Commandants and heads of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp. Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp

Source - Wikipedia

The Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON) is the largest forced labor camp of the 1920s, located on the territory of the Solovetsky Islands.

monastery prison
The Solovetsky Monastery was used for many years as a place of isolation of Orthodox hierarchs, heretics and sectarians who were recalcitrant to the sovereign's will. Politically unreliable people also came here, such as the disgraced Averky Palitsyn or Pavel Gannibal, who sympathized with the Decembrists, and others. Since 1718, the State Prison on Solovki existed for almost 200 years, it was closed in 1903.

On February 3, 1919, during the civil war, the government of the Northern Region of Miller-Tchaikovsky, which was supported by the troops of the Entente, adopted a resolution according to which citizens, “whose presence is harmful ... may be arrested and extrajudicially deported to the places indicated in paragraph 4 of this resolutions." The specified paragraph read “The Solovetsky Monastery or one of the islands of the Solovetsky group is appointed as the place of expulsion ...”

Northern camps

In 1919, the Cheka established a number of forced labor camps in the Arkhangelsk province: in Pertominsk, Kholmogory and near Arkhangelsk. The camps had to exist on their own money without the support of the center.
In 1921, these camps became known as the Northern Special Purpose Camps (SLON).

The emergence of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (1923)
At the beginning of 1923, the GPU of the RSFSR, which replaced the Cheka, proposed to increase the number of northern camps by building a new one on the Solovetsky archipelago. In May, Deputy Chairman of the GPU I.S. Unshlikht turned to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee with a project to organize the Solovetsky forced labor camp. And already in July, the first prisoners were transferred from Arkhangelsk to Solovetsky Island.

On July 6, 1923, six months after the formation of the USSR, the GPUs of the union republics were removed from the jurisdiction of the republican NKVD and merged into the United State Political Directorate (OGPU), subordinated directly to the SNK of the USSR. Places of detention of the GPU of the RSFSR were transferred to the jurisdiction of the OGPU.

Later, one of the camp divisions of the BelBaltLag was located on Solovki, and in 1937-39. - Solovetsky Special Purpose Prison (STON) of the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) of the NKVD of the USSR.

Thanks to archival research conducted in 1995 by the director of the St. Petersburg Research Center "Memorial" Veniamin Ioffe, it was found that on October 27, 1937, by the verdict of the Special Troika of the UNKVD in the Leningrad Region, part of the prisoners of the Solovetsky camp were loaded onto barges and, delivering them to the village of Povenets, were shot in the Sandormokh tract (1111 people, including all the disabled and “undressed” - a camp term for a prisoner who did not have a specialty).

Chronology

Gorky on Solovki. 1929
June 6, 1923(Even before the decision to create the Solovetsky camp was made), the Pechora paddle steamer delivered the first batch of prisoners from Arkhangelsk and Pertominsk to the Solovetsky Islands.
October 13, 1923- Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on the organization of the Solovetsky forced labor camp is issued. The camp was supposed to accommodate 8,000 people.
December 19, 1923 on a walk, five were killed and three (one mortally) wounded members of the Socialist-Revolutionary parties. and anarchists. This shooting received wide publicity in the world press.
October 1, 1924- the number of political prisoners in the camp is 429 people, of which 176 are Mensheviks, 130 are right SRs, 67 are anarchists, 26 are left SRs, 30 are socialists of other organizations.
"Politicians" (members of the socialist parties: Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Bundists and anarchists) made up a small part of the total number of prisoners (about 400 people), nevertheless they occupied a privileged position in the camp - as a rule, they were exempted from physical labor (except for emergency work ), freely communicated with each other, had their own governing body (headman), could see relatives, received help from the Red Cross. They were kept separately from other prisoners in the Savvateevsky Skete. From the end of 1923, the OGPU began a policy of tightening the regime for keeping political prisoners.

June 10, 1925 Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of 06/10/1925 on the termination of the detention of political prisoners in the SLON is adopted. In the summer of 1925 political prisoners were taken to the mainland.
Camp leaders
From October 13, 1923 to November 13, 1925 - A.P. Nogtev;
From November 13, 1925 to May 20, 1929 - F. I. Eichmans,
from May 20, 1929 to May 19, 1930 - A.P. Nogtev
from May 19, 1930 to September 25, 1931 - A. A. Ivanchenko,
from September 25, 1931 to November 6, 1931 - K. Ya. Dukis, acting head
November 6-16, 1931 - E. I. Senkevich
from November 16, 1931 to January 1, 1932 the camp was closed due to the organization of the Belbaltlag on its base
from January 1932 to March 1933 - E. I. Senkevich
August 27, 1932 - Boyar (mentioned as interim chief)
from January 28, 1933 - no later than August 13, 1933 (mentioned) - Ya. A. Bukhband,
October 8, 1933 - Ievlev (mentioned as temporary acting chief)
December 4, 1933 - the camp, as an independent unit, is finally closed.
Living conditions in the camp
Maxim Gorky, who visited the camp in 1929, cited the testimonies of prisoners about the conditions of the Soviet system of labor re-education:

The prisoners worked no more than 8 hours a day;
For harder work "on peat" an increased ration was issued;
Elderly prisoners were not subject to assignment to heavy work;
All prisoners were taught to read and write.
Gorky describes their barracks as very spacious and bright.

