsky camp and prison

In May 1920, the monastery was closed, and soon two organizations were created on Solovki: a forced labor camp for prisoners of war civil war and persons sentenced to forced labor, and the Solovki state farm. At the time of the closing of the monastery, 571 people lived in it (246 monks, 154 novices and 171 laborers). Some of them left the islands, but almost half remained, and they began to work as civilians on the state farm.

After 1917, the new authorities began to consider the rich Solovetsky Monastery as a source of material assets, numerous commissions mercilessly ruined it. Only the Famine Relief Commission in 1922 took out more than 84 poods of silver, almost 10 pounds of gold, and 1988 precious stones. At the same time, salaries from icons were barbarously stripped, precious stones were picked out from mitres and vestments. Fortunately, thanks to the employees of the People's Commissariat of Education N. N. Pomerantsev, P. D. Baranovsky, B. N. Molas, A. V. Lyadov, many priceless monuments from the monastery sacristy were taken to the central museums.

At the end of May 1923, a very strong fire broke out on the territory of the monastery, which lasted three days and caused irreparable damage to many of the ancient buildings of the monastery.

At the beginning of the summer of 1923, the Solovetsky Islands were transferred to the OGPU, and the Solovetsky Special Purpose Forced Labor Camp (SLON) was organized here. Almost all the buildings and lands of the monastery were transferred to the camp, it was decided "to recognize the need to liquidate all the churches located in the Solovetsky Monastery, to consider it possible to use church buildings for housing, taking into account the acuteness of the housing situation on the island."

On June 7, 1923, the first batch of prisoners arrived at Solovki. At first, all male prisoners were kept on the territory of the monastery, and women - in the wooden Arkhangelsk hotel, but very soon all the monastery sketes, deserts and toni were occupied by the camp. And two years later, the camp “splashed out” onto the mainland and by the end of the 1920s occupied the vast expanses of the Kola Peninsula and Karelia, and the Solovki themselves became just one of the 12 departments of this camp, which played a significant role in the Gulag system.

During its existence, the camp has undergone several reorganizations. Since 1934, Solovki became the VIII branch of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, and in 1937 it was reorganized into the Solovetsky prison of the NKVD GUGB, which was closed at the very end of 1939.

During the 16 years of the existence of the camp and prison on Solovki, tens of thousands of prisoners passed through the islands, including representatives of famous noble families and intellectuals, prominent scientists in various fields of knowledge, military men, peasants, writers, artists, poets. . In the camp, they were an example of true Christian mercy, non-covetousness, kindness and peace of mind. Even in the most difficult conditions, the priests tried to the end to fulfill their pastoral duty, providing spiritual and material assistance to those who were nearby.

Today we know the names of more than 80 metropolitans, archbishops and bishops, more than 400 hieromonks and parish priests - prisoners of Solovki. Many of them died on the islands from disease and starvation or were shot in the Solovetsky prison, others died later. At the Jubilee Council of 2000 and later, about 60 of them were glorified for church-wide veneration as the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. Among them are such prominent hierarchs and figures of the Russian Orthodox Church, as Hieromartyrs Eugene (Zernov), Metropolitan Gorky († 1937), Hilarion (Troitsky), Archbishop of Vereya († 1929), Peter (Zverev), Archbishop of Voronezh († 1929), Procopius (Titov), ​​Archbishop of Odessa and Kherson († 1937), Arkady (Ostalsky), Bishop of Bezhetsky († 1937), clergyman Athanasius (Sakharov), Bishop of Kovrov († 1962), Martyr John Popov, professor at the Moscow Theological Academy († 1938), and many others.

Clement (Kapalin), Met. Testimony of Faith

The past twentieth century keeps many interesting names. The life story of Georgy Mikhailovich Osorgin, on the one hand, is similar to the millions of fates of Russian nobles who fell into the merciless millstones of the class struggle at the dawn of the Soviet era. On the other hand, in its laconic facts, the immeasurable depth of fidelity, steadfastness and true nobility of the Christian soul is revealed.

Zhemaleva Yu.P. Justice Above Repression

Interview with the participant of the conference "" Yulia Petrovna Zhemalyova, head of the press service of LLC NPO Soyuzneftegazservis, member of the Russian Nobility Assembly (Moscow). In the report “The fate of the participants of the White Movement on the Don on the example of the hereditary nobleman Ivan Vasilyevich Panteleev”, Yulia Petrovna spoke about her great-grandfather, who was serving a sentence in the Solovetsky camp in 1927-1931.

