Solovki prison camp

Common card · No. 475084

The Solovki special camp (later the Solovki special prison), was set up in 1923 on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea as a remote and inaccessible place of detention, primarily intended for socialist opponents of Soviet Russia's new Bolshevik regime. At first, the anarchists, Mensheviks, and Socialist Revolutionaries enjoyed a special status there and were not made to work. Gradually, prisoners from the old regime (priests, gentry, and White Army officers) joined them and the guards and the ordinary criminals worked together to keep the "politicals" in order. This was the nucleus from which the entire Gulag grew, thanks to its proximity to the first great construction project of the Five-Year Plans, the White Sea–Baltic Canal. In one way, Solovki and the White Sea Canal broke a basic rule of the Gulag: they were both far too close to the border. This facilitated a number of daring escapes in the 1920s; as war loomed in the late 1930s, it led to the closure of the Solovki special prison...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Abraham Ortelius, Public domain