However, according to the researcher of the history of the Solovetsky camps, photographer Yu. A. Brodsky, various tortures and humiliations were used in relation to the prisoners in Solovki. So, the prisoners were forced to:

drag stones or logs from place to place,
Count the seagulls
Shout the Internationale loudly for hours on end. If the prisoner stopped, then two or three were killed, after which people screamed while standing until they began to fall from exhaustion. This could be done at night, in the cold.
See Chernavin: Escape from the Gulag
The fate of the founders of the camp
Many organizers who were involved in the creation of the Solovetsky camp were shot

The man who proposed to assemble the camps on Solovki, the Arkhangelsk leader Ivan Vasilyevich Bogovoy, was shot.
The man who raised the red flag over Solovki ended up in the Solovetsky camp as a prisoner.
The first head of the camp, Nogtev, received 15 years, was released under an amnesty, did not have time to register in Moscow, and died.
The second head of the camp, Eichmans, was shot as an English spy.
Head of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Prison Apater - shot.
At the same time, for example, SLON prisoner Naftaly Aronovich Frenkel, who proposed innovative ideas for the development of the camp and was one of the "godfathers" of the Gulag, advanced through the ranks and retired in 1947 from the post of head of the Main Directorate of Railway Construction Camps in the rank lieutenant general of the NKVD.

Notable prisoners
Alimov, Safa Bedretdinovich - the second imam of the Moscow Cathedral Mosque
Anichkov, Igor Evgenievich
Antsiferov, Nikolai Pavlovich
Artemiev, Vladimir Andreevich
Bezsonov, Georgy Dmitrievich
Beneshevich, Vladimir Nikolaevich
Braz, Osip Emmanuilovich
Volkov, Oleg Vasilievich
Danzas, Yulia Nikolaevna
Kenel, Alexander Alexandrovich
Krivosh-Nemanich, Vladimir Ivanovich
Likhachev, Dmitry Sergeevich - worked, including in the criminological office of the camp administration
Lozina-Lozinsky, Vladimir Konstantinovich - priest
Lysenko, Ivan Nikiforovich - Hero of the Soviet Union, before the war he was convicted under the "law of three spikelets."
Malsagov, Sozerko Artaganovich - officer, participant of the legendary escape
Mirzhakip Dulatov
Magzhan Zhumabaev - Kazakh poet
Mitrotsky, Mikhail Vladimirovich - priest
Meyer, Alexander Alexandrovich
Frantisek Olekhnovich - Belarusian playwright and politician
Priselkov, Mikhail Dmitrievich
Pigulevskaya, Nina Viktorovna
Hieromartyr Hilarion (Trinity)
Skulsky, Dmitry Arkadievich
Vitaly Snezhny
Snesarev, Andrey Evgenievich
Solonevich, Boris Lukyanovich
Florensky, Pavel Alexandrovich - held from 1933 to 1937.
Shiryaev, Boris Nikolaevich

"The harsh climatic conditions, the labor regime and the struggle with nature will be a good school for all sorts of vicious elements!" - decided the Bolsheviks, who appeared on Solovki in 1920. The monastery was renamed the Kremlin, White Lake to Red, and a concentration camp for prisoners of war of the Civil War appeared on the territory of the monastery. In 1923, this camp grew into SLON - "Solovki Special Purpose Camps". Interestingly, the first prisoners of the SLON were activists of those political parties that helped the Bolsheviks seize power in the country.

The "special purpose" of the Solovetsky camps was that people were sent there not for crimes or offenses, but for those who posed a threat to the red regime by the mere fact of their existence. The new government immediately destroyed active opponents. The concentration camps included those whose upbringing was not consistent with communist practice, who, by virtue of their education, origin or professional knowledge, turned out to be “socially alien”. Most of these people ended up in Solovki not by court verdicts, but by decisions of various commissions, collegiums, and meetings.

Solovki created a model of a state divided along class lines, with its capital, the Kremlin, army, navy, court, prison and material base inherited from the monastery. They printed their own money, published their own newspapers and magazines. There was no Soviet power here, there was Solovetsky power - the first local Council of Deputies appeared on Solovki only in 1944.

Work in the camp at first had only educational value. Former university teachers, doctors, scientists, qualified specialists carried water from one hole to another in winter, shifted logs from place to place in summer or shouted toast to the authorities and the Soviet power until they lost consciousness. This period of the formation of the camp system was distinguished by the mass death of prisoners from overwork and bullying of guards. Following the prisoners, their guards were also destroyed - in different years, almost all the party leaders who created the SLON and the Chekists who controlled the camp administration were shot.

