Solovki: where sea meets sky

I have not been to the Solovets Islands, popularly known as the Solovki, for 33 years. I would not say that I miss this archipelago, which became infamous in Soviet times as a symbol of bondage, cruelty, and deadly hopelessness. However, back in 1976, when I was there with a group of tourists, we were certainly told none of this.

SOME MEMORIES

The rumor has it that the islands obtained the name Solovets (from sol ‘salt’), because those who lived there long ago obtained salt by evaporation of sea water for sale. However, it is known for sure that the existence of Solovki prisoners was salty in the sense ‘tough.’ Pavel Florensky, one of the most famous prisoners, wrote: “The nature here, despite all the views, which cannot be called other than beautiful and unique, is repellent to me. The sea does not look like a sea; it is rather something either dirty white or black and gray. All the rocks were brought here by glaciers. All the hills are alluvial and made of glacial trash.

“Nothing is native to this place, everything came here from somewhere else, including people. This peculiarity of the landscape, when you understand it, depresses you as if you were in a dirty room. The same is with people: any contacts with people are accidental, superficial, and are not defined by any deep inner motives. It is just like with crystalline rock which form boulders — they are interesting on their own, but become dull when removed from their primary deposit. The same is with people here — they are notable on their own and on average are more notable that those who live a free life, but they are not interesting just because they were brought from far away. Today they are here and tomorrow they can find themselves in a different place.”

For many Solovki prisoners this area became their last destination point in life. One place in this area was Sandarmokh near the city of Medvezhegorsk in Karelia. From Oct. 27 through Nov. 4 , 1937, 1,111 Solovki prisoners were brought here and shot. There were many well-known Ukrainians among them. The punitive action was carried out following a decision made by a special NKVD troika (three-person tribunal) in Leningrad oblast. Among those who were sentenced to death was a fairly large group of Ukrainian prisoners: Marko Vorony, Serhii Hrushevsky, Hryhorii Epik, Mykola Zerov, Mykola Kulish, Les Kurbas, Antin Krushelnytsky, his sons Bohdan and Ostap, Myroslav Irchan-Babiuk, Mykhailo Lozynsky, Valerian Pidmohylny, Valerian Polishchuk, Stepan Rudnytsky, Oleksa Slisarenko, Pavlo Fylypovych, Volodymyr Chekhivsky, Matvii Yavorsky, Mykhailo Yalovy, and others.

Back in 1976, the guide did not say a word about Sandarmokh because nobody, except for the initiated, actually knew it existed. It was discovered only in 1997 by a group of enthusiasts, including two human rights activists — the late Veniamin Joffe and Yurii Dmitriev.

Our group stayed in a tourist hotel located in the Kremlin — the central part of the Solovets Monastery. The rooms were respectfully called monastic cells, even though everyone understood that they simply used to be monastic cell and were later adjusted to serve as cells for prisoners. I remember the non-stop raining and our long conversations with my cellmates about anything in the world but not the place where we actually were.

By that time I had already had a chance to work in the restricted-access funds, where Western literature about the Soviet Union and publications of different styles, which were considered to be anti-soviet in USSR, were kept away from public access. I read some things about the Solovki, too. It was nothing much but enough to understand what this place really was. I spoke about it quietly only with one man with whom we studied together at university and who was in the tourist group in the Solovki. Together with him we walked along the coastline of the White Sea and the shore of warm Saint Lake near the Solovets Monastery.

I also remember talking to local people there. We met a few of them. The men were usually a bit buzzed and asked questions about Ukraine. They usually would speak proudly about their good lifestyle and high salaries. One young man swaggered that he had three color TV sets (they were a great deficit in USSR back then) and then he added in a somewhat confused tone: “I’ve got three TV sets, but there’s nothing to watch really.” The Solovki locals also told us about the two most popular items of merchandise. The first one was an easy guess — vodka. And the other one turned out to be motorbikes. They explained: “Look! You buy one, get on it, and ride without any speed limits across the island. No traffic police. And if you crash it, there will be no problems. You can always order another one, and they will bring it to you on a steamship from the mainland.”

This year everything began to materialize all of a sudden for me: the Solovki locals, the Solovets Monastery, Saint Lake, the White Sea, and many new impressions.