Golubeva N.V. Spirit-led work

Interview with Natalia Viktorovna Golubeva, participant of the conference “History of the country in the fate of the prisoners of the Solovetsky camps”, author of the literary and musical composition “But a man holds everything in himself” (Concentration camp and art), representative of the cultural and educational fund “Sretenie”, Severodvinsk .

Mazyrin A., Priest, Doctor of History“Thank God, there are people thanks to whom the memory of the Solovetsky tragedy is alive”

Interview with the participant of the conference "" Candidate of Historical Sciences, Doctor of Church History, Professor of PSTGU Priest Alexander Mazyrin.

Kurbatova Z. Interview of the granddaughter of academician D. S. Likhachev to the Pravda Severa TV channel

Zinaida Kurbatova lives in Moscow, works on a federal television channel, does what she loves - in a word, she is doing well. And, nevertheless, the granddaughter of academician Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev is drawn to the Arkhangelsk region like a magnet.

Tolts V.S. See the best in every person

In the summer, Solovki hosted the traditional international scientific and practical conference"History of the country in the fate of the prisoners of the Solovetsky camps". This year it was dedicated to the 110th anniversary of the birth of one of the most famous prisoners of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp, Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev, celebrated on November 28. We offer an interview with the granddaughter of Academician Vera Sergeevna Tolts, Slavist, professor at the University of Manchester.

Sukhanovskaya T. A museum of Dmitry Likhachev is being created on Solovki

The Russian North returns to Russia the name of the world magnitude again. In one of the past issues of RG, she talked about the governor's project, under which the first museum was opened in a small Arkhangelsk village Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky. Not so long ago, a decision was made to create a museum of Dmitry Likhachev on Solovki: the patriarch of Russian literature was a prisoner of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp from 1928 to 1932. The exposition about Likhachev should become part of the Solovetsky Museum-Reserve. The idea was supported by the Minister of Culture of Russia Vladimir Medinsky.

Mikhailova V. Life rules of Archpriest Anatoly Pravdolyubov

February 16, 2016 marks the 35th anniversary of the death of a remarkable Ryazan resident, Archpriest Anatoly Sergeevich Pravdolyubov, a spiritual composer, a talented writer, an experienced confessor and preacher, a prisoner of the ELEPHANT.

March 5 is the anniversary of Stalin's death. About the times of great repressions, great construction projects and great war a lot has been written. Here we have collected quotes from the book of memoirs by Nikolai Kiselev-Gromov “S.L.O.N. Solovetsky Forest of Special Purpose”, published in Arkhangelsk.

The author was not a prisoner of the camp, he was a guard, he served in the headquarters of the paramilitary guards of the famous Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp - S.L.O.N. This camp, as you know, was the first and was a model not only for the Gulag, but also for the camps of Nazi Germany. In 1930, Kiselev fled from the USSR to Finland and wrote these memoirs there.

THE ROAD IS LONG

In winter, it is incredibly cold in a freight car, since there is no stove in it; it is completely dark - no lamps or candles are issued. It is very dirty, and most importantly, incredibly crowded - there are no devices for lying or sitting, and the prisoners have to stand all the way, they cannot sit down because of crowding: at least sixty people are put into a freight car without a railing. Before the train leaves, the Chekists throw an old, often leaky bucket into the car and order them to get into it; on the way, the security officers do not release prisoners from the cars for their natural needs.

On the way from Petrograd, that is, for at least three days, the prisoner is given about one kilogram of black, half-baked and stale bread and three roach. Prisoners on the road are not supplied with water at all. When they begin to ask the Chekists to get drunk on the way, they answer them: “I didn’t get drunk at home! Wait, I'll get you drunk in Solovki! If a prisoner, driven to despair by thirst, begins to persistently demand water and threatens to complain to the higher authorities, then the escorts begin to beat such a prisoner (“ban”). After that, others endure in silence.

And from cities like Baku or Vladivostok, from where prisoners are also sent to SLON, the road continues for weeks.

JOB

In the 7th company, in which prisoners are also concentrated before being sent on business trips, I had to observe the following: the company barrack stands on a square fenced off with barbed wire, in the frosty season, dozens of prisoners walk around it non-stop all night long, because for them there was enough space in the barracks: it was so crowded with people that you couldn’t stick your finger in, those who remained in the yard had to walk all the time so as not to freeze. Exhausted from walking and the cold, and unable to resist sleep, they approach their things piled up right there on the square, stick their heads against them and fall asleep for a few minutes, the cold quickly makes them get up and rush around the square again.

The party marches through the dense Karelian forest, eaten up by billions of mosquitoes and clouds of midges in summer, among countless swamps, and in winter, that is, for most of the year, waist-deep in snow. Turning out of the snow, feet shod in bast shoes, they walk five, ten, twenty and even up to thirty kilometers. The night is coming.

