The Solovetsky Islands, a mysterious northern archipelago hidden from the eyes of the mainland in the White Sea, is one of the most "charged" places in the entire country, attracting thousands of travelers to its harsh northern expanses every year. This summer, Bigpikcha joined them in order to see the sacred land with her own eyes and find out exactly what it owes its mysterious appeal.
In June 2015, as part of the Big Onega Expedition, Bigpikcha went in search of the beauty and sights of the Russian North. The ten-day route, which started from St. Petersburg, cleverly skirted the Ladoga and Onega lakes and brought us to the coast of the White Sea, from where in the early morning on a small private launch "Vasily Kosyakov" we rushed to the main destination of the trip - the Solovetsky Islands.
The islands are not visible from the shore. Solovki is 45 kilometers from the Rabocheostrovsk pier. It takes about three hours for a small, old ship to cross the rough sea.
The passengers of the launch are very different from each other. There are equipped hikers - adventure seekers, pious hermit pilgrims, young families with children, scientists in thick glasses, and tourist groups with curious eyes. Like ourselves.
Everyone either sleeps or ascends to the upper deck in order to catch the sacred moment, despite the rain and wind, when, among the fog and spray, the outlines of that other land appear.
The Solovetsky archipelago is a group of about 110 islands, including six large and inhabited ones: the Bolshoy Solovetsky, Anzersky, Bolshaya and Malaya Muksalma, Bolshoy and Small Zayatsky islands, as well as many small islands.
The mysteries of the archipelago begin right from the doorway: there is no single version of the origin of the toponym "Solovki". Most often it is associated with the transformation of the Old Karelian suol (island) - sort of like the first settlers called this land simply "islands". However, if you look into the works of researchers, dozens of other very likely options arise - references to "salt" (the islands were famous for their salt pans), and to "fishing" (from the co-lovers), and to the "sun", and to the "soul "(Soul), and to loneliness (solo) and the Finno-Ugric" salma "(strait), and more, more, and more …
The history of the archipelago's life, more or less known to mankind, is about five thousand years old. Among them are millennia of development and gradual settlement of its lands by primitive tribes, centuries of spiritual and economic upsurge during the monastic period, decades of Soviet camp horrors, and, finally, the current stage - calm and respectful modernity.
Promotional video:
Each of these time periods left traces of priceless historical and cultural heritage on the territory of the archipelago. Since 1992, they have been officially included in the same UNESCO List, and since 1995 - in the State Code of Especially Valuable Cultural Heritage Sites of the peoples of the Russian Federation.
We tried to find out a little about each.
Development period
The archaeological heritage of the Solovetsky archipelago is still an almost unsolved, but extremely interesting quest for researchers. It represents a variety of traces of human presence, dating from about 3 thousand years BC to about 3,000 BC. up to 1 millennium AD
It is almost certainly known that until the monastic period (that is, until the beginning of the 15th century), people did not live on Solovki - they used to raid here. The memory of these short visits of the first representatives of the Sami and Karelian tribes remained in the form of many stone buildings: the remains of primitive sites, complexes of sanctuaries, barrows, dolmens, seids and other mysterious boulder calculations.
The main interest of tourists and archaeologists today is the so-called Solovetsky labyrinths. Someone put forward hypotheses that these are special fish traps, someone - that the maps of the starry sky, others - that religious buildings that drive away evil spirits. The most beautiful version: the labyrinths served as memorial places for those whose bodies could not be buried (no remains were found inside the labyrinths), mostly fishermen who drowned in the sea.
According to legend, thanks to such spiral structures, the souls of the dead had the opportunity to find their place of eternal rest, but at the same time they could not get out into the world of the living, getting lost in the cunning bends of the labyrinth. Their true purpose remains a mystery - one of the many associated with the archipelago.
Especially rich in mysterious structures is Bolshoy Zayatsky Island, located five kilometers from Bolshoy Solovetsky. Its name, incidentally, also sowed confusion among researchers. Some argued that the island was named after bearded seals (one of the species of the White Sea seals that lived on its territory for some time). Others have a more interesting version: they say, eggs of northern birds, which nested on this island in large numbers, were added to the famous brick of the Solovetsky Monastery, which has high strength. The monks went here for eggs, hence the analogy - Zayatsky. Nobody knows for sure.
Monastery
And yet, the main part of the spiritual and cultural heritage of the archipelago is made up of the monuments of the Solovetsky Monastery, which, over almost six centuries of its activity, has turned into a complex of buildings striking in its completeness and diversity - temple, residential, defensive, economic and engineering. A whole separate world is full-fledged and self-sufficient, most of which is rightly ranked among the masterpieces of ancient Russian architecture.