THE BUS IS NO LUXURY

An offer to go to the Solovki began with … a total denial. It had to be a trip by bus from Kyiv to Kem, the city from which one can get to the Solovki by sea. I was hesitating not just because it is simply hard to travel by bus. I had no doubt that no matter how comfortable the bus would be (and it was mentioned right at the beginning that we would be traveling on a double-deck Mercedes), the drivers would be ours. That is why we had to really feel that we were still not in Europe despite patriotic claims that we are already there or have never left it.

Not the least reason why I agreed to go was that now I am involved in film production. As part of the joint project of Ukraine’s National Television Company (NTKU) and the Security Service of Ukraine named “Defense Classification Removed,” the film director Iryna Shatokhina and I are shooting the third film in the series. The first film was Ukrainska Mriia (Ukrainian Dream), and the second one, Tsar i Rab Khytroshchiv (The Tsar and Slave of Cunning). The main character of our new film finds himself in the Solovki, but despite the conditions and the seemingly unbreakable repressive logic of the time he manages to escape. We are trying to tell about how and why it happened. Naturally, we cannot do without filming the archipelago itself. It turned out that the NTKU was unable to pay for our tickets to the Solovki, so we started thinking about joining the delegation that is traditionally formed by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory. Every August this delegation takes part in the events that commemorate the victims of the Great Terror of 1937–38 and take place in Sandarmokh.

Oleksandr Polonsky and Iryna Boltasova of the Institute of National Memory coordinated the trip and made us, i.e., Shatokhina, our cameraman Volodymyr Tarhonsky, and the present author, members of the 2009 delegation.

Now back to the bus. It was indeed comfortable and made in Germany, but the drivers were Ukrainians. They drove professionally, smiled, and offered tea and coffee. But the restroom was closed during the whole trip. The bus would stop only for human reasons, and it was usually on the side of the road near some forest but not at a gas station. The old Soviet principle “Girls go to the left and the guys, to the right” was again in play. Therefore, as you can understand, Europe was not even close at the stops. The further to the north we went, the more signs we saw that we were not the only ones travelling in this manner. It all devalued all the talks about our Europeanness and the Asian character of Russia and made us search for an answer to the question: Why is it that in Turkey or Egypt buses carrying many more passengers are fully functional, while in Ukraine it is the opposite? However, all attempts to answer this question failed. However, the trip itself did not.

FOLLOWING THE PATH OF SORROW

There were 24 people in this year’s delegation. Most of them were members of the Vasyl Stus Memorial Society, the Prosvita Society, the Society of Political Prisoners and the Repressed, the National Union of Journalists, the Plast Organization, and other non-governmental organizations and establishments.

We went along the following route: Kyiv – Saint Petersburg – Levashovo Memorial Cemetery – Petrozavodsk – Medvezhegorsk – Sandarmokh-Povenets – Kem – Solovki. We left our bus in Kem and took a steamship to Big Solovets Island, which is located 60 kilometers from Kem.

As we traveled, I had plenty of time to think and remember some things. I remembered how in 1979 a Solovki local told me: “You know, I have been to every place in the Soviet Union and no place is as good as the Solovki.” In the 1920s and the 1930s, the prisoners called the penal servitude in the Solovki “the Soviet Union in miniature.” It was actually true: all the nations and ethnic groups of the Soviet Union were represented there at the time. More importantly, the island reflected exactly what was going on in the country. The intensiveness of repressions was immediately reflected by the number of prisoners and the way they were treated. The Solovets Special Purpose Camp, the Northern Special Purpose camp complex, the Solovets Special Purpose Prison of the Main Administration of State Security of the USSR — these were the successive official names for the Solovki in 1929–1939. They reflect the importance of the place for the communist regime.

The birth of USSR camp system is connected to a great extend with the Solovki. The Solovki Special Purpose Camp with two distribution stations in Arkhangelsk and Kem was founded by the Oct. 13, 1923 decree of the Soviet Council of People’s Commissars. The function of controlling the camp was assigned to the Unified State Political Administration (OGPU) of the USSR. On Nov. 2, 1939, the NKVD issued decree No.001335 “On Closing the Prison of the Main Administration of State Security on Solovets Island.”

Those two dates are the timeframe of the existence of the Solovets camps. Creating and maintaining this colossal death complex for 16 years did not happen by chance; nor was it an observance of a Russian tradition. It was an urgent necessity, one of the “subsystems of fear,” which enabled the functioning of the entire system created by Bolsheviks on ruins of Russian Empire.

“The Solovki camps are a country of suffering and despair. Most of those who were taken there had to die. Within the molded walls of Monastery, where monks used to burn incense as a sign of obeying the Almighty, now a romantic lie about love, hatred, and God’s kingdom on earth was being fabricated,” wrote a contemporary about the Solovki. Citizens of that “country of suffering and despair” felled trees, laid railroad tracks, and built the ill-famed Belomorkanal (White Sea Canal), which claimed the lives of nearly 100,000 prisoners and ultimately failed to win Stalin’s approval (“too narrow”).

There was no social category that would not be represented in the Solovki. It was a true unity of all the working people: workers, peasants, and, of course, intelligentsia, which was called a working stratum back then. There were a lot of Ukrainians among the prisoners. “Ukrainization” of the Solovki began back in the 18th century. The most outstanding prisoner under Catherine II was Petro Kalnyshevsky, the last kish otaman of the Zaporozhian Sich. He was exiled to the Solovki in 1776. After he had served his sentence, he stayed in the Solovki and died there in 1803 at the age of 112. Another famous Solovki prisoner from Ukraine was Yurii Andruzky, member of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood. He served his sentence there in 1850–54.

Communist concentration camps practically did not leave a chance for anyone to live as long as Kalnyshevsky did. Among those who were brought to the Solovki were the following groups: the activists of Ukrainian People’s Republic; soldiers and otamans of numerous insurgent detachments; workers who did not like their slave status; peasants driven into despair with the “paradise” of collective farming; persecuted priests; “specialists,” i.e., representatives of the old intelligentsia who were declared to be saboteurs and nationalists; those whom the authorities used and relied upon and now announced them to be enemies of the people — the former Communist Party activists and state officials and numerous activists of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine; Soviet writers, scientists, and artists. All of them, with only a few exceptions, were doomed to destruction by the very fact that they were brought to the Solovki.

We went along that path of sorrow, the same path that the Solovki prisoners had to go. We also visited the places which became the prisoners’ last abode on this earth — in the Levashovo Memorial Cemetery near Saint Petersburg and then in Medvezhegorsk. These were the places from where the prisoners were taken to Sandarmokh to be shot. I was asked to speak at meetings in Sandarmokh and in the Solovki. I emphasized that the victims of the Great Terror were people of different nationalities. Death was what united them. We, the living representatives of different nations, should be united by historical memory. I also said that for contemporary Ukraine the memory about the victims of the communist terror is not dictated by the current political situation but is a tool to shape democratic thinking and civil society.

SOLOVKI 2009

There it is, Big Solovets Island. In the middle there is warm Saint Lake, while the island is surrounded by the cold White Sea. Nobody could escape from the island, because a person would not survive for 15 minutes in the freezing water, they say. All the escapes that were registered as successful took place on the mainland.

Many things have changed in the Solovki since the time I was here in 1976. The local people now drive not only motorbikes but also Jeeps (or at least Jeep-like Russian four-by-fours). There are quite a few foreigners on the island — an absolutely unthinkable thing 33 years ago. Local people treat them well. Yes, there are changes. However, the traditions are still alive. For example, people who live in the Solovki still stick to the alcohol paradigm. One can buy alcohol in the stores, which are now situated in what used to be barracks for prisoners. Here one can buy souvenirs as well as industrial goods. There is a cafe? in one of the barracks with fairly low prices and pretty good food. There are also barracks where people live.

We filmed one of the episodes for our future film with my comments near this inhabited barrack. We filmed a few takes there. Suddenly a woman came out of that barrack, clearly tipsy. She watched and listened to us and then made her comment: “I have been living in this barrack for 25 years now, damn it! Nobody ever filmed anything here. This is my barrack!” Soon she grasped that we had no claims to her barrack and went to the next house, which looked far more decent. Then a slightly drunk young man approached us. He started to elbow our Tarhonsky away from his camera, saying: “You have already looked into the lens. Now let me do it!” We managed to deal with this incident peacefully.

Without doubt, the monastery, which is still being revived, is the biggest point of attraction. It looked nothing like what I saw back in 1976. It is a hard work to revive something that was been lost 90 years ago. In 1919, when the Solovki monks understood that they would not be able to stand against the Bolsheviks, they took the most valuable things and left for London.

Today the monastery is being slowly but surely renewed. Pilgrims, tourists, and researchers visit the monastery. Its main competitor as a tourist attraction is now only the Solovki State Historical and Architectural Museum Preserve. I would say that the monastery definitely has the edge in this competition. The Museum Preserve is located on its territory, but it seemed to me that this is only a temporarily arrangement. Mikhail Lopatkin, director of the Museum Preserve, practically confirmed my guess. In our conversation he said that he would agree to move out from the monastery’s territory if there were some other decent-sized place provided for the museum.

The museum staff speaks about the past tragedy and the life of the Solovki prisoners out loud. However, I got an impression that people in the monastery and its administration are not all that interested in the topic of suffering. What is 16 years (this is how long the Solovki Camp and later the Special Purpose Prison existed) from the point of the eternity after all?

This is somewhat surprising, because the monastery was founded in the 15th century and received its first prisoner in 1553 — the hegumen Artemii who spoke against church nobility and church lands. Prison cells were made in one of the monastery’s towers. It means that the monastery prison was started long before communists arrived. In fact, communists inherited the monastery’s prison tradition — something that should not be forgotten, in my opinion.

Saint Lake is just as warm as it was back then. Pilgrims and tourists eagerly swim in it. The Solovki’s nature is magnificent, and it is sheer pleasure to traverse the Solovki Lakes. You experience an illusion of absolute solitude and can take your time tete-a-tete with nature. The Solovki forests can impress even those who are totally indifferent towards nature. They are not simply beautiful — they have the power of authentic, original, and mighty nature.

In the thick of the forests, there is Mt. Sekirnaia with the Ascension Church, which was built in 1862. This was a scary place for prisoners — there used to be a penal isolation cell for political prisoners here. On the two floors of the church building, which also serves as a lighthouse, the prisoners were tortured. There are practically no traces of prisoners kept in there but people remember about it. Near the Cross of Respectful Salutation here the Ukrainian delegation lit the candles in memory of those who died there and visited another sad place — the Savvatievo skete. Finally, a round table was held before our departure. It was organized by the Solovki Museum Preserve.

FAREWELL AND WISHES

Our film crew left Big Solovets Island a bit earlier than the rest of the delegation. We needed sunlight to film some episodes on Popov Island near Kem and the rest of the delegation had to leave later in the evening. We stood on the stern of a tourist-filled steamship, and the Solovki became more and more distant. The White Sea reached the sky, and it looked as if it was really white. I remembered a poem of a classic in the translation of Mykola Zerov, one of the most outstanding Solovki prisoners:

We will all be there,
Facing the last moment.
Our turn will come, and we’ll be thrown into a boat,
And the dismal coast will meet us
Before the eternal exile.

The coast of the Solovets Islands is both dismal and majestic, just like the history of this unusual place. We were saying good-bye to it now. Our shooting session on Popov Island was successful, and we joined our delegation in Kem and left for home in the evening.

This was the farewell, and here are our wishes. The format of trips to the Solovki seems to require an update. There is nothing wrong with having a priest and a kobza player as the mandatory members of the delegation. But let us imagine that Russians, Lithuanians, Poles, and Estonians bring their own musicians and priests. Do we, i.e., Ukraine, look somewhat archaic against this background?

Another thing I want to mention that we should probably reduce the degree of patriotism on the bus during such trips. There is no doubt that those who decided to make this trip are all patriots, all for Ukraine, and all for, not against, memory. Then maybe we should not be meditating and declaiming banal things in front of each other. Maybe it would be better to prepare presentations that will help us understand deeper where we are going, what we are going to see there, and what it all used to look like. Every participant of the delegation could be given a task to prepare a report on some concrete topic and use some video materials. Speaking about the videos, there should not be too many of them and they should not create discomfort. There has to be some time for silence, pauses, and thinking. There is no need to put the bus passengers under constant stress.

Here we are back in Kyiv. Polonsky and Boltasova thank every participant, and we are grateful to them and the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, because memory is able to cement society and create strategies for the future.

Yurii Shapoval is a professor of history.