Arctic Paradise

The Solovetsky Archipelago in the far northern White Sea is an extraordinary mix. Colleen Combes braved the mosquitoes to investigate the natural phenomena, prehistoric puzzles, monastic traditions, and labor camp hardships that make this remote corner of Russia so unique. Photos by the author.

“... nature, drained out in the coastal tundra and swamps, must have taken offence, and mustering its last forces, it created very special nature on this island — nature with space for one and all, nature, in which there reigns an affinity of spirit, familiar to a stranger from other parts.”

— Writer S.V. Maksimov on a visit
to Solovki over 100 years ago

Like the slow beating of a heart, a solitary row boat surges and glides with each pull of the oar across a glassy smooth lake ringed with birch and fir. Fat orange carrots, an inpromptu gift from the boatman, set up a bright play of color with the cool blues and greens of summer while ocean breezes ruffle hair and lighten moods.

Cradled by this natural calm, it’s hard to imagine that a dot of land on the White Sea, one of 100 Arctic islands called the Solovetsky Archipelago, could lay claim to so much Russian history.

From the upper strata of the mythical middleworld held in awe by the Finno-Ugric people over 3,000 years ago, to the wide reaches of trade set up by the Solovetsky Monastery in the 17th century, to the depths of brutality in Soviet prisons here... the islands have experienced the full spectrum of man.

Solovki, as the islands are nicknamed, currently has a population of just over 1,000. A portion of the residents consist of retired military officers or former prison personnel. Others were lured to the isolated island outpost by higher wages.

Today, like much of the rest of Russia, islanders have fallen on hard times. State wages don’t begin to cover rising prices. Island projects are stalled, like the new school that stands partially built after funds ran out four years ago.

The island administration is convinced the only way to survive is to promote tourism. Not an easy thing when most Russians can no longer afford plane or ship fares to Solovetsky, and the new rich are eschewing Russian rustic for Mediterranean chic. Tourist numbers have never since come close to the 32,000 who came in 1992, during the initial period of interest in the islands.

Most Solovki people, however, shrug off the idea of tourism. They remain unmoved by suggestions they can earn extra money by selling hand-made souvenirs or food to visitors, they insist they cannot create on demand. One woman spinner says: “I do it for my soul.”

This attitude is a long cry from that of the savvy 18th and 19th century monks who turned the island into an important center of industry and trade.

“Ships are built here, they are repaired, there is lithography, leather is tanned, bricks are burnt.

“And how many professions are represented! Photographers, finishers, goldsmiths, jewelers, shoemakers, tailors, wax-makers, mechanics, cattle-breeders, cheese-makers, builders, architects...

“There are carvers, cabinet-makers, potters, horse-breeders, vegetable  and fruit-growers, artists and even gold-diggers. In other words — cut off from the rest of the world for eight months a year, the Solovetsky Monastery knows no want...”

— Theater director Vladimir  Nemirovich-Danchenko, 19th century.

Reflecting this prosperity brought about by hard work and business smarts, the monastery, founded in 1436 by two monks Herman and Zosim, remains the most substantial monument on the island.   

Various Father Superiors made enlargements or additions to the complex, most notably Father Superior Filipp who, in the 18th century, ordered 51 canals with locks built to connect 52 of the island’s 560 freshwater lakes.

Man-made locks and gravitation provided water pressure to run the flour mill at the monastery and pipe water to the laundry and bath houses. Locks were also used to create a unique dry dock for boat repair.

In addition, a two-kilometer earthen walkway was built between the Solovetsky and Great Muksalma islands, where — due to a ban of all things female on the main island — dairy cows, hens and sows were kept. Women pilgrims were also banned. Until the beginning of the 19th century, they had to reside offshore on an island called Babya Luda.

More and more land was deeded the monastery by the ruling principality of Novgorod, including what is today northern Karelia and the Arkhangelsk region, until Catherine the Great confiscated the monastery’s mainland holdings and the main island during her reign in the late 1700s. Under St. Petersburg’s rule the monks increased their shipping and trade industries and bought four steamers to add to a fleet of 200 smaller boats used to ferry pilgrims to the monastery. In 1880-90, an average of 15,000 pilgrims were ferried over every year.

Though the pilgrims did not have to pay for food and lodging for a three-day stay, they did pay for the transportation (three to four roubles) and for souvenirs made and sold by the monks. These included blessing hand spoons, ceramic bowls, candles, small icons and honey. In the end, without accounting for donations, the pilgrims each spent an average of 10 silver rubles.

Not all were appreciative of the monk’s industry. Vasily Vereshchagin, a painter from the famous Itinerants group of the later 1800s, cut his visit short in disgust, saying, “This is not a holy monastery, but a merchant community, which doesn’t pay any taxes and uses its privileged status to make money.”

Throughout history the Solovetsky fortress withstood not only the barrage of politics and pilgrims, but physical attacks by Swedish and British forces. During the Crimean War, two British frigates tried to force its surrender with a warning shot, only to be answered by a lethal salvo which crippled one of the vessels — the monks had no knowledge of naval etiquette.

But Solovki achieved real notoriety as a prison. War prisoners and those caught on the wrong side of tsarist politics were kept here as early as the 17th century.  Imprisoned Decembrists trod the stone floors in the monastery following their rebellion in 1825. And after the Bolshevik revolution came the enemies of the Soviet state.

In all there were some 100,000 Soviet prisoners held in the Stalin-era Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON) from 1923 to 1939, later the Special Purpose Prison (STON — the Russian word for ‘groan’). Of these, about 30,000 were executed or died from disease and hardship.

The stories of the most brutal treatment of prisoners came from the hermitage-lighthouse built in the 19th century on Sekirnaya Hill.

In the early 1930s, a former prisoner escaped to England and published his memoirs. He described how the guards at the Sekirnaya Hill prison would amuse themselves by devising unusually harsh punishments, such as stripping someone naked and tying him to a tree in mosquito season, or binding him hand and foot to a log and rolling him down a long flight of stairs.

Soviet authorities hotly denied these allegations, and sent their most respected writer, Maxim Gorky, to the island to investigate. It is reported that before Gorky’s arrival, the offending guards were shot and the prisoners given a clean set of clothes. When Gorky appeared at the hermitage some convicts were set out in the yard reading newspapers. However, to protest this charade they had turned the newspapers upside down. Gorky, it is said, did not get the point and went on to write a glowing report about the fine care the prisoners received and how they were being rehabilitated by working to better the motherland.

It was true, however, that many of the island’s inmates did work on projects that aided the growing nation. Before the camp became a prison in the 1930s, most were allowed to form theater groups, practice religion and pursue scientific research.

Meteorology and botanical research were of particular interest on this island located just 150 km from the Arctic Circle. The Solovetsky archipelago, affected by ocean and winds, had been long known for its unique micro-climate, more closely resembling that of central Russia than the north. In summer the winds blow from the northeast, in winter from the southeast, so at its coldest, temperatures only reach -12 C; the hottest month is July with temperatures hovering at +15 C.

The Khutor Gorka garden was the site of the botanical prison research community. It was originally a hermitage built as a summer retreat in the 1860s for Father Superior Porfiry. Islanders noticed that here vegetables and other plants would grow substantially larger than elsewhere on the island. Scientists determined it was because  temperatures at the site were always two to three degrees warmer.

In the gardens, botanists experimented growing plants and trees from around the world. Specimens were sent from Asia, Europe and America (the US provided the Pennsylvania bird cherry trees which still grow here today), though it is not known whether the collaborating scientists from other countries realized they were working with state prisoners.

More than 30 scientific studies were produced by inmates. A few of the prisoners were rehabilitated, such as historian Dmitry Likhachov, who became an academician in St. Petersburg; others were executed, yet others have disappeared without trace.

One of those in the last category was archaeologist Nikolai Vinogradov. In the 1920s, Vinogradov was the first to study and record the islands’ unusual rock mazes. Thirty-three in all, they were created by the Finno-Ugric people, who used Solovki for summer fishing and hunting and to bury their dead.

Over time rocks from the labyrinths on the main island were taken to build new structures, but in 1978 three mazes, Great Babylon, the Spiral and the Venter were reconstructed on their original beach sites by students from the Arkhangelsk pedagogical institute using Vinogradov’s notes and sketches.

While no concrete explanation for the mazes have been found, theories abound. One theory is that they were fish traps built on beaches at low tide. The fish would swim in at high tide and would be unable to exit as the water receded. Another more plausible theory is that the mazes represent paths built by shamans to confuse the spirits of the deceased buried in nearby stone cairns.

According to the Finno-Ugric people there were three worlds — the world of the living, the middle world and the land of the dead. These White Sea coastal dwellers had a fear of souls returning after death. This maze perhaps was an attempt to prevent spirits from finding their way back to the living as they traveled through the middle world to the land of the dead.

On a rise beyond the island shores and overlooking the village, dairy cows softly low at calves as they amble from pasture to barn and shadows of ‘dancing’ birch trees lengthen in evening light. With only the ‘now’ of time surrounding the living, it becomes clear that the natural serenity of Solovetsky may very well leave man’s memory far behind.

For as philosopher priest and Solovki prisoner Pavel Forensky wrote some 50 years ago: “The Past has not yet passed.”

“The forest scents of moss, peat, conifer compose a mixture that carries to us the barely perceptible sound of rock. The sea is like a mirror. Cranberry strips on the horizon, clouds and black vessels, which have thrown anchor, wet black rocks — everything is reflecting in this mirror.”

— Writer Yuri Kazakov, 1960s