Party, hundred-oh-oh! - shouts the senior in the escort from a small sleigh, on which the prisoners are carrying him and all the escorting Chekists in turn. The party has stopped.

Make fires, shovel snow, settle down for the night.

For the Chekists, the prisoners set up a camping tent, which they, like the Chekists themselves, carried on a sleigh, put an iron stove in it, and prepare food for the Chekists. They themselves warm themselves, who have teapots, and drink boiling water from 200 grams. black bread (if only they had it left). Then, bent over in three deaths and placing a dirty fist under their heads, the prisoners somehow spend the night at the fires, all the while extracting dried wood from under the snow, supporting the fire of their own fires, and in the stove of the Chekists.

Many prisoners, seeing that self-killing cannot save them, and in the long term - inevitable death with preliminary long suffering, act more decisively: they hang themselves on icy trees or lie down under a chopped pine tree at the moment when it falls - then their suffering ends for sure .

No mosquito nets, which are absolutely necessary in that climate, the ELEPHANT never gives out to prisoners. While working, the prisoner every now and then drives away or erases from the face, neck and head with the sleeve of either the right or the left hand the insects mercilessly biting him. By the end of the work, his face becomes terrible: it is all swollen, covered with wounds and the blood of mosquitoes crushed on it.

"Rack on mosquitoes" here is a favorite way of punishment for Chekists. "Philo" is stripped naked, tied to a tree and left like that for several hours. Mosquitoes cover it with a thick layer. The "simulant" screams until he faints. Then some guards order other prisoners to pour water on the fainting man, while others simply do not pay attention to him until the end of the sentence ...

The second scourge with which the nature of the North beats the prisoners is night blindness and scurvy.

Night blindness often leads to the murder of a prisoner, when in the evening he moves a few steps away from a business trip to the forest in order to recover, and gets lost. The Chekist warder knows perfectly well that the prisoner got lost due to illness, but he wants to curry favor, get a promotion, receive gratitude in the order and a monetary reward, and most importantly, he has a special Chekist sadism. He is therefore glad to take such a prisoner at gunpoint and put him on the spot with a shot from a rifle.

Only an insignificant part of the sick and samoubers escapes death, the rest die on business trips, like flies in the fall. Comrades, on the orders of the Chekists, take off their clothes and underwear and throw them naked into large grave pits.

"Krikushnik" - a small shed made of thin and damp boards. The boards are nailed in such a way that you can stick two fingers between them. The floor is earthen. No facilities for sitting or lying down. No oven either...

IN Lately in order to save forests, the heads of business trips began to build “screamers” in the ground. A deep pit, about three meters deep, breaks out, a small frame is made above it, a piece of straw is thrown to the bottom of the pit, and the “screamer” is ready.

From such a "screamer" you can not hear how the "jackal" yells, - the security officers say. "Jump!" - it is said to the person being put into such a "screamer". And when they let him out, they give him a pole, along which he climbs, if he still can, upstairs.

Why do they put the prisoner in the “screamer”? For all. If he, talking with the Chekist-supervisor, did not, as expected, go to the front, he is in the “shouter”. If during the morning or evening verification he did not stand rooted to the spot (because “the system is a holy place,” the Chekists say), but kept himself at ease, he is also a “screamer”. If it seemed to the Chekist-supervisor that the prisoner was talking to him impolitely, he was again in the “screamer”.

WOMEN

The women in SLON are mainly employed in fishing business trips. The intelligent ones, like the majority there, and especially those who are prettier and younger, serve with the KGB guards, washing their linen, preparing dinner for them ...

Overseers (and not only overseers) force them to cohabit with themselves. Some, of course, at first "fashion", as the Chekists put it, but then, when for "fashion" they are sent to the most difficult physical work - to extract peat in the forest or in the swamps - they, in order not to die from overwork and starvation rations, reconcile and make concessions. For this they get a feasible job.

The Chekists-supervisors have a long-established rule to exchange their "marukhs", about which they previously agree among themselves. “I am sending you my marukha and asking, as we agreed with you, to send me yours,” one Chekist writes to another when his “beloved” gets tired of him.

ELEPHANT does not issue government clothing to imprisoned women. They go all the time in their own; after two or three years they are completely naked and then make themselves clothes out of sacks. While the prisoner lives with the Chekist, he dresses her in a poor cotton dress and boots made of rough leather. And when he sends her to his comrade, he takes off "his" clothes from her, and she again puts on bags and state-owned bast shoes. The new cohabitant, in turn, dresses her, and sending her to the third, undresses her again ...

