"Solovki Forced Labor Camp" special purpose”, which was part of the system of the Northern camps of the GPU, was established by decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in 1923. It appeared on the site of one of the richest monasteries tsarist Russia. The Solovetsky camps were intended to isolate the most dangerous state criminals - both political and criminal, however, people could be sent there only on suspicion of anti-state activities.
For many years, the Solovetsky special purpose camp remained the largest in the USSR and was an impressive complex that occupied a vast territory. So, by 1931, the SLON included eight camp departments, six of which were located on the mainland.
“Because of the lack of space in the old prisons, in many places she built or occupied wooden barracks, designed for a large number of prisoners. The Soviet government softly calls them "concentration camps".
Even the famous, distinguished by her regime and in Soviet Russia, Solovetsky penal servitude, the Bolshevik authorities affectionately call it the “Solovki Special Purpose Camp,” wrote one of the surviving prisoners, Yuri Bezsonov, in his book “Twenty-six Prisons and the Escape from Solovki”.
The settlement of SLON began in June 1923, when the first 100 prisoners - socialists and anarchists - were delivered by the Pechora steamer from Arkhangelsk and Pertominsk.
At first, all male prisoners were kept on the territory of the former Solovetsky Monastery, and women - in a wooden Arkhangelsk hotel, but soon all the monastery sketes and deserts were already occupied by the camp. As a result of the program for the resettlement of prisoners from the Middle Volga, Central Black Earth and Leningrad in SLON in April 1930, there were already 57.3 thousand prisoners - 55 thousand men and 2.3 thousand women. The Solovetsky camp reached its maximum population in 1931 - 71.8 thousand prisoners lived there.
The building on Solovki, where the administrative part of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp was located in 1923-37, 1989
Vladimir Fedorenko/RIA NovostiBasically, the convicts were engaged in road construction and logging: more than half of the prisoners worked at these jobs. The rest were employed in production, in the administrative and economic apparatus, security, drainage of swamps and household services. On the Solovetsky Islands, a brick, mechanical and tanneries, a power station, their own narrow-gauge railway and a small flotilla were opened. There were also enterprises for the extraction of peat, iodine, five agricultural enterprises and even a fur farm - "push farm", which mainly employed women.
The prisoners did not remain without leisure - in the Transfiguration Cathedral on September 23, 1923, the first camp theater was opened, and also
a year later, an amateur theater called "Khlam" was formed. The name reflected the professions of the people involved in its work - artists, writers, actors, musicians.
Simultaneously with the theater, a local history museum was opened in the Church of the Annunciation, as well as a bio-garden-nursery, in which a circle of nature lovers was organized for prisoners.
In addition, a large number of convicted writers and journalists also made it possible to ensure the regular release of periodicals. Including - the monthly magazine "SLON" and the weekly newspaper "New Solovki".
"Politicians", priests: who was in the camp
A considerable part of the prisoners were members of various anti-Soviet political parties. They were placed separately from other prisoners in the Savvatievsky, Trinity and Sergievsky sketes. "Politicians" were given preferential treatment - they could elect elders, subscribe to newspapers and magazines, use personal property, and meet with relatives. Political prisoners even had the opportunity to create party factions, to legally discuss issues of the camp regime, life, and leisure. The “politicians” worked only eight hours a day (unlike the rest of the prisoners who worked 12 hours), they were allowed to move freely within the zone during the daytime.
However, political prisoners refused to observe even such softened regime restrictions. Particular indignation was caused by the clause prohibiting movement at night. On December 19, 1923, the prisoners of the Savvatievsky Skete decided to organize a riot and went out into the street late in the evening. The guards used their weapons, killing six and seriously injuring three prisoners. The incident was the first impetus for the mass relocation of political prisoners to the mainland, which they have been seeking for several years.
The administration resisted this for a long time, which is why at the end of 1924 the “politicians” went on a hunger strike that lasted 15 days. Six months later, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution on the removal of this category of prisoners from the Solovetsky Islands.
Another special category of prisoners was the clergy. The first priests convicted in cases of opposing the seizure of church valuables arrived in Solovki from Rostov-on-Don and Novocherkassk already in 1923, the next large group of convicts arrived from Petrograd the following year. Later, those convicted for “violating the decree on the separation of church and state”, wandering monks and nuns from monasteries ruined and closed by the authorities, began to arrive among the imprisoned clergy. Among the prisoners of Solovki were eight metropolitans, 46 archbishops, 49 bishops, thousands of Orthodox clergy.