The next stage in the development of the camp system on Solovki was the transfer of the camp to self-support, to receive maximum profit from the forced labor of prisoners, the creation of more and more new branches of the SLON on the mainland - from the Leningrad region to Murmansk and the Urals. Dispossessed peasants and workers were sent to Solovki. The total number of prisoners increased, the new camp law began to read "Bread according to production", which immediately put the elderly and physically infirm prisoners on the brink of death. Those who fulfilled the norms were awarded with diplomas and premium pies.

The slogan on the wall of the Red Corner of the former punishment cell in the camp Savvatievo

The birthplace of the Gulag - Solovki - after the destruction of its own natural resources (the ancient forests of the archipelago), pumped most of the prisoners to the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal. The isolation regime became more and more tough, from the mid-30s the prisoners were transferred to prison. In the autumn of 1937, an order came to Solovki from Moscow about the so-called. "norms" - a certain number of people who should be executed. The prison administration selected two thousand people who were shot. After that, SLON was withdrawn from the Gulag and turned from the camp into an exemplary prison of the Main Directorate of State Security, which had five departments on different islands.

In 1939, the construction of a special Large Prison Building was completed. Colleagues of the "iron commissar" Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov, who had already been shot in Moscow by that time, could well have been here, but the Solovetsky prison, on the orders of the new people's commissar Beria, was suddenly urgently disbanded. The Second World War begins and the territory of the archipelago was required for the organization of the naval base of the Northern Fleet on it. The large prison building remained uninhabited. At the end of the autumn of 1939, the prisoners were transferred to other places in the Gulag.

Before me lies a bibliographic rarity - a book by Yu. A. Brodsky "Solovki. Twenty Years of Special Purpose." For thirty-eight years, Yuri Arkadyevich has been collecting materials about the SLON - eyewitness accounts, documents. In his archive there are several thousand negatives of photographs that he took in places associated with the Solovki camp. In 2002, with the assistance of the Soros Foundation and the Swedish Embassy in the Russian Federation, a book was published that Brodsky wrote based on the collected material. On 525 pages of the book, unique material is collected - written memoirs of former SLON prisoners, documentary evidence, photographs. The circulation of the book is negligible, but there is hope that it will be published again.

Sekirnaya Gora, one of the highest places on the Big Solovetsky Island, has always had a bad reputation. According to legend in the XV century. two angels flogged a woman with rods, who could be a temptation for the monks on the island. To commemorate this "miracle", a chapel was erected there, and in the 19th century a church, on the dome of which a lighthouse was built, showing the way to ships approaching Solovki from the west. During the camp period, on Sekirnaya Gora, a punishment cell was placed at Camp No. 2 (Savvatiyevo), known for its particularly difficult regime. Sitting for days on wooden poles and systematic beatings were the easiest types of punishment, as I. Kurilko, an employee of the detention center, said during interrogation. On the site in front of the church, executions of prisoners in the punishment cell were periodically carried out.

Engineer Emelyan Solovyov said that he once observed prisoners of the punishment cell on Sekirka, who were driven to work on backfilling the cemetery for scurvy and typhoid:

"- We guessed about the approach of the penalty box from Sekirnaya Gora by a loud command: - Get out of the way!

Of course, everyone shied away, and we were led past by emaciated, completely bestial people, surrounded by a numerous convoy. Some were dressed, for want of clothes, in sacks. I didn't see any boots."

From the memoirs of Ivan Zaitsev, who was placed in a punishment cell on Sekirnaya Gora and survived after a month of being there:

“We were forced to undress, leaving only our shirt and underpants on. Lagstarosta knocked on the front door with a bolt. An iron bolt creaked inside and a huge heavy door opened. To the right and to the left, along the walls, the prisoners silently sat in two rows on bare wooden bunks. Tightly, one to one. The first row, lowering their legs down, and the second behind, bending their legs under themselves. All barefoot, half-naked, with only rags on their bodies, some are already like skeletons. They looked in our direction with gloomy tired eyes, which reflected deep sadness and sincere pity for us, newcomers. Everything that could remind us that we are in the temple has been destroyed. The paintings are badly and roughly whitewashed. The side altars have been turned into punishment cells, where beatings and straitjackets are put on. with a board placed on top. In the morning and in the evening - checking with the usual dog barking "Hello!". Sometimes, for a sluggish calculation, a Red Army boy makes you repeat this greeting for half an hour or an hour. Food, and very scarce, is given out once a day - at noon. And so not a week or two, but for months, up to a year.

During his visit to Solovki in 1929, the great proletarian writer Maxim Gorky visited Sekirnaya Gora (pictured) with his relatives and members of the OGPU. Before his arrival, the perches were removed, tables were set up, and newspapers were handed out to the prisoners, ordered to pretend that they were reading them. Many of the penalty boxers began to hold newspapers upside down. Gorky saw this, went up to one of them and turned the paper over correctly. After the visit, one of the authorities of the OGPU left an entry in the control log of the detention center: "During the visit to Sekirnaya, I found the proper order." Maxim Gorky added below: "I would say - excellent" and signed.