I did not know a single woman in SLON, if she was not an old woman, who in the end would not give her "love" to the Chekists. Otherwise, it inevitably and soon perishes. It often happens that children will be born from cohabitation in women. Not a single security officer during my more than three years of stay in SLON recognized a single child born from him as his own, and women in labor (the security officers call them “mothers”) go to Anzer Island.

They are sent according to a common template. They stand in ranks, dressed in sack clothes, and hold their babies wrapped in rags in their arms. Gusts of wind penetrate both themselves and the unfortunate children. And the Chekists-guards yell, intertwining their commands with the inevitable obscene abuse.

It is easy to imagine how many of these babies can survive...

In winter, they follow the snowy road in all weathers - in bitter frost and in a snowy blizzard - several kilometers to the Rebeld's coastal business trip, carrying children in their arms.

In desperation, many women kill their children and throw them into the forest or into the latrines, and then commit suicide themselves. "Mamoks" who kill their children are sent by the IDF to the women's punishment cell on the Hare Islands, five kilometers from Bolshoi Solovetsky Island.

IN THE KREMLIN

The thirteenth company is located in the former Assumption Cathedral (I think I am not mistaken in the name of the cathedral). A huge building of stone and cement, now damp and cold, since there are no stoves in it, drops from human breath and fumes are constantly falling from its high vaults. It can accommodate up to five thousand people and is always packed with prisoners. Three-tiered bunks made of round damp poles are arranged throughout the room.

The prisoner worked twelve hours the day before; having come from work to the company, he spent at least two hours standing in line for bread and lunch and for lunch itself; then he dried his clothes and shoes, or onuchi; an hour and a half after dinner, the evening verification begins, on which he also stands for two hours. Only then can he go to sleep. But the noise and uproar all around does not stop: someone is “beaten in the face”, the guards at the top of their lungs call those dressed up for night work, the prisoners go to recover and the prisoners talk. A few hours later, he is raised for morning verification ...

At the entrance to the 13th company, on the right and left, there are huge wooden tubs a meter and a half high, replacing the latrine. A prisoner who wants to recover must declare this to the orderly, he will report to the company officer on duty, and the company officer on duty will allow him to go to the “lavatory” when a whole party of people who wish is gathered. The orderly leads them to the tubs and puts them in line. In order to recover, the prisoner must climb onto a tall tub with a board laid across it, where he will rectify his need in front of everyone standing below, listening to: “Come on, you rotten professor! Protector of the king-father! Get off the tub with a bullet! Enough! Overstayed!” etc.

To endure such tubs filled with sewage, two people put a stick through his ears and carry him on their shoulders to the “central room”. Bearers must descend about a hundred meters down the steps of the cathedral. Chernyavsky forced (necessarily priests, monks, priests and the most cleanly dressed or distinguished by their manners intellectuals) to carry them out several times a day. At the same time, in order to mock the “bars” and the “long-maned”, he forced criminals to push a tub filled to the brim so that the contents splashed and fell on the one in front, or he taught to knock down the front or back of the walking ones, in order to later force the intellectuals and priests to wipe spilled rags.

In 1929, all the priests of the 14th company, through the company commander Sakharov, were asked to cut their hair and take off their cassocks. Many refused to do so and were sent on penal assignments. There, the Chekists, with scuffles and blasphemous abuse, forcibly and baldly shaved them, took off their cassocks, dressed them in the dirtiest and torn clothes and sent them to forest work. Polish priests were also dressed in such clothes and sent to the forest. In general, it must be said that Polish citizens get more in SLON than people of other nationalities. At the slightest political complication with Poland, they immediately begin to squeeze them in every possible way: they go to punishment cells or on penal assignments, where the guards quickly bring them to the “bend”.

The pug mill is, as it were, a branch of the punishment cell. It is an absolutely dark and damp basement, dug under the southern wall of the Kremlin. At the bottom of it lies a half-meter layer of clay, which the prisoners knead with their feet to construction works. In winter, the clay freezes; then they put small iron stoves on it, thaw it and make the prisoners knead ... Literally everything is removed from those who get into the pug mill, and completely naked - in winter and summer - they stand for several hours in wet clay up to their knees ...

Photo from an album donated by the Administration of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camps
S. M. Kirov, First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

To my world

SOLOVETSKY SPECIAL PURPOSE CAMP (ELEPHANT)

Story

About "prisoner-of-war camps", "internment camps" or, in a modern manner, "filtration camps" have been known since the time of the pharaohs, when captured enemies were kept locked up, in pits, in ravines, in gorges guarded by archers. Captured and disarmed soldiers died in them in large numbers, they were not given food, they were killed or turned into slaves. Slaves of ancient Egypt, Greece, ancient rome replenished with captured soldiers. Their professional skills were used in gladiator camps.