Until 1929, the imprisoned clergy in Solovki were allowed to walk in cassocks and with long hair. All imprisoned bishops and clerics lived separately from other prisoners. They occupied the premises of the local watch company in the Kremlin, since the most common job among the clergy was the profession of a watchman or captain.
In other camps, convicted clergymen did not enjoy such privileges - they were sent to general works, excluding only the elderly, who were assigned to disabled companies. Also, church services were not allowed in any other camp, any forms of worship were severely persecuted.
The special treatment of the clergy ended in 1929, when all priests were first voluntarily invited to cut their hair and take off their cassocks. When they resisted, they were sent on penal assignments, where they did it by force, dressed in rags and sent to work in the forest.
Sisyphean torture
During the ten years of the existence of the SLON, about 200 thousand prisoners passed through it. For various reasons, thousands of Solovetsky prisoners died or were turned into invalids, died from overwork, malnutrition and various serious diseases. Thousands were shot for misdemeanors, frozen, beaten to death by guards, died of torture, committed suicide.
“I must say that most of the men evicted to the North died, and many were killed deliberately. The cultural Cossack class - Cossack officers, the Cossack civil intelligentsia of the village, they were sent to Solovki, this is about 8,000 people, but they did not reach Solovki. At the time when they were sailing on barges from Kem to Solovki, they were all bound with barbed wire back to back in twos and thrown into the sea. A person is known who developed this system of killing people and actively applied it at the Solovetsky stages, ”wrote in his book The Price of a Catastrophe.
Inscription in the cell of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp, 1938
RIA News"The practice of punishment by heavy and senseless labor was considered commonplace in the Solovetsky camps. For example, they could be forced to carry handfuls of water from one hole to another (under the command of the convoy "Draw dry!"). Also, the prisoners were forced to roll huge boulders from place to place, half-dressed loudly and hundreds of times on the seashore in winter, to exhaustion, "count the seagulls."
If a prisoner did not please the convoy in some way, they could douse him on the street in winter with cold water, put him in a “rack” in the snow, lower him into an ice hole, or put him in his underwear in an unheated punishment cell. The guilty Solovki prisoners were also forced to sit all day on poles as thick as an arm, strengthened so that their feet did not reach the ground - the guards who fell down were beaten.
In the summer, undressed prisoners were tied to a tree for the night - in slang it was called to put "on a mosquito", which in the Arctic conditions meant a slow and painful death.
Another frequent method of punishment was the so-called "screamer" - a small shed made of thin and damp boards, with an earthen floor. There were no facilities for sitting or lying there, much less a stove. Over time, in order to save forests, “screamers” began to be built right in the ground.
According to Nikolai Kiselev-Gromov, who served in the headquarters of the paramilitary guards of the Solovetsky camp, this was what the “screamer” was like: “From such a “screamer” you can’t hear how the “jackal” is yelling, the Chekists 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 in the ranks (because “the ranks are 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”.
The most terrible punishment imposed for serious misconduct, such as violation of the camp regime, self-mutilation (“self-harm”, “self-frostbite”), an attempt to escape, was placement in a punishment cell. Prisons of this type were divided into men's and women's - the first was on the Solovetsky Sekirnaya Hill, the second - on the Big Zayatsky Island.
No one could withstand the Sekirka regime for more than two or three months.
There were also frequent extrajudicial reprisals against prisoners, which were usually carried out in a small basement under the "Kremlin" bell tower. In addition, there was a certain “rite of passage” for each newly arrived stage: the head of the SLON used to shoot one or two prisoners with his own hands right on the pier for warning. Under the hot hand of the authorities fell "incorrigible", disliked, dangerous, who were then written off as dead from some kind of illness, the academician later testified.
overwork
In the Solovetsky camp, people died en masse without executions and torture - the practice of "educating prisoners by labor" consisted in squeezing everything out of the camp in a matter of months and, turning him into a disabled person, replacing him with a new "working human body", as the medical directors of SLON put it .
Slogan in the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp, 1937
Alexander Lyskin/RIA NovostiWith the dead and the dead in the camp, no one stood on ceremony. Before dumping the bodies into a common grave, they knocked out their teeth with gold crowns. In winter, the bodies were buried in the snow, and in the summer they were dumped into huge pits near the Solovetsky Kremlin or in the forest - without any markings. Prisoners often dug their own graves before execution.