From the memoirs of N. Zhilov:

“I cannot fail to note the vile role played in the history of the death camps by Maxim Gorky, who visited Solovki in 1929. Looking around, he saw an idyllic picture of the paradise life of prisoners and came to emotion, morally justifying the extermination of millions of people in the camps. Public opinion of the world was deceived by him in the most shameless way. Political prisoners remained outside the writer's field. He was completely satisfied with the gingerbread offered to him. Gorky turned out to be the most ordinary inhabitant and did not become either Voltaire, or Zola, or Chekhov, or even Fyodor Petrovich Haaz ... "

For decades, traces of the camp on Solovki were destroyed by local state security workers. Now, the "new owners" on the island are doing this. Quite recently, a wooden hut stood on this site, in which women sentenced to death on Sekirka were kept during the camp years. On the walls of the barracks there were still inscriptions made by unhappy people. A few days before our arrival, the monks of the monastery sawed up the hut for firewood.

This is the same famous staircase of three hundred steps on Sekirka, along which the fined were forced to carry water ten times a day - up and down. Dmitry Likhachev (a future academician), who served his term in Solovki as a VRIDL (temporarily acting as a horse), told that the guards of Sekirnaya Gora lowered the prisoners down this ladder, tying them to a balan - a short log. “There was already a bloodied corpse below, which was difficult to recognize. In the same place, under the mountain, they immediately buried it in a hole,” D. Likhachev wrote.

Under the mountain - the place that Y. Brodsky talked about. People who were shot at the church on Sekirka were buried here. There are pits where several dozen people lie. There are pits that were dug then for the future - they dug in the summer for those who would be shot in the winter.

Above the front door of this house in the area of the botanical garden there is a wooden tablet, on which you can still make out the remains of the inscription: COMMANDANT'S OFFICE.

Disabled camp trip to about. Bolshaya Muksalma is another of the remaining camp sites on Solovki. Big Muksalma is located ten kilometers from the monastery on the road from peat extraction. The camp staff said that in the winter of 1928, two thousand and forty prisoners died at Bolshaya Muksalma. In the autumn, invalids gathered throughout the First Department were sent here, who could not be used on Solovki also because they were poor, did not have support from the outside, and therefore could not give a bribe.

Bribes in Solovki were very developed. The further fate of the prisoner often depended on them. "Rich" prisoners could get a job for bribes in the Sixth Guard Company, where the majority were priests who guarded warehouses, arsenals and gardens. Those who were sent to Muksalma knew that their days were numbered and they would die in winter. The doomed were herded onto two-story bunk beds for a hundred people in a room of thirty to forty square meters. meters. Lenten soup for lunch was brought in large tubs and eaten from a common bowl. In the summer, disabled people worked picking berries, mushrooms and herbs, which were going to be exported abroad. In the fall, they drove to dig holes for their future graves, so as not to dig them in winter, when the ground freezes. Large pits were dug - 60-100 people each. From snow drifts, the pits were covered with boards, and with the onset of autumn cold weather, they began to fill up first with those who had diseased lungs, then the rest went. By spring, only a few people remained in this barracks.

Tov. Commandant Kem. per. item.

I earnestly ask for your order to return to me the two knives taken from me: a table knife and a penknife. I have false teeth; without a knife, I can not only bite off a piece of sugar, but even a crust of bread.

I brought from the Inner Prison of the GPU, where I had permission from both the doctor and the head of the prison, knives, allowed as the only exception in the entire prison, due to my old age and my lack of teeth. Without first crushing the bread with a knife, which is very stale given out for two weeks in advance, I am deprived of the opportunity to eat it, and bread is my main food.

I respectfully ask you to enter into my position and order the knives back to me.

Volodymyr Krivosh (Nemanich)*, a prisoner in barrack 4*

Commandant's Resolution:

The established rules for everyone are binding and there can be no exceptions!

* Professor V. Krivosh (Nemanich) worked as a translator at the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. He was fluent in almost every language in the world, including Chinese, Japanese, Turkish and all European languages. In 1923 he was sentenced to ten years under Article 66, like most foreigners, "for espionage in favor of the world bourgeoisie" and exiled to Solovki. He was released in 1928.

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Solovetsky camp and prison

In May 1920, the monastery was closed, and soon two organizations were created on Solovki: a forced labor camp for the imprisonment of prisoners of war of the Civil War and persons sentenced to forced labor, and the Solovki state farm. At the time of the closing of the monastery, 571 people lived in it (246 monks, 154 novices and 171 laborers). Some of them left the islands, but almost half remained, and they began to work as civilians on the state farm.