It all began with a settlement founded by two Novgorod monks Zosima and German in 1429. In fact, it was they - along with the novices and disciples - who were the first permanent residents of the islands. They laid the walls of the future shrine.
But the monastery experienced a real flourishing of its history a little later, already in the 16th century, under the leadership of Abbot Philip. During his reign, the wooden walls of the monastery were rebuilt with the same "super-strong stone" that has survived to this day. Moreover, the construction mechanics were completely unique: in order to place huge boulders-bricks on top of each other, the monks built sand embankments at each level of the wall, along which they rolled stone giants up. And at the end of the work, they cleaned off all these tons of sand to the base of the resulting fortress.
Philip turned out to be a real strong business executive, built a network of canals between numerous lakes on Bolshoy Solovetsky Island, installed mills on them, erected a number of important outbuildings, organized the first iron-making weapons factory in Korelsky district. Crafts began to flourish in the monastery: he owned salt pans, smithies, monks and novices fished, and hunted animals. As the locals say now, they even managed to grow watermelons and breed ostriches.
One way or another, rapidly developing, the monastery turned into the capital of the vast northwestern territories of the Russian state, becoming the center of spirituality and culture, trade and crafts, defense of the White Sea region. Russian sovereigns and many noble people, recognizing the power of the monastery, gave large sums to its treasury, sent icons, books, clothes and fabrics. By 1765, the monastery reached the highest point of its "religious career" - it became stavropegic, that is, directly subordinate to the Synod (and today - to the Patriarch).
However, the first dark pages of the history of the archipelago, which largely determined all the upcoming horrors, also opened precisely then: from the 16th to the end of the 19th century, the Solovetsky Monastery began to serve as a political and church prison for Russia. According to various estimates, from the time of Ivan the Terrible and until 1883, when the monastery prison officially ceased to exist, from 500 to 550 prisoners passed through the underground stone dungeons of the monastery, among whom were such notable personalities as the diplomat and associate of Peter the Great P. A. Tolstoy, the last ataman of the Zaporizhzhya Sich P. I. Kalnyshevsky or the famous Decembrist, Prince F. P. Shakhovskoy.
Soviet period
But, of course, the most tragic pages were written in the history of the archipelago by the Soviet camp period. All the reverse sides of the communist system were felt by the Solovetsky Islands almost immediately. By 1920, the regime, unfriendly to spiritual matters, practically eliminated the usual way of monastic life: the monks were transferred to the status of servants, the cultural values of the monastery and large supplies of food were requisitioned. And already in 1923, the notorious Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON) was established here, which was later transformed in 1937 into the Solovetsky Special Purpose Prison with a very speaking abbreviation STON. A significant part of the prisoners of which were the so-called. "Political" - the clergy, the officers of the white movement, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the intelligentsia disagreeing with the regime.
Now on the islands, only some of the buildings of the camp period have survived, testifying to the tragedy that took place here. For example, several wooden barracks, located literally near the walls of the monastery, where some prisoners were kept. Today it is a museum.
Visitors are greeted by a huge poster with the inscription "Soviet power does not punish, but corrects." Inside there are hundreds of exhibits, photographs, diary entries reminiscent of the worst 20 years in the history of the archipelago. According to various estimates, about 100 thousand people passed through the camp regime from the 20th to the 39th year, of which almost every tenth died - from hunger, cold, disease, inhuman stress and banal bullying.
A separate monument to the cruelty that reigned here is Sekirnaya Gora - the highest point of the archipelago, notable for the fact that there is the only operating lighthouse in Russia located in a church building. It was this building - the Temple of the Ascension on Sekirnaya Gora - that became the main synonym for painful and inevitable death during the camp years: the ELEPHANT's punishment cell was located here, in comparison with which life "below", in the main barracks, could be considered a resort. Particularly objectionable prisoners, fugitives and rebels from the "lower" camp were sent here. The average life expectancy of "those who fell on the Sekirka" was about six months, only a few returned. Countless places of mass graves, chaotically scattered on the left side of the mountain, are a terrible confirmation of this.
Temple of the Ascension on Mount Sekirnaya
An illustrative episode from the life of the camp was the visit to the islands of Maxim Gorky, which took place in 1929. The writer arrived here as part of a commission to assess the living conditions in the ELEPHANT: some of the goods produced by prisoners as part of "corrective labor" were exported, and the western buyer was scrupulous about using the products of forced labor. It was necessary to testify that the work is being carried out in suitable conditions, and the working people themselves are glad to atone for their sins before the Fatherland with righteous labor. As it is easy to guess, the writer loyal to the power of the Soviets, despite the more than obvious inconsistencies, examined everything “as it should”. The trade continued.