The prisoners of the SLON, who survived until the Second World War, after its end ended up in the same camps as prisoners of war who had passed through the Nazi concentration camps.
One of the prisoners whose letters have been preserved, Zinkovshchuk, referring to the opinion of his cellmates, who knew the fascist "death factories" well, came to the conclusion that they were only slightly different from the Solovetsky camps.
In his works he directly calls Solovki "Polar Auschwitz".
For example, in both camps people worked 12 hours a day without breaks and days off. There were also extra night shifts. The rations of SLON and Auschwitz prisoners were the same, only 1,700 calories a day.
In 1930, a special commission was held "for a comprehensive examination of the activities of existing camps", including the Solovetsky ones. She revealed the facts of widespread use of torture, inducement of female prisoners to cohabitation, systematic beatings and executions under the guise of escaping, the creation by the camp administration of "provocative cases" about imaginary conspiracies of prisoners, and much more. As a result of the checks, the OGPU Collegium brought to criminal responsibility 38 elders, company commanders, employees of the “supervision”. 13 of them were shot at the same time.
In December 1933, the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp was disbanded. Since 1934, Solovki became the VIII branch of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, and three years later they were reorganized into the Solovetsky prison of the NKVD GUGB.
The ELEPHANT finally ended its existence in 1937. The surviving prisoners were transferred to other places, and a new prison was built on the island - STON (Solovki Special Purpose Prison). It worked for two years, closing in 1939, and its buildings were handed over to the military, who during the war used the Solovetsky Islands to house the training detachments of the Soviet fleet.
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 island, but almost half remained, and they began to work as civilians at the state farm.
After 1917, the new authorities began to consider the rich Solovetsky Monastery as a source material assets, numerous commissions mercilessly ruined it. The Famine Relief Commission alone 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 ancient structures.
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" 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. Solovki became a place 
links of many hierarchs, clergy, monastics of the Russian Orthodox Church and laity who suffered for the faith of Christ. 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 of 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) († 1938), professor at the Moscow Theological Academy and many others.
Living conditions in the camp
Maxim Gorky, who visited the camp in 1929, cited the testimonies of prisoners about the conditions of the Soviet system of labor re-education:
The prisoners worked no more than 8 hours a day;
For harder work "on peat" an increased ration was issued;
Elderly prisoners were not subject to assignment to heavy work;
All prisoners were taught to read and write.
Gorky describes their barracks as very spacious and bright.
However, according to the researcher of the history of the Solovetsky camps, photographer Yu. A. Brodsky, various tortures and humiliations were used in relation to the prisoners in Solovki. So, the prisoners were forced to:
Drag stones or logs from place to place;
Count seagulls;
Shout the Internationale loudly for hours on end. If the prisoner stopped, then two or three were killed, after which people screamed while standing until they began to fall from exhaustion. This could be done at night, in the cold.
Newspapers were published in the camp, and a prison theater was operating. The villagers composed a number of songs about the camp, in particular, “The white sea is the expanse of water ...” (attributed to Boris Yemelyanov).
The fate of the founders of the camp
Many of the organizers who were involved in the creation of the Solovetsky camp were shot:
The man who proposed to assemble the camps on Solovki, the Arkhangelsk leader Ivan Vasilyevich Bogovoy, was shot.
The man who raised the red flag over Solovki ended up in the Solovetsky camp as a prisoner.
The first head of the camp, Nogtev, received 15 years, was released under an amnesty, did not have time to register in Moscow, and died.
The second head of the camp, Eichmans, was shot as an English spy.
The head of the Solovetsky prison for special purposes, Apeter, was shot.
At the same time, for example, SLON prisoner Naftaly Aronovich Frenkel, who proposed innovative ideas for the development of the camp and was one of the "godfathers" of the Gulag, advanced through the ranks and retired in 1947 from the post of head of the main department of railway construction camps with the rank lieutenant general of the NKVD.
