The Gulag Archipelago: Part 3, Chapter 2: The Archipelago Rises from the Sea Summary & Analysis

The Solovetsky Islands, once known for their natural beauty and religious significance, became a grim landmark in the history of Soviet repression. Before the arrival of the Soviet regime, these islands were home to the Solovetsky Monastery. The monastery’s towering kremlin walls, built for defense against foreign invaders like the Swedes and the English, eventually transformed into an ideal prison fortress.

When the Bolsheviks seized power, the monks’ peaceful life gave way to a brutal new reality. Commissars, eager to harness the monastery’s abundant resources, transformed it into a state farm, where they put the monks to work. In 1923, the monastery was deliberately set on fire, making way for the establishment of the Northern Special Purpose Camps. Only a few monks who had essential skills remained, but their existence was bleak and far removed from their former religious duties.

The camp gained infamy for its inhumane treatment and brutal punishment methods. Guards carried out cruel and creative tortures: they forced prisoners to balance on thick wooden poles for hours and savagely beat those who fell. At Sekirnaya Hill, guards tied prisoners to beams and rolled them down 365 steep steps, causing injuries that often proved fatal. In winter, guards made prisoners work in freezing conditions, harnessing them to sledges like beasts of burden and abandoning those who disobeyed to freeze in the snow. Other tortures included tying prisoners naked to trees in summer for mosquitoes to torment or driving them through forests with legs tied to horse-drawn carts until they collapsed or died.

In 1929, the famous writer Maxim Gorky visited Solovki, raising hopes among the prisoners that he would expose the camp’s atrocities. The guards, aware of his impending arrival, went to great lengths to hide the camp’s reality. They transferred many prisoners to distant work sites, released patients from the overcrowded infirmary, and even set up a fake “boulevard” lined with fir trees planted without roots. Despite these efforts, a courageous fourteen-year-old boy managed to speak privately with Gorky, detailing the horrific abuses.

Gorky left the camp visibly emotional, but upon his return to Moscow, he published a statement praising the camp’s administration and their “cultural achievements.” His endorsement became a significant piece of Soviet propaganda, reassuring both domestic and international audiences that Solovki was a model reformatory camp. The boy who had confided in Gorky paid the ultimate price, as the guards executed him as soon as Gorky’s ship departed. This incident shattered any remaining illusions of justice or hope for those in the camp.