Ahmet Erkun

Our seventh port of call ... new-to-us Solovetsky (Solovski) Island, Russia ... a place of beauty that played an important role in a dark and sad chapter of Soviet history.

Located in Russia’s White Sea Region, the archipelago of islands, which gets its name from the main island of Bolshoy Solovetsky, is perhaps better known as the Soviet-era Gulag Islands.

Christian monks, seeking a place of solitude and retreat, arrived at the Solovetsky Islands in the 15th century. Stone churches were built, some surrounded by fortified walls ... such at the Solovetsky Transfiguration Monastery. As the islands flourished, they became a place of visitation for tsars and emperors. Bolshoy Solovetsky, the island we tendered to today, was the most popular of the islands.

Unfortunately, all that changed during the Soviet times. Instead of being a place of retreat, the islands became a place for forced labor camps operated by the government agency known as GULAG.

The first of the camps — referred to as the Solovski Special Prison — was set up in 1923 in the converted monastery. It was closed in 1939. The exact number of prisoners sent to the camp is not known. Varying accounts give numbers ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.En savoir plus