Solovki
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Solovki is a shortened name for the Solovetsky Islands, White Sea, Russia. Historically it has been a location of the famous Russian Orthodox Solovetsky Monastery complex, which repelled foreign attacks during the Time of Troubles, the Crimean War, and the Russian Civil War.
By Lenin's decree, the holy buildings were turned into Solovetsky Lager' Osobogo Naznachenia (SLON), Solovki Special Purpose Camp. The acronym of the camp name is a sullen word play for those who speak Russian: slon means "elephant". It was one of the first "corrective labor camps", a prototype of the Gulag system.
In 1926 the Solovki camp was turned into a prison, partly because of the conditions which made escape near impossible and partly because the Solovetsky islands were already being used as an exile during the Russian empire. The treatment of the prisoners attracted a lot of criticism in Western Europe and the USA. After a thorough cleanup, the Soviet government sent the proletarian writer Maksim Gorky to the camp in an attempt to counter this criticism. Indeed, Gorky wrote a very favourable essay, describing the beautiful nature. How much Gorky knew about the real conditions, remains a mystery.
The prison was closed in 1939 because the Second World War was imminent, and the camp was situated close to the border with Finland. The buildings were then transformed into a naval base. The Orthodox Church reestablished the monastery in 1992, the year when the ensemble was included into UNESCO's World Heritage List.
As stated in the UNESCO's evaluation of this patrimony, "the Solovetskii complex is an outstanding example of a monastic settlement in the inhospitable environment of northern Europe which admirably illustrates the faith, tenacity, and enterprise of late medieval religious communities".