Solovetsky Monastery- Solovetsky Monastery. SOLOVETSKY MONASTERY (Preobrazhensky), male, on the Big Solovetsky Island in the White Sea, founded in the 30s. 15th c. He played a significant role in the economic development of Pomorie. In the 60s and 70s. 17th century one of the centers of division. From 16… Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary
Male, on the Solovetsky island. in Bely m. Founded in the 30s. 15th c. He played a significant role in the economic development of Pomorie. In the 60s and 70s. 17th century one of the centers of division. At 4 p.m. 20th century link place. After October revolution abolished. In 1923 39 ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
SOLOVETSKY MONASTERY, male, on Solovetsky Lake in the White Sea. Founded in the 30s. 15th c. Major religious and cultural center; played a significant role in the economic development of Pomorie. In the 60s and 70s. 17th century one of the centers of division. At the 16th beginning ... ... Russian history
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Male, on the Solovetsky Island in the White Sea. Founded in the 30s. 15th century Large religious and cultural center. He played a significant role in the economic development of Pomorie. In the 60s and 70s. 17th century one of the centers of division. In the XVI early XX centuries. place… … encyclopedic Dictionary
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Solovetsky: Settlements Solovetsky village in Arkhangelsk region on Solovetsky Island, administrative center municipality"Solovki"; Solovetsky village, Orlovsky district, Oryol region; Other ... ... Wikipedia
Solovetsky Monastery- (Savior Transfiguration Solovetsky stauropegial monastery) The Solovetsky archipelago consists of six large ones (Big Solovetsky Island, Anzer Island, Big and Small Muksalma Islands, Big and Small Zayatsky Islands) and several ... ... Orthodoxy. Dictionary-reference
Vishera Pulp and Paper Mill today Vishera Correctional Labor Camp, Vishera Correctional Labor Camp, Vishlag, Visherlag Correctional Labor Camp, organized in 1928-1929. on the basis of the Vishera branch of the Solovetsky ITL OGPU ... ... Wikipedia
The Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON) is the first forced labor camp in the USSR. For 10 years of existence, tens of thousands of people have passed through it. In 1933, it was officially liquidated, but until 1939, an institution with the abbreviation STON, the Solovetsky Special Purpose Prison, continued to operate on its territory.
Prison on Solovki
Dungeons in these places existed in tsarist times. A prison for special prisoners operated at the Solovetsky Monastery from the 16th century.
So, Kasimov Khan Simeon Bekbulatovich, who for some time was the formal head of state in the reign of Ivan the Terrible, was exiled to Solovki. Also, the author of the Tale, which tells about the events of the Time of Troubles, Avraamy (Palitsyn), Alexander Pushkin's cousin Pavel Gannibal and other famous personalities served his sentence there.
The monastery prison ceased to exist in 1883. But exactly 40 years later, the first forced labor camp of the USSR appeared in these places - the infamous Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp, or, as it was often called, SLON. The first batch of prisoners - criminals from Arkhangelsk prisons - arrived there in 1923.
After the camp
In 1933, there were almost 20,000 prisoners in the camp. After disbanding, most of them were transferred to other places. About 1,500 prisoners remained on Solovki. The camp itself by 1937 was transformed into a prison (STON).
In the area of the former monastery plant, between the Biosad and Varangian lakes, in 1938-39 a new, three-story building of the correctional institution was built. In addition, since the founding of the SLON, Solovki has operated male and female punishment cells. The first was located on Sekirnaya Gora, and the second - on the Big Zayatsky Island.
Despite the name change, the life of the remaining prisoners of the prison differed little from camp times. All the same “occupational therapy”, frequent beatings from representatives of the administration and, in general, a difficult, deprivation-filled existence.
Basically, the prison contingent was divided into two categories: counter-revolutionaries and "punks" (criminals). In camp times, political prisoners (SRs, Mensheviks, and others) were also kept on the islands. However, after they staged a two-week hunger strike in June 1925, the Council of People's Commissars decided to take them out of Solovki.
"Caera"
Counter-revolutionaries, or "kaers" (from the abbreviation KR - counter-revolutionary) were mostly convicted under Article 58 of the Criminal Code (treason, espionage, undermining industry, etc.).
Among the prisoners were many former tsarist officers, representatives of the bourgeoisie, intellectuals, as well as members of non-socialist social movements and parties. The same category included peasants who resisted collectivization, as well as workers and engineers in industries who allegedly deliberately engaged in sabotage.
Amnesty did not apply to this category in STON, and attempts to escape were stopped by execution on the spot. In the case of talking about escaping, the prisoner was punished by being in a punishment cell.
"Shpana"
In STON, along with the “fifty-eighths”, ordinary criminals were also kept. Unlike the "caers", they had the right to an amnesty. Also in this category were beggars, women with reduced social responsibility, as well as juvenile delinquents who went to Solovki from Moscow and Leningrad.
