FROM MONASTERY TO PRISON CAMP
_The Famous Solovetsky Monastery — Its Wealth and Economic Strength —
The Bolshevist Invasion — Destruction and Pillage — Organisation of the
Solovky — The Camps and their Rulers._
The "Solovetsky" concentration camp received its name from the
Solovetsky Monastery, founded in 1429 by Saints Sabbatius and Hermann,
while Saint Zosima built the first church in 1436. The island, seventeen
miles long by eleven broad, on which the monastery stands, is one of a
group known by the collective designation Solovetsky Islands; there are,
besides the principal island, five other large ones — Ansersk, Great and
Little Zajatsk, Great and Little Muksalm — and a number of small ones.
They lie in the White Sea, at the entrance to the Gulf of Onega, and
close to the western coast of the Archangel Government.
The Solovetsky Monastery, one of the most ancient and most held in
honour of Russian monasteries, has long been noted for the peculiar
ascetism of the life led by its inmates, the incalculable wealth of its
churches and the large number of monks in the brotherhood, which is
indicated by the fact that the number of boys sent by their relations to
the monastery for a year reached in some years the figure of two
thousand.
The monastery had, among other things, its own tannery, iron foundry,
paper mill, match factory, saw mills, dozens of workshops of various
kinds, a printing works (the workmen were all monks), a dock, a merchant
fleet, and even a small navy for the defence of its shores. The
monastery's infantry and artillery, consisting exclusively of monks,
were also designed to serve this purpose.
The first years of the Revolution affected the organisation and economic
strength of the monastery only to an insignificant degree, lying, as it
did, to one side of the main road of Bolshevist pillage. Even at the
time when the British were in these parts — it will be remembered that
the Archangel and Murmansk areas were for a time occupied by a Russian
anti-Soviet army, under General Miller, and British troops — the
monastery still lived its old industrious life.
[Illustration: Map of Northwestern Russia, Showing the Solovetsky
Islands]
The Soviet power destroyed this highly cultured advanced post of Russia
in the Far North with characteristic violence and cruelty. In the autumn
of 1922 all the wooden buildings of the monastery were burnt. The
Bolsheviks began by murdering half the monks, including the Igumen of
the monastery; the remainder they sent to forced labour in Central
Russia. The treasures were plundered by the first Tchekists who entered
the precincts. The decorations of the ikons were torn off, the ikons
themselves blasphemously chopped up with hatchets for fuel. The bells
were flung down from all the belfries and the fragments sent to Moscow
to be melted down.
Besides a multitude of objects precious in a religious and material
sense, the Soviet Huns destroyed treasures of immense historical value.
The Tchekists pillaged the library of the monastery, which during the
five centuries of its existence had been filled with unique works. They
heated the stoves with rare books, old documents and chronicles of the
greatest antiquity. Finally, the dishonest methods of the new
management, combined with the criminal plundering and inexperience of
the Soviet administration, ruined the factories and workshops belonging
to the monastery.
The ancient building was reduced to a heap of ruins. The Tchekists put
up a barbed wire fence round it. The half-destroyed Kremlin, or main
enclosure of the monastery, became the headquarters of the "Slon."[13]
All the branches of the Solovky are under the direction of the office in
question, viz., the Solovky camp itself, the Kem camp (on Popoff
Island), the camp on Kond Island, and the places of exile in the
Petchersk and Zyriansk regions.
The Kem camp on Popoff Island (about a quarter of a mile from the shore
and six miles from the town of Kem) is a base depot for the Solovky. In
it are assembled, until navigation opens, thousands of new prisoners
bound for the Solovky from all parts of Russia. The ordinary criminals
who from time to time are amnestied are sent there from Solovetsky
Island on their way south. Prisoners are continually being sent from the
Kem camp to the monastery and from the monastery to Popoff Island for
labour purposes — generally the latter, for most of the work is done on
Popoff Island.
Before proceeding to a detailed account of the administration of the
Solovky, I may mention that when I arrived in the domain of the Slon
there were in the concentration camps over five thousand prisoners of
the three categories defined in a previous chapter — "K.R.'s,"
"political and party men," and "_shpana_," or ordinary criminals.
In the monastery itself, the "K.R.'s" and criminals live in the cells
and churches of the Kremlin which have escaped destruction, the
"politicals and party men" in the hermits' caves which are scattered all
over the island — three, six or eight miles from the Kremlin. On Popoff
Island the prisoners are housed in hutments erected by the British — the
"K.R.'s" and _shpana_ together, the "politicals and party men"
separately.
The supreme head of the administration of the Northern Camps for Special
Purposes is a Moscow Tchekist, a member of the Vtsik, named Gleb Boky.
(One of the Solovetsky steamers, by the way, has been re-named _Gleb
Boky_ in his honour.) He is a tall, thin man, apparently well educated.
His bearing is generally gloomy, his eyes piercing; he always wears
military uniform. He is the typical rigid Communist of superior
education, with an element of cruelty in his disposition. He lives in
Moscow, where he has some other employment in the Gpu, and only comes to
the Solovky now and then.
His deputy, who lives permanently in the Kremlin of the monastery, is
the real head of the Slon in practice; the fate of the prisoners in the
Solovky is completely in his hands. His name is Nogteff. He is also a
member of the Vtsik, and was formerly a sailor in the cruiser _Aurora_.
He is semi-educated, drunken, and rather deaf, with a conspicuously
cruel physiognomy. He is universally known in the camps by the nickname
_palatch_ (executioner). When he goes round the hutments and caves of
the "political and party" prisoners, they shout in his face "Go away,
executioner!" (I will explain later how it is that they are able to do
this with impunity.)
Nogteff's right-hand man and deputy is an Estonian Communist named
Eichmans. He suffers from "paradomania." Of smart military bearing
himself, he demands the same of prisoners in a state of permanent
starvation. They are compelled to salute him. Immediately on his arrival
in the Solovky he began to teach the prisoners, with blows when
required, how to reply to his "good morning" in a brisk, military tone,
at the same time coming to attention.
When I arrived in the Solovky, and until March, 1924, the commandant of
the "Kemperraspredpunkt"[14] was one Gladkoff, a Tchekist, born at
Kaluga, in Central Russia, and formerly a workman. He was notable for
his open peculation of Government money and his astounding patronage of
the _shpana_. Almost illiterate, coarse, addicted to cards and drink, he
was really in no way different from these common criminals. It was thus
on what might be termed ideological grounds that Gladkoff established
and strengthened the dictatorship of the _shpana_ over the "K.R.'s" and
politicals, and all the violence we endured at their hands.
[Footnote 13: _Severnye Lageri Osobennavo Naznatchenia_ (Northern Camps
for Special Purposes). _Slon_ means "elephant" in Russian; the _double
entendre_ cannot, of course, be reproduced in English.]
[Footnote 14: This appalling portmanteau word, a fine flower of Soviet
officia phraseology, signifies _Kemsky peresylotchno-raspredelnitelnyi
punkt_ (Kem distributing centre for prisoners passing through). These
long-winded official designations, of no interest to the general reader,
are given here for the benefit of students of Soviet Russian affairs.]