It was these camps that were created everywhere on the territories of countries waging war. They were also in Napoleonic France, Tsarist Russia, Imperial Japan, Kaiser's Germany ... in a word, wherever wars were fought. And this is the bitter reality of any war. Agree that the same "Swedes near Poltava" Russian soldiers had to disarm somewhere, search and contain, before Emperor Peter the Great let them go home.

Such camps for prisoners were in the United States during the Civil War (1861-1865). They write that in the camp near Andersonville, up to 10 thousand captured soldiers died of starvation. It was he who has recently been intensively called the "first concentration camp", forgetting that a year ago the camps for the Boers during the Second Anglo-Boer War of 1899 were called the "first concentration camps". Big Russian money came to London and the Kremlin political wind immediately blew to the west.

Now about the "concentration camps" as government agency. Their homeland is the USSR. The camps, which later transformed into concentration camps, first appeared on the territory of present-day Russia in 1918-1923. The term "concentration camp", the very phrase "concentration camps" appeared in documents signed by Vladimir Lenin, wrote Anatoly Pristavkin. Their creation was supported by Leon Trotsky. It was only after Lenin's Russia that concentration camps arose in Hitler's Germany and in Pol Pot's Kampuchea.

A concentration camp is not just a place surrounded by barbed wire

The Solovetsky Camp for Forced Labor for Special Purposes (SLON OGPU), including two transit and distribution points in Arkhangelsk and Kemi, was organized by a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars (Minutes No. 15 of the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars of October 13, 1923, chaired by Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars A.I. Rykov) on the basis of the Pertominsk camp forced labor, which by that time already had its own branch in Solovki.

According to the draft resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (prepared by the OGPU in June 1923), 8,000 people were supposed to be placed in the Solovetsky camp.

The total number of prisoners in Solovki grew from 2,500 people at the end of 1923 to 5,000 at the end of 1924, then stabilized - about 8,000 people at a time.

The period 1925-1929 of the existence of the Solovetsky Camps found the greatest reflection in memoirs. At the same time, the image of Solovki was formed, which gained fame far beyond the borders of the USSR.

During these years, Solovetsky prisoners worked: on the construction and operation railway(Kremlin–Kirpichniy Zavod branch and Kremlin–Filimonovo branch), logging (central and northern part of Bolshaya Solovetsky Island), peat mining (northwestern part of Bolshaya Solovetsky Island), fishing industry (catching lake and sea ​​fish, slaughtering a sea animal - M. Muksalma, Rebolda), in a solkhoze (extraction of salt from sea water), in agriculture (dairy farming, pig farms, vegetable growing - the Kremlin, B. Muksalma, Isakovo), in fur farming (rabbit farm, muskrat breeding, arctic foxes, foxes, sables - the islands of Deep Bay), iodine industry (extraction and processing of seaweed - Anzer, Muksalma, Rebolda); for the maintenance of factories: brick, leather, mechanical, pottery, tar, lime, lard and a number of workshops.

On Solovki, an Operational and Commercial Unit (headed by N.A. Frenkel) was organized, aimed at using free "labor" in the resource-rich undeveloped region. The most profitable for the GPU is logging for export.

By 1929, logging from Solovki was finally transferred to Karelia, and after the threat of an embargo in connection with the "use of the slave labor of prisoners" was carried out through the Karelles trust.

The Solovetsky camps gradually grew, moved to the mainland with the Directorate in Kem (since 1929), the number of prisoners, taking into account mainland business trips, by 1929/1930 reached 65,000 people, while about 10,000 people were kept on the Solovetsky Islands proper.

By this time, the work of prisoners from forced for the purpose of "re-education" finally became a slave labor, the development of the North was transformed into colonization, which was carried out by the forces of the Gulag. Organized "colonization villages" from among the prisoners who served part of the term (depending on the article) with the mandatory call of the family. Production activity is concentrated on the mainland, in 1930-1933 several large groups of Solovki prisoners are known to work on the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, in the Ukhta and Vaigach expeditions of the OGPU.

During these years, Solovki served to isolate the "special contingent", political isolators - special isolators (Trotskyites, Ukrainian "Borotbists", communists) were again created. Disabled people and “reachers” were also sent here.

The mass executions of 1937 affected mainly the category of prisoners of the Solovetsky camp, who were transferred to the prison regime without a decision. From October 1937 to February 1938, 1825 prisoners of the Solovetsky prison were sentenced to death by the Special Troika of the UNKVD in the Leningrad Region: 657 people were sentenced on October 9, 1937 (shot on October 27, November 2 and 3, 1937); On October 10, 1937, 459 people were sentenced (shot on November 1 and 4, 1937); On November 10, 1937, 84 people were sentenced (shot on December 8, 1937); On November 25, 1937, 425 people were sentenced (shot on December 8, 1937); On February 14, 1938, 200 people were sentenced (the date of execution is unknown). The place of execution and burial of the first stage - 1111 people (from October 27 to November 4, 1937) - the Sandormokh tract (near Medvezhyegorsk), the rest of the burial places are unknown. Presumably, on December 8, 1937, a group of 509 people was shot in the Leningrad region, and in February 1938 the remaining 200 people were shot in Solovki (presumably in the area of ​​Isakovo or Kulikov Bolot).

After the mass executions of 1937, the regime was even tougher (prisoners were deprived of their surnames - they were assigned numbers; after getting up and before lights out, it was forbidden not only to lie down on the bed, but also to lean against the wall and headboards, it was necessary to sit with open eyes, holding hands on knees; walk 30 minutes a day; limited correspondence, received letters were not issued to prisoners - they were allowed to be read once in the presence of the guard).

Solovetsky camp - the first demonstration state concentration camp in the world

1. For the first time in world history, the Solovetsky camps became a STATE STRUCTURE (state structures were created in the rank of a ministry, managing the camps - the OGPU, the NKVD, the MGB, the Charter of the Solovetsky camp was written, their own monetary circulation was introduced, etc.).
2. The camps were created by DIRECT INSTRUCTIONS OF THE FIRST PERSONS OF THE STATE, who are PERSONALLY AND DIRECTLY involved in the murders of their own citizens through the secret state decrees or orders issued by them. (Secret Decree of the Council of People's Commissars "On the organization of the Solovetsky forced labor camp" dated 02.11.1923. With the participation of Vladimir Lenin, signed by his deputy - Alexei Rykov and his secretary Nikolai Gorbunov. The so-called "hit lists" of Joseph Stalin).
3. A vile LEGAL BASIS has been created for sending to the camp (Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR). Black becomes white and vice versa. Lies are elevated public policy. Without any hesitation, the Justice and the Police openly take the side of lawlessness, and the main enemies of the state are declared to be citizens who dare to declare their rights and oppose state arbitrariness.
4. A STATE SYSTEM of ideological support for the camps was created - the state media exposed the "enemies of the people" and brainwashed the people themselves, public figures they justified and praised terror... Fear and horror, which came from Solovki, were established in the country.
5. The camps were intended to destroy the POLITICAL OPPOSITION inside the country (destruction and exile of prominent members of other political parties, members of social movements and political organizations).
6. The camps were used for SOLVING ECONOMIC PROBLEMS - prisoners dug canals, built factories, erected settlements, etc., and the concentration camps were integrated into civil institutions, for example, the Ministry Rail transport, MinStroy, etc.
7. Concealment of crimes in the camps was carried out AT THE STATE LEVEL (Soviet secret decree of the KGB of the USSR No. 108ss). War criminals were covered by the STATE, presenting them with STATE orders, insignia and honorary titles "Pensioner of State Importance" (History of the Solovki executioner Dmitry Uspensky).
8. Incredible and previously unknown in history SCALE OF MURDER (The clash between the British and the Boers, which "glorified" the British as the first builders of camps for the civilian population - the British drove more than 200 thousand people into the camps - claimed the lives of 17 thousand people only in 1902. Through the SLON concentration camp According to various estimates, up to 3 million people passed, and from 300 thousand to 1 million people died.).
9. The camps were used for internment and destruction of OWN CITIZENS.
10. The camps were used for internment of representatives of ALL SOCIETY, and not representatives of certain groups of the population (military, rebels, migrants, etc.).
11. The camps were used to exterminate people IN PEACETIME.
12. People of all religions, sexes, ages and nationalities were exterminated in the camps - Armenians, Byelorussians, Hungarians, Georgians, Jews ... Kazakhs ... Russians ... The "International Solovki" arose.

Here are the 12 signs that distinguish the SYSTEM of concentration camps from prisoner of war camps, from colonies for criminals, from penal battalions, from labor camps, reservations, ghettos, from filtration camps ...

There was nothing like it anywhere before Bolshevik Russia (RSFSR-USSR). Not in the United States of America, not in England, not in Finland, not in Poland. In none of these countries the camps were brought to the level of a STATE STRUCTURE, a state institution. Neither the Sejm, nor the Parliament, nor the Congress issued laws on the camps. Neither the prime minister nor the president personally gave orders to the punitive organs to "shoot". The ministers of these countries did not communicate to their subordinates the state orders on the number of people being shot. The prisoners of England and the USA did not build factories, canals, power plants, roads, universities, bridges ... did not participate in the "atomic" project, did not sit in "sharashkas". In none of these countries did the economy depend on the "occupancy rate" of the camps and the "economic return" of each prisoner. The newspapers of England did not howl in a wild frenzy "Death to the enemies of the people!" The people of the United States did not demand "Death to dogs" in the squares. And, most importantly, in none of these countries did camps exist for decades, over several generations ... in peacetime.

This was the FIRST TIME in Solovki, in the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp. Communists "have driven humanity to happiness with an iron fist." And "happiness" immediately appeared to mankind with mass executions, typhoid Solovki, Ukrainian famine, Kolyma. Communism gave rise to the monstrous - women-cannibals and torture by children. Communism created state organization- Cheka / GPU / NKVD, in which most of the employees were psychopathic patients. They were given control over the Russian people. An unprecedented tragedy began, stretching for almost seventy years and leading to the most severe degradation of the entire population of Russia.

Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON), one of the world's first concentration camps

Reorganization and closure of the camp

The life of the Solovki prisoners is vividly described in Zakhar Prilepin's novel "The Abode".

Prisoners of the Solovetsky camp

In the following list, we are trying to collect the names of Solovki prisoners who served their sentences on church matters. This list does not claim to be complete, it will be updated gradually, as material becomes available. Dates in brackets are arrival at the camp (unless otherwise indicated) and departure (or death). The list is sorted by latest date.

• Feodor Polikarpov (1920 - 1921), released
• Grigory (Kozyrev), bishop. Petropavlovsky (March - October 1924), released early
• Sophronius (Arefiev), updated. ep. (1923 - 1924), released
• Alexander (Tolstopyatov), ​​Hierom. (September 26, 1924 - June 18, 1925), released early, sent into exile
• mts. Anna Lykoshina (October 1924 – 11 October 1925), died in the camp
• Arseny (Smolenets), bishop. Rostov (1923 - 1925), released
• Cyprian (Komarovsky), bishop. (1923 - 1925), exiled to Vladivostok
• ssmch. Konstantin Bogoslovsky, prot. (March 30, 1923 - 1925), released
• Vladimir Volagurin, Fr. (March 30, 1923 - not earlier than 1925), fate unknown
• Gabriel (Abalymov), bishop. (May 16, 1923 – May 1926), released
• Mitrofan (Grinev), bishop. Aksaysky (June 1923 - June 1926), exiled to Alatyr
• ssmch. Zechariah (Lobov), bishop. Aksaysky (September 26, 1924 - September 3, 1926), sent into exile in Krasnokokshaisk (Yoshkar-Ola)
• Nikolai Libin, prot. (September 26, 1924 - September 1926), released
• Pitirim (Krylov), igum. (December 14, 1923 - November 19, 1926), transferred to a special settlement
• Pavel Diev, prot. (February 22, 1924 - December 3, 1926), exiled to Ust-Sysolsk (Syktyvkar, Komi)
• ssmch. John Pavlovsky, Rev. (May 21, 1921 - 1926)
• ssmch. Arseny Troitsky, prot. (May 16, 1923 - 1926), released
• ssmch. Ignatius (Sadkovsky), bishop. Belevsky (September 14, 1923 - 1926), released
• Peter (Sokolov), bishop. Volsky (1923 - 1926), released
• Seraphim (Shamshev), Hierom. (1923 - 1926), exiled to the Urals
• Sergiy Gorodtsov, prot. (1924 - 1926), sent into exile
• mch. Stefan Nalivaiko (October 26, 1923 - 1926), exiled to Kazakhstan
• Nikon (Purlevsky), bishop. Belgorodsky (May 27, 1925 - July 27, 1927), released and exiled to Siberia
• ssmch. Alexander Sakharov, prot. (October 22, 1924 – August 7, 1927), died in camp
• Manuel (Lemeshevsky), bishop. Luzhsky (February 3, 1924 – September 16, 1927), released
• Vasily (Belyaev), bishop. Spas-Klepikovsky (1926 - 1927), released
• ssmch. Eugene (Zernov), archbishop. (1924 - 1927), sent into exile
• mch. John Popov, prof. MDA (1925 - 1927), sent into exile
• ssmch. John Steblin-Kamensky, prot. (September 26, 1924 - 1927), released
• Seraphim (Meshcheryakov), Met. Stavropolsky (September 25, 1925 - 1927), released
• ssmch. Sergius Znamensky, prot. (1926 - 1927), released
• Sofroniy (Starkov), bishop. (1923 - 1927), exiled to Siberia
• Tarasy (Livanov) (1924 - 1927/28), released
• prmch. Anatoly (Seraphim) Tjevar (June 19, 1925 - January 1928)
• prmch. Innokenty (Trouble), archim. (December 17, 1926 – January 6, 1928), died in camp
• ssmch. Amphilochius (Skvortsov), bishop. Krasnoyarsk (1926 - April 1928), released
• Gleb (Pokrovsky), archbishop. Permsky (March 26, 1926 - August 24, 1928), released with restrictions in choosing a place to live
• ssmch. Vasily (Zelentsov), bishop. Priluksky (September 24, 1926 - October 22, 1928), released early and deported to Siberia
• Ambrose (Polyansky), bishop. Kamyanets-Podilsky (May 21, 1926 - November 30, 1928), exiled
• ssmch. Procopius (Titov), ​​bishop. Kherson (May 26, 1926 - December 1928), exiled to the Urals
• ssmch. Iuvenaly (Maslovsky), archbishop. Kursky (1924 - 1928), released
• Vasily Gundyaev (1923 - no later than 1928), released
• ssmch. Innokenty (Tikhonov), bishop. Ladoga (1925 - c. 1928), exiled to Vologda
• ssmch. Peter (Zverev), archbishop. Voronezhsky (spring 1927 - February 7, 1929), died in a camp hospital
• Kornily (Sobolev), archbishop of Sverdlovsk (May 1927 -?), then sent into exile
• Theodosius (Almazov), archim. (July 17, 1927 - July 6, 1929), released and exiled to the Narym Territory
• ssmch. Hilarion (Troitsky), archbishop. Vereisky (January 1924 - October 14, 1929), exiled to Kazakhstan
• Boris (Shipulin), archbishop. Tulsky (March 9, 1928 - October 24, 1929), released early with deportation to the Vologda province.
• ssmch. Anthony (Pankeev), bishop. Mariupol (1926 - 1929), sent into exile
• Spanish Petr Cheltsov, prot. (June 19, 1927 - 1929), released
• ssmch. Joasaph (Zhevakhov), bishop. Dmitrievsky (September 16, 1926 - late 1929), exiled to the Narym Territory
• Vladimir Khlynov, prot. (1920s), released
• ssmch. Nikolai Vostorgov, Fr. (December 1929 – February 1, 1930), died in camp
• ssmch. Vasily Izmailov, prot. (August 26, 1927 – February 22, 1930), died in camp
• ssmch. Alexy (Buy), bishop. Kozlovsky (May 17, 1929 - February 1930), transferred to Voronezh
• ssmch. John Steblin-Kamensky, archpriest, 2nd time (August 16, 1929 - April 23, 1930), arrested in a camp, transferred to Voronezh and shot
• acc. Agapit (Taube), mon. (March 1928 - May 23, 1930), exiled to the Northern Territory for three years
• acc. Nikon (Belyaev), Hierom. (March 1928 - May 23, 1930), exiled to the Northern Territory for three years
• ssmch. Seraphim (Samoilovich), archbishop. Uglichsky (1929 - autumn 1930), transferred to Belbaltlag
• mch. Leonid Salkov (1927 - 1930), exiled to the Mezhdurechensky district of the Vologda region.
• mch. Vladimir Pravdolyubov (August 8, 1929 – c. 1930), exiled to Velsk
• Sergei Konev, prot. (December 5, 1927 – c. 1930), released
• ssmch. Nikolai Simo, prot. (March 16, 1931), arrested in the camp immediately after arrival and transferred to Leningrad
• ssmch. Vladimir Vvedensky, Fr. (March 30, 1930 - April 3, 1931), died in the hospital of the Calvary-Crucifixion Skete
• ssmch. German (Ryashentsev), bishop. Vyaznikovsky (January 1930 - April 10, 1931), further term of imprisonment was replaced by exile
• ssmch. Victor (Ostrovidov), Bishop Glazovsky (July 1928 - April 10, 1931), exiled to the Northern Territory
• Avenir Obnovlensky, (October 8, 1929 - May 1931), exiled to Ust-Tsilma
• ssmch. Sergiy Goloshchapov (November 20, 1929 - summer 1931), sent into exile
• Spanish Nikolai Lebedev, Fr. (November 3, 1929 - August 9, 1931), exiled to Mezen
• acc. Alexander (Orudov), igum. (October 30, 1928