Oleg Volkov, a well-known Russian publicist, in his work "Immersion in the Dark" gives the following recollections of Gorky's arrival in Solovki: “I was in Solovki when Gorky was brought there. Swollen with arrogance (still, a ship was brought under him alone, led by the arms, surrounded by an honorary retinue), he walked along the path near the office. He only looked in the direction to which he was pointed, talked with the Chekists dressed in brand new prisoner clothes, entered the Vokhrovtsy barracks, from where they had just managed to take out racks with rifles and remove the Red Army men … And he praised them!
A mile from the place where Gorky enthusiastically played the role of a noble tourist and shed a tear, touched by the people who devoted themselves to the humane mission of re-educating by labor the lost victims of the remnants of capitalism, - a mile from there, in a straight line, the brutal overseers beat backhand with sticks harnessed in eight and ten into the sleigh loaded with long hours of tortured, emaciated penalties - the Polish military. Firewood was transported to them along the blackrope. The Poles were kept in a particularly inhuman way."
It all ends someday. A decade later, by 1939, the Solovetsky prison was completely abolished and ceased to exist as an independent unit.
On October 30, 1990, a memorial stone was erected on Lubyanskaya Square in Moscow in memory of those killed in the years of political repression. The stone itself was brought from the Solovetsky Islands. The same stones are in Arkhangelsk and in the museum of the Holy Trinity Monastery in the city of Jordanville (USA) in memory of the new martyrs who died in the Solovetsky special camp.
Modernity
Today, only special memorial plaques remind of these cruel years. The distortions in the landscape, landscapes and architectural ensemble of the Solovki, caused by the camp activities and the subsequent period of complete mismanagement, are gradually disappearing. The islands are being reborn.
In the same 1990, the monastery itself resumed its activities - it is now officially called the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Solovetsky Stavropegic Monastery, with the return of which many hopes are connected to improve the preservation and use of the historical and cultural heritage of the archipelago.
Pilgrims and tourists come here. For them, the infrastructure is slowly developing here: hotels and guest houses are being built, excursions to cult places are held. In summer, cargo and passenger ships go to the island every day, in winter, communication with the mainland is carried out by air - twice a week, a plane leaves from the Solovkov airfield to Arkhangelsk.
The famous sailing ship Mir, the fastest sailing ship on Earth, has also arrived here - right before our eyes - to bless the ship's flag.
Solovki for sailors is a special place, a kind of End of the World. There is also a famous monument to the Solovetsky cabin boys; traditional rituals of dropping wreaths into the waters of the White Sea in memory of the dead sailors are held here. The ceremony of consecrating the banner takes place in the Church of St. Andrew the First-Called on Bolshoi Zayatsky Island. It is conducted by the chief governor of the Solovetsky Monastery (who is also the director of the entire museum-reserve) - Archimandrite Porfiry.
People come here for good. So, some time ago, a family known among the Moscow creative intelligentsia moved to Solovki - Pyotr Mikhailovich Leonov, who once was in charge of the literary part of Tetra on Taganka, together with his wife. A children's art school was opened on the island, in which 25-30 local children learn the basics of musical literacy and learn to play musical instruments every year.
The local population - which officially live here today, just over 800 people - live a simple worldly life. They mainly work in trade, navigation, subsistence farming, fishing and crafts.
This face of the Solovetsky Monastery is well known today even to those who have never been to the islands: it is he who adorns the reverse side of our 500-ruble bill
For example, literally ten steps from the walls of the monastery is the so-called Vegetable House - a two-story building of the 19th century, built of larch (as the residents themselves say, there is no better building material - over the years, larch becomes stronger than stone, but retains the comfort and warmth of a living tree). The owner of the house, Olga Sharova, is a former resident of Arkhangelsk and an honored teacher. Today she is already a completely mastered Solovki woman and the keeper of the primordial craft traditions of the Russian North: she is a well-known master of making roesul, or, in other words, northern gingerbread, which are very popular with tourists.
Today, the most popular characters in pictures taken from the streets of Bolshoy Solovetsky Island are local livestock and poultry. The inhabitants are happy to tell stories about them: they say that chickens were specially brought here by the warships of the Navy, for which the whole team was then awarded honorary medals, and a fairy tale happened to the local cows. It means that Prince Charles himself once visited the island on an official visit. While walking along the walls of the monastery, a red-headed ladybug caught up with him, and so persistently and good-naturedly began to pester him that the prince was imbued and decided to take her with him to English lands. Of course, he failed to do this, but the cow became a local celebrity, and her calf was named Charlie. Where did both go later, however, history is again silent.
It is quiet and peaceful here today. The sacred land found peace. And only the gusty wind, which seems to be blowing simultaneously from all directions, and the harsh, downright irrationally rapidly changing weather return to this quiet abode a reminder of the stormy events that once took place here.