After 1917, the new authorities began to consider the rich Solovetsky Monastery as a source of material values, numerous commissions ruthlessly ruined it. Only the Famine Relief Commission in 1922 took out more than 84 poods of silver, almost 10 pounds of gold, and 1988 precious stones. At the same time, salaries from icons were barbarously stripped, precious stones were picked out from mitres and vestments. Fortunately, thanks to the employees of the People's Commissariat of Education N. N. Pomerantsev, P. D. Baranovsky, B. N. Molas, A. V. Lyadov, many priceless monuments from the monastery sacristy were taken to the central museums.

At the end of May 1923, a very strong fire broke out on the territory of the monastery, which lasted three days and caused irreparable damage to many of the ancient buildings of the monastery.

At the beginning of the summer of 1923, the Solovetsky Islands were transferred to the OGPU, and the Solovetsky Special Purpose Forced Labor Camp (SLON) was organized here. Almost all the buildings and lands of the monastery were transferred to the camp, it was decided "to recognize the need to liquidate all the churches located in the Solovetsky Monastery, to consider it possible to use church buildings for housing, taking into account the acuteness of the housing situation on the island."

On June 7, 1923, the first batch of prisoners arrived at Solovki. At first, all male prisoners were kept on the territory of the monastery, and women - in the wooden Arkhangelsk hotel, but very soon all the monastery sketes, deserts and toni were occupied by the camp. And two years later, the camp "splashed" onto the mainland and by the end of the 1920s occupied the vast expanses of the Kola Peninsula and Karelia, and the Solovki themselves became just one of the 12 departments of this camp, which played a significant role in the Gulag system.

During its existence, the camp has undergone several reorganizations. Since 1934, Solovki became the VIII branch of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, and in 1937 it was reorganized into the Solovetsky prison of the NKVD GUGB, which was closed at the very end of 1939.

During the 16 years of the existence of the camp and prison on Solovki, tens of thousands of prisoners passed through the islands, including representatives of famous noble families and intellectuals, prominent scientists in various fields of knowledge, military men, peasants, writers, artists, poets. . In the camp, they were an example of true Christian mercy, non-covetousness, kindness and peace of mind. Even in the most difficult conditions, the priests tried to the end to fulfill their pastoral duty, providing spiritual and material assistance to those who were nearby.

Today we know the names of more than 80 metropolitans, archbishops and bishops, more than 400 hieromonks and parish priests - prisoners of Solovki. Many of them died on the islands from disease and starvation or were shot in the Solovetsky prison, others died later. At the Jubilee Council of 2000 and later, about 60 of them were glorified for church-wide veneration as the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. Among them are such prominent hierarchs and figures of the Russian Orthodox Church as Hieromartyrs Eugene (Zernov), Metropolitan Gorky († 1937), Hilarion (Troitsky), Archbishop of Vereya († 1929), Peter (Zverev), Archbishop of Voronezh († 1929), Procopius (Titov), Archbishop of Odessa and Kherson († 1937), Arkady (Ostalsky), Bishop of Bezhetsky († 1937), clergyman Athanasius (Sakharov), Bishop of Kovrov († 1962), Martyr John Popov, Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy († 1938) and many others.

Clement (Kapalin), Met. Testimony of Faith

The past twentieth century keeps many interesting names. The life story of Georgy Mikhailovich Osorgin, on the one hand, is similar to the millions of fates of Russian nobles who fell into the merciless millstones of the class struggle at the dawn of the Soviet era. On the other hand, in its laconic facts, the immeasurable depth of fidelity, steadfastness and true nobility of the Christian soul is revealed.

Zhemaleva Yu.P. Justice Above Repression

Interview with the participant of the conference "" Yulia Petrovna Zhemalyova, head of the press service of LLC NPO Soyuzneftegazservis, member of the Russian Nobility Assembly (Moscow). In the report “The fate of the participants of the White Movement on the Don on the example of the hereditary nobleman Ivan Vasilyevich Panteleev”, Yulia Petrovna spoke about her great-grandfather, who was serving a sentence in the Solovetsky camp in 1927-1931.

Golubeva N.V. Spirit-led work

Interview with Natalya Viktorovna Golubeva, participant of the conference “History of the country in the fate of the prisoners of the Solovetsky camps”, author of the literary and musical composition “But a man holds everything in himself” (Concentration camp and art), representative of the cultural and educational fund “Sretenie”, Severodvinsk .

Mazyrin A., Priest, Doctor of History“Thank God, there are people thanks to whom the memory of the Solovetsky tragedy is alive”

Interview with the participant of the conference "" Candidate of Historical Sciences, Doctor of Church History, Professor of PSTGU Priest Alexander Mazyrin.

Kurbatova Z. Interview of the granddaughter of academician D. S. Likhachev to the Pravda Severa TV channel

Zinaida Kurbatova lives in Moscow, works on a federal television channel, does what she loves - in a word, she is doing well. And, nevertheless, the granddaughter of academician Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev is drawn to the Arkhangelsk region like a magnet.