It is worth noting that former prostitutes often became mistresses of the prison administration. Women lived in a separate building, in more tolerable conditions, and they ate better.
From prison to military unit
The Solovetsky Special Purpose Prison worked for two years - from 1937 to 1939. The constructed three-story building was never used. The prisoners were sent to other places, and the building itself and the territory of the correctional facility were transferred to the military. The cells were converted into barracks.
After the start of the Soviet-Finnish war in buildings former prison The training detachment of the Northern Fleet was located. Later, this territory was given over to military warehouses.
In 1928 a number European countries, as well as the Socialist International (an association of the socialist parties of Europe) turned to the government of the USSR with inquiries about the situation of prisoners in Soviet concentration camps. This was due to the fact that the US and UK governments decided not to buy construction timber from Soviet Union, arguing that the prisoners of the Solovetsky camp extract it, being in inhuman conditions, and a huge number of Solovetsky prisoners die right during logging. We learned about this state of affairs in Solovki abroad from the prisoners themselves, who managed to escape from the camp from mainland business trips.
The Soviet government decided to invite a commission of foreign representatives to the Solovetsky Islands to check the state of affairs in the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON), which included the famous Soviet writer Maxim Gorky. In 1929, this commission arrived at the camp. The camp management was well prepared for the meeting of dear guests. The commission inspected various camp departments, including the Children's Labor Colony and the Detention Facility. The commission also got acquainted with the cultural sights of the Solovetsky camp: the library, many of whose books have been preserved from the old monastery library; two camp theaters "KHLAM" and "SVOI"; Anti-religious museum, etc.
Returning to Moscow, M. Gorky published an essay on Solovki, in which he sang of romance camp life which turns hardened criminals and enemies of Soviet power into exemplary builders of a new society.
And a year later, in 1930, there was another commission in the camp that dealt with the abuses of the camp leadership. As a result of the work of this commission, 120 death sentences were passed against the leaders of the Solovetsky camp.
So what is SLON? "Romance of camp life" or "horrors of logging"? Why in the 70s in the village of Solovetsky, when they built a residential building for school teachers and, after digging a foundation pit and discovering a mass grave of executed prisoners, the Soviet government ordered a house to be built on this site and forbade any earthworks to be carried out in this place?
There is a lot of information about the Solovetsky camp, but, nevertheless, relying on them, it is very difficult to draw up a real portrait of Solovki during the camp period, because. they are all very subjective and describe different periods of the existence of the Solovetsky camp. Let's say, the opinion of M. Gorky, who is shown the disciplinary cell, and the opinion of the prisoner of this isolator can be very different. In addition, the theater, which was shown to Gorky in 1929, had already ceased to exist in the 30th. Considering all these features, I will try to review the memories of eyewitnesses of the life of the camp and make the most objective idea of the Solovetsky camp.
In the 15th century, on the deserted Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea, Saints Zosima, Savvaty and Herman founded the Solovetsky Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Savior, which by the time it was closed in 1920 was one of the largest and most famous monasteries in Russia. The climate in Solovki is extremely harsh, the monks always had to confront nature in order to survive, so labor in the monastery has always been highly valued. Navigation in the White Sea is possible only in the summer months, so most of the time the Solovetsky Islands are cut off from the outside world.
These features of the Solovki and decided to take advantage of the new owners of the archipelago - the Soviet government. The monastery was closed, plundered (moreover, 158 pounds were taken from Solovki precious metals and stones) and burned in 1923 on the eve of Easter on Good Friday. The desecrated and disfigured Solovki in the same 1923 were transferred to the jurisdiction of the GPU for the organization of a forced labor camp for special purposes there. Even before the official opening of the Solovetsky camp, prisoners from other concentration camps Arkhangelsk and Pertominsk had already arrived there, where prisoners of war were kept. white movement. The construction of the concentration camp began. All monastery buildings were converted into places for keeping prisoners, and the huge farm left after the monastery became the production base of the Solovetsky camp.
In the same 1923, civilians dissatisfied with the Soviet regime began to be exiled to Solovki. Basically, these were the so-called "political" - Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, anarchists and other former comrades-in-arms of the Bolsheviks. They were placed in one of the former monastic sketes in Savvatiyevo, where they were kept in strict isolation.
"Political" tried to start a revolt, but he was brutally suppressed. The Red Army soldiers shot unarmed prisoners, of which 8 people died and many were wounded. The Pravda newspaper described this incident as a collision between a convoy and prisoners who attacked it. This is the first time mass execution on Solovki, alas, not the last. The news of this execution got into the press and even received publicity abroad.
Other civilians were also sent to Solovki for forced labor. It was an intelligentsia that did not fit into the new ideological guidelines. There were a lot of clergy, in particular, in 1924, Hieromartyr Hilarion Troitsky arrived in the camp. Looking at what the glorious monastery had become, he said: “We won’t get out of here alive” (he left the Solovetsky camp alive, or rather, half-alive and died on the way from typhus when he was transferred to exile in Kazakhstan).
Dispossessed peasants were sent to Solovki, who by 1927 made up the majority of the prisoners in the Solovetsky camp - about 75%. There were also many criminals, among whom a significant percentage were former Chekists convicted of criminal offenses. They were immediately recruited by the camp leadership, and they became overseers. In the camp, they did the same as in freedom, only with special diligence.
The number of prisoners in the Solovetsky camp was constantly increasing, if in October 1923 there were 2557 people, then in January 1930 in the Solovetsky camps, including the mainland, there were already 53,123 people. The total number of prisoners for all the years of the existence of the camp until 1939 is more than 100,000 people.
ideological inspirer of the GULAG system and the head of the Special Department of the GPU was Gleb Bokiy, and his governor on Solovki was Nogtev, a prominent Chekist, a former sailor of the Aurora cruiser. “In addition to his insatiable cruelty, Nogtev is famous in Solovki for his impenetrable stupidity and drunken brawls, in the camp he is called the “executioner,” wrote A. Klinger, a former officer of the tsarist army, who spent three years in the Solovetsky penal servitude and made a successful escape to Finland. About his deputy Eichmans, who soon became head of the SLON himself, he writes the following: “He is also a communist and also a prominent Chekist from Estonians. hallmark Eichmans, in addition to the sadism, debauchery and passion for wine that are characteristic of all agents of the GPU, is a passion for military drill.
In general, the attitude of the Soviet government towards the GULAG system can be expressed in the words of S. M. Kirov, which he said on the day of the fifteenth anniversary of the VChK OGPU: “Punish for real, so that the population growth is noticeable in the next world thanks to the activities of our GPU.” Can you imagine what awaited the Solovetsky prisoners?
Forced labor awaited them, which, due to the low qualification of the "workers", was not very productive. Large sums were spent on the protection of prisoners and on "educational" work (political information, etc.). Therefore, at first, SLON did not bring profit to the treasury of the Soviet government.
The situation changed in 1926, when one of the prisoners N.A. Frenkel (a former civil servant convicted of bribery) proposed to transfer the SLON to self-financing and use the labor of prisoners not only on the Solovetsky archipelago, but on the mainland. This is where the Gulag system came into full swing. Contribution of N.A. Frenkel was appreciated by the Soviet government, he was soon released ahead of schedule, presented for a government award, and even headed one of the departments of the GPU, and later the NKVD.
The main types of work that the prisoners were engaged in were logging (by the 1930s, all the forest on Solovki was destroyed and sold abroad, logging had to be moved to the mainland), peat harvesting, fishing, brick production (on the basis of the monastery brick factory, built by St. Philip, however, in the 30s, clay supplies ran out, and brick production had to be stopped), and some types of handicraft production. In general, the labor of prisoners still remained unproductive, but due to merciless exploitation, it was possible to “squeeze” fabulous profits out of them.
Many prisoners could not withstand the inhuman loads and unbearable conditions of detention, and died right during the work from exhaustion, illness, beatings or accidents. They were not often shot at Solovki, but there was no need for frequent executions. The prisoners died in a "natural" or rather "unnatural" way. For example, logging in Solovki was called "dry execution", because. during the winter season, up to a quarter of prisoners died on them.
“Work in both winter and summer starts at 6 o'clock in the morning. According to the instructions, it stops at 7 pm. Thus, on Solovki there is a 12-hour working day with a break for lunch at one in the afternoon. This is official. But in fact, the work goes on much longer - at the discretion of the supervising Chekist. This happens especially often in the summer, when prisoners are forced to work literally until they lose consciousness. At this time of the year, the working day lasts from six in the morning until midnight or one in the morning. Every day is considered a work day. Only one day a year is considered a holiday - the First of May. This is how one of its prisoners, S.A., described the “corrective” labor in the camp. Malgasov in his book "Infernal Island".
The prisoners were required to comply with the plan, if the daily norm was not fulfilled, they left him in the forest for the night: in the summer - to be eaten by mosquitoes, in the winter - in the cold. In the camp, there were a number of measures to force prisoners to "shock" work: from reducing correspondence with relatives and cutting rations for a certain period to imprisonment in a punishment cell and capital punishment - execution. “I witnessed such a case: one of the prisoners, a sick old man from the“ kaers ”(counter-revolutionaries), shortly before the end of the work, was completely exhausted, fell into the snow and, with tears in his eyes, declared that he was not able to work anymore. One of the guards immediately cocked the trigger and fired at him. The corpse of the old man was not removed for a long time "to intimidate other lazy people," wrote A. Klinger.
About the punishment cell of the Solovetsky camp, which was called "Sekirka" after the name of the mountain on which it was located, must be said separately. This is the former temple of the Holy Ascension Skete, converted into a punishment cell. The prisoners, being in it, did not work, they simply served their sentences there for a period of several weeks to several months. But if we take into account that the punishment cell was not heated at all, and at the same time all outer clothing was removed from the prisoners, then in fact they were frozen alive there. “Every day on Sekirka, one of the prisoners dies of hunger or simply freezes in the cell.”
The situation of women prisoners was terrible. Here is what a prisoner of the Solovetsky camp writes about this former general tsarist and white armies, chief of staff of the Cossack ataman Dutov, I.M. Zaitsev: “On Solovki, love intercourse between imprisoned men and women is strictly prohibited. In practice, only ordinary prisoners are prosecuted for this. Whereas the exiled security officers and employees of the GPU, occupying command and command positions, satisfy their voluptuousness even too much. If the chosen kaerka rejects the love proposal, then severe repression will fall on her. If the chosen kaerka accepts the love proposal of a high-ranking Solovetsky person, for example, Eichmans himself, then this will earn great benefits for herself: in addition to being released from heavy forced labor, she can count on a reduction in the term of imprisonment. And then he writes (moreover, it is emphasized by the author): "Amnesty through a love affair is a proletarian innovation used by the GPU."
And here is how the prisoners remember the arrival of M. Gorky:
“Quick-witted prisoners will put into his pockets notes in which the truth about Solovki is written: Embarrassedly, Gorky will put his hands in his pockets, thrusting the papers deeper. Many prisoners will live in a vague hope: Gorky, the petrel, knows the truth! Then an article by Gorky would appear in the Moscow newspapers, in which he would say that Solovki is almost an earthly paradise, and that the Chekists are good at correcting criminals. This article will give birth to many angry curses, and shock will come in many souls ... ”Wrote camp prisoner G.A. Andreev.
And what does Gorky himself write?
“The Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR decided to destroy prisons for criminals and apply only the method of education by labor to “offenders”. In this direction, we have interesting experience, and it has already given undeniable positive results. The "Solovki Special Purpose Camp" is not Dostoevsky's "Dead House", because they teach how to live there, teach them to read and write and work ... It seems to me that the conclusion is clear: such camps as Solovki are needed (highlighted by me). It is in this way that the state will quickly achieve one of its goals: to destroy prisons.”
According to known archival data alone, in the period from 1923 to 1933, about 7.5 thousand prisoners died in the Solovetsky camp.
Having served as a testing ground for processing the principles of the Gulag system, at the end of 1933, SLON was disbanded, and the prisoners, apparatus and property were transferred to the White Sea-Baltic ITL, but the camp on the Solovetsky Islands continued to exist until 1937 as the 8th branch of the White Sea-Baltic camp. The main brainchild of this organization was the famous White Sea-Baltic Canal. It stretches for 221 km, of which 40 km is an artificial path, plus 19 locks, 15 dams, 12 spillways, 49 dams, power plants, settlements ... All these works were completed in 1 year and 9 months. "Super shock". People were not sorry.
At the end of 1937, a special troika of the UNKVD Leningrad region decided to shoot a large group of prisoners of the SLON (BBK - Belomoro-Baltic Combine) - 1825 people. But the leadership of the camp showed amazing "humanity". Not far from the city of Medvezhyegorsk, near the village of Sandarmokh, “only” 1,111 people were shot. The rest were shot later. The executor of the sentence was Captain M. Matveev, sent for this purpose by the Leningrad NKVD. Every day Matveev personally shot from a revolver about 200 - 250 people in accordance with the strength of the Troika protocol (one protocol per day). In 1938, Matveev himself was convicted and repressed.
From the beginning of 1937 to 1939, the places of detention on Solovki were reorganized into the Solovetsky Special Purpose Prison (STON) of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD. So the prophecy of the petrel of the revolution M. Gorky that corrective labor camps like Solovetsky would destroy prisons did not justify itself.
How is a prison different from a camp? In the camp, the prisoners work, in prison they serve their sentences. In prison cells, it was only allowed to sit on the bed, not leaning against the wall, with open eyes, with hands on knees. It was allowed to walk up to 30 minutes a day, use books from the prison library. For the slightest violation, a punishment cell for up to five days or deprivation of a walk for up to 10 days followed. Prisoners were taken around the yard only for interrogation under escort. Everyone was dressed in the same black robes with the inscription "STON". Boots were supposed to be worn without laces. In the Solovetsky prison, mostly "enemies of the people" Trotskyists were imprisoned, i.e. former Leninists. O.L. Adamova-Sliozberg, a STON prisoner, wrote that "she is a communist and, wherever she is, she will obey Soviet laws." Many of the arrested communists asked other prisoners before their death to hand over to freedom: "I'm not guilty, I'm dying a communist." The revolution devours its children.
Eyewitness accounts are always subjective. But there is also objective evidence of the nightmare that was in Solovki during the camp period from 1923 to 1939, these are mass graves. I have already mentioned one of them. In 1929, a group of prisoners from the former members of the White movement decided to organize a rebellion in the camp: disarm the guards, seize the ship and break through to Finland. But the conspiracy was revealed, and all its participants were shot at the monastery cemetery, the corpses were thrown into one mass grave. It was their remains that were discovered in 1975 during the construction of a house for village teachers. On the island of Anzer in the Solovetsky archipelago, in the former Golgotha-Crucifixion Skete, during the camp period there was a medical isolation ward. The prisoners who died during the winter were dumped in one mass grave in the spring on the elephant of Mount Golgotha. Thus, the whole mountain is one solid mass grave. In winter since 1928/29. there was a terrible epidemic of typhus in Solovki, during this winter more than 3,000 people died of typhus, among them was a saint. Peter (Zverev), Archbishop of Voronezh. In 1999, a special commission found his relics and discovered mass graves on Mount Golgotha. In the summer of 2006, a mass grave of executed prisoners was found on Mount Sekirnaya, where during the years of the camp there was a punishment cell.
In the summer of 2007, Bishop Ambrose of Bronitsky visited the Solovetsky Monastery, here is what he said in an interview:
“When on Mount Sekirke I made a litiya about all the innocently killed in this place, the head of the skete told me about how the excavations were carried out. The remains - light and yellow bones and skulls were reverently stacked in coffins and properly buried. But there is a place where it was impossible to excavate - the terrible black bodies did not decompose and emit a terrible stench. According to testimonies, the very same punishers and torturers of innocently killed people were shot here.
In 1939, the camp-prison life on Solovki ceased, because. the Soviet-Finnish war was approaching, and it could turn out that the Solovetsky archipelago could fall into the area of hostilities. It was decided to evacuate the prisoners and the entire apparatus of the camp. And since 1989, a revival of monastic life began on Solovki.
Summarizing the above, we can draw disappointing conclusions. The Solovetsky special purpose camp is a terrible black spot in the history of Russia. Tens of thousands of tortured and executed people, broken destinies, crippled souls. This is evidenced by the former prisoners of the Solovetsky camp themselves, and archival documents, and mass graves. According to rough estimates, about 40 thousand prisoners died in the Solovetsky camp.
The tragic meaning of the abbreviation of the last name - STON - reflected the conditions of detention of prisoners. Sophisticated bullying, torture, physical destruction of thousands of people gave the very word - Solovki - an ominous sound.
It is quite obvious that M. Gorky's enthusiastic remarks about camps like Solovetsky are pure profanity. This only shows that at the heart of the totalitarian system, which was in the Soviet Union, there is not only merciless cruelty, but also monstrous hypocrisy. What motives prompted the great writer to lie? Sincere delusion or fear of the system? We will never know the answer to this.