Tolts V.S. See the best in every person

In the summer, Solovki hosted the traditional international scientific-practical conference "The history of the country in the fate of the prisoners of the Solovetsky camps." This year it was dedicated to the 110th anniversary of the birth of one of the most famous prisoners of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp, Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev, celebrated on November 28. We offer an interview with the granddaughter of Academician Vera Sergeevna Tolts, Slavist, professor at the University of Manchester.

Sukhanovskaya T. A museum of Dmitry Likhachev is being created on Solovki

The Russian North returns to Russia the name of the world magnitude again. In one of the past issues, RG talked about the governor's project, under which the first museum of Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky was opened in a small Arkhangelsk village. Not so long ago, a decision was made to create a museum of Dmitry Likhachev on Solovki: the patriarch of Russian literature was a prisoner of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp from 1928 to 1932. The exposition about Likhachev should become part of the Solovetsky Museum-Reserve. The idea was supported by the Minister of Culture of Russia Vladimir Medinsky.

Mikhailova V. Life rules of Archpriest Anatoly Pravdolyubov

February 16, 2016 marks the 35th anniversary of the death of a remarkable Ryazan resident, Archpriest Anatoly Sergeevich Pravdolyubov, a spiritual composer, a talented writer, an experienced confessor and preacher, a prisoner of the ELEPHANT.

In 1928, a number of European countries, as well as the Socialist International (an association of socialist parties in Europe) turned to the government of the USSR with inquiries about the situation of prisoners in Soviet concentration camps. This was due to the fact that the governments of the United States and Great Britain decided not to buy construction timber from the Soviet Union, arguing that the prisoners of the Solovetsky camp extract it in inhuman conditions, and a huge number of Solovetsky prisoners die right during logging. We learned about this state of affairs in Solovki abroad from the prisoners themselves, who managed to escape from the camp from mainland business trips.

The Soviet government decided to invite a commission of foreign representatives to the Solovetsky Islands to check the state of affairs in the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON), which included the famous Soviet writer Maxim Gorky. In 1929, this commission arrived at the camp. The camp management was well prepared for the meeting of dear guests. The commission inspected various camp departments, including the Children's Labor Colony and the Detention Facility. The commission also got acquainted with the cultural sights of the Solovetsky camp: the library, many of whose books have been preserved from the old monastery library; two camp theaters "KHLAM" and "SVOI"; Anti-religious museum, etc.

Returning to Moscow, M. Gorky published the essay "Solovki", in which he sang the romance of camp life, which turns hardened criminals and enemies of Soviet power into exemplary builders of a new society.

And a year later, in 1930, there was another commission in the camp that dealt with the abuses of the camp leadership. As a result of the work of this commission, 120 death sentences were passed against the leaders of the Solovetsky camp.

So what is SLON? "Romance of camp life" or "horrors of logging"? Why, in the 70s in the village of Solovetsky, when they were building a residential building for school teachers and, having dug a foundation pit and discovered a mass grave of executed prisoners, did the Soviet government order a house to be built on this site and forbade any earthworks to be done in this place?

There is a lot of information about the Solovetsky camp, but, nevertheless, relying on them, it is very difficult to draw up a real portrait of Solovki during the camp period, because. they are all very subjective and describe different periods of the existence of the Solovetsky camp. Let's say, the opinion of M. Gorky, who is shown the disciplinary cell, and the opinion of the prisoner of this isolator can be very different. In addition, the theater, which was shown to Gorky in 1929, had already ceased to exist in the 30th. Considering all these features, I will try to review the memories of eyewitnesses of the life of the camp and make the most objective idea of the Solovetsky camp.

In the 15th century, on the deserted Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea, Saints Zosima, Savvaty and Herman founded the Solovetsky Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Savior, which by the time it was closed in 1920 was one of the largest and most famous monasteries in Russia. The climate in Solovki is extremely harsh, the monks always had to confront nature in order to survive, so labor in the monastery has always been highly valued. Navigation in the White Sea is possible only in the summer months, so most of the time the Solovetsky Islands are cut off from the outside world.

These features of the Solovki and decided to take advantage of the new owners of the archipelago - the Soviet government. The monastery was closed, plundered (moreover, 158 pounds of precious metals and stones were taken from Solovki) and burned in 1923 on the eve of Easter on Good Friday. The desecrated and disfigured Solovki in the same 1923 were transferred to the jurisdiction of the GPU for the organization of a forced labor camp for special purposes there. Even before the official opening of the Solovetsky camp, prisoners from other concentration camps Arkhangelsk and Pertominsk, where captured members of the White movement were kept, had already arrived there. The construction of the concentration camp began. All monastery buildings were converted into places for keeping prisoners, and the huge farm left after the monastery became the production base of the Solovetsky camp.

In the same 1923, civilians dissatisfied with the Soviet regime began to be exiled to Solovki. Basically, these were the so-called "political" - Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, anarchists and other former comrades-in-arms of the Bolsheviks. They were placed in one of the former monastic sketes in Savvatiyevo, where they were kept in strict isolation.

"Political" tried to start a revolt, but he was brutally suppressed. The Red Army soldiers shot unarmed prisoners, of which 8 people died and many were wounded. The Pravda newspaper described this incident as a collision between a convoy and prisoners who attacked it. This is the first case of a mass execution in Solovki, alas, not the last. The news of this execution got into the press and even received publicity abroad.

Other civilians were also sent to Solovki for forced labor. It was an intelligentsia that did not fit into the new ideological guidelines. There were a lot of clergy, in particular, in 1924, Hieromartyr Hilarion Troitsky arrived in the camp. Looking at what the glorious monastery had become, he said: “We won’t get out of here alive” (he left the Solovetsky camp alive, or rather, half-alive and died on the way from typhus when he was transferred to exile in Kazakhstan).

Dispossessed peasants were sent to Solovki, who by 1927 made up the majority of the prisoners in the Solovetsky camp - about 75%. There were also many criminals, among whom a significant percentage were former Chekists convicted of criminal offenses. They were immediately recruited by the camp leadership, and they became overseers. In the camp, they did the same as in freedom, only with special diligence.

The number of prisoners in the Solovetsky camp was constantly increasing, if in October 1923 there were 2557 people, then in January 1930 in the Solovetsky camps, including the mainland, there were already 53,123 people. The total number of prisoners for all the years of the existence of the camp until 1939 is more than 100,000 people.

The ideological inspirer of the Gulag system and the head of the Special Department of the GPU was Gleb Bokiy, and his governor on Solovki was Nogtev, a prominent Chekist, a former sailor of the Aurora cruiser. “In addition to his insatiable cruelty, Nogtev is famous in Solovki for his impenetrable stupidity and drunken brawls, in the camp he is called the “executioner,” wrote A. Klinger, a former officer of the tsarist army, who spent three years in the Solovetsky penal servitude and made a successful escape to Finland. About his deputy Eichmans, who soon became head of the SLON himself, he writes the following: “He is also a communist and also a prominent Chekist from Estonians. A distinctive feature of Eichmans, in addition to the sadism, debauchery and passion for wine that are characteristic of all agents of the GPU, is his passion for military drill.

In general, the attitude of the Soviet government towards the GULAG system can be expressed in the words of S. M. Kirov, which he said on the day of the fifteenth anniversary of the VChK OGPU: “Punish for real, so that the population growth is noticeable in the next world thanks to the activities of our GPU.” Can you imagine what awaited the Solovetsky prisoners?

Forced labor awaited them, which, due to the low qualification of the "workers", was not very productive. Large sums were spent on the protection of prisoners and on "educational" work (political information, etc.). Therefore, at first, SLON did not bring profit to the treasury of the Soviet government.

The situation changed in 1926, when one of the prisoners N.A. Frenkel (a former civil servant convicted of bribery) proposed to transfer the SLON to self-financing and use the labor of prisoners not only on the Solovetsky archipelago, but on the mainland. This is where the Gulag system came into full swing. Contribution of N.A. Frenkel was appreciated by the Soviet government, he was soon released ahead of schedule, presented for a government award, and even headed one of the departments of the GPU, and later the NKVD.

The main types of work that the prisoners were engaged in were logging (by the 1930s, all the forest on Solovki was destroyed and sold abroad, logging had to be moved to the mainland), peat harvesting, fishing, brick production (on the basis of the monastery brick factory, built by St. Philip, however, in the 30s, clay supplies ran out, and brick production had to be stopped), and some types of handicraft production. In general, the labor of prisoners still remained unproductive, but due to merciless exploitation, it was possible to “squeeze” fabulous profits out of them.

Many prisoners could not withstand the inhuman loads and unbearable conditions of detention, and died right during the work from exhaustion, illness, beatings or accidents. They were not often shot at Solovki, but there was no need for frequent executions. The prisoners died in a "natural" or rather "unnatural" way. For example, logging in Solovki was called "dry execution", because. during the winter season, up to a quarter of prisoners died on them.

“Work in both winter and summer starts at 6 o'clock in the morning. According to the instructions, it stops at 7 pm. Thus, on Solovki there is a 12-hour working day with a break for lunch at one in the afternoon. This is official. But in fact, the work goes on much longer - at the discretion of the supervising Chekist. This happens especially often in the summer, when prisoners are forced to work literally until they lose consciousness. At this time of the year, the working day lasts from six in the morning until midnight or one in the morning. Every day is considered a work day. Only one day a year is considered a holiday - the First of May. This is how one of its prisoners, S.A., described the “corrective” labor in the camp. Malgasov in his book "Infernal Island".

The prisoners were required to comply with the plan, if the daily norm was not fulfilled, they left him in the forest for the night: in the summer - to be eaten by mosquitoes, in the winter - in the cold. In the camp, there were a number of measures to force prisoners to "shock" work: from reducing correspondence with relatives and cutting rations for a certain period to imprisonment in a punishment cell and capital punishment - execution. “I witnessed such a case: one of the prisoners, a sick old man from the“ kaers ”(counter-revolutionaries), shortly before the end of the work, was completely exhausted, fell into the snow and, with tears in his eyes, declared that he was not able to work anymore. One of the guards immediately cocked the trigger and fired at him. The corpse of the old man was not removed for a long time "to intimidate other lazy people," wrote A. Klinger.

About the punishment cell of the Solovetsky camp, which was called "Sekirka" after the name of the mountain on which it was located, must be said separately. This is the former temple of the Holy Ascension Skete, converted into a punishment cell. The prisoners, being in it, did not work, they simply served their sentences there for a period of several weeks to several months. But if we take into account that the punishment cell was not heated at all, and at the same time all outer clothing was removed from the prisoners, then in fact they were frozen alive there. “Every day on Sekirka, one of the prisoners dies of hunger or simply freezes in the cell.”

The situation of women prisoners was terrible. Here is what a prisoner of the Solovetsky camp writes about this, a former general of the tsarist and White armies, the chief of staff of the Cossack ataman Dutov, I.M. Zaitsev: “On Solovki, love intercourse between imprisoned men and women is strictly prohibited. In practice, only ordinary prisoners are prosecuted for this. Whereas the exiled security officers and employees of the GPU, occupying command and command positions, satisfy their voluptuousness even too much. If the chosen kaerka rejects the love proposal, then severe repression will fall on her. If the chosen kaerka accepts the love proposal of a high-ranking Solovetsky person, for example, Eichmans himself, then this will earn great benefits for herself: in addition to being released from heavy forced labor, she can count on a reduction in the term of imprisonment. And then he writes (moreover, it is emphasized by the author): "Amnesty through a love affair is a proletarian innovation used by the GPU."

And here is how the prisoners remember the arrival of M. Gorky:

“Quick-witted prisoners will put into his pockets notes in which the truth about Solovki is written: Embarrassedly, Gorky will put his hands in his pockets, thrusting the papers deeper. Many prisoners will live in a vague hope: Gorky, the petrel, knows the truth! Then an article by Gorky would appear in the Moscow newspapers, in which he would say that Solovki is almost an earthly paradise, and that the Chekists are good at correcting criminals. This article will give birth to many angry curses, and shock will come in many souls ... ”Wrote camp prisoner G.A. Andreev.

And what does Gorky himself write?

“The Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR decided to destroy prisons for criminals and apply only the method of education by labor to “offenders”. In this direction, we have set up a most interesting experience, and it has already yielded undeniable positive results. The "Solovki Special Purpose Camp" is not Dostoevsky's "Dead House", because they teach how to live there, teach them to read and write and work ... It seems to me that the conclusion is clear: such camps as Solovki are needed (highlighted by me). It is in this way that the state will quickly achieve one of its goals: to destroy prisons.”

According to known archival data alone, in the period from 1923 to 1933, about 7.5 thousand prisoners died in the Solovetsky camp.

Having served as a testing ground for processing the principles of the Gulag system, at the end of 1933, SLON was disbanded, and the prisoners, apparatus and property were transferred to the White Sea-Baltic ITL, but the camp on the Solovetsky Islands continued to exist until 1937 as the 8th branch of the White Sea-Baltic camp. The main brainchild of this organization was the famous White Sea-Baltic Canal. It stretches for 221 km, of which 40 km is an artificial path, plus 19 locks, 15 dams, 12 spillways, 49 dams, power plants, settlements ... All these works were completed in 1 year and 9 months. "Super shock". People were not sorry.

At the end of 1937, a special troika of the UNKVD of the Leningrad Region decided to shoot a large group of prisoners of the SLON (BBK - the White Sea-Baltic Combine) - 1825 people. But the leadership of the camp showed amazing "humanity". Not far from the city of Medvezhyegorsk, near the village of Sandarmokh, “only” 1,111 people were shot. The rest were shot later. The executor of the sentence was Captain M. Matveev, sent for this purpose by the Leningrad NKVD. Every day Matveev personally shot from a revolver about 200-250 people in accordance with the strength of the Troika protocol (one protocol per day). In 1938, Matveev himself was convicted and repressed.

From the beginning of 1937 to 1939, the places of detention on Solovki were reorganized into the Solovetsky Special Purpose Prison (STON) of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD. So the prophecy of the petrel of the revolution, M. Gorky, that corrective labor camps like Solovetsky would destroy prisons, did not justify itself.

How is a prison different from a camp? In the camp, the prisoners work, in prison they serve their sentences. In prison cells, it was only allowed to sit on the bed, not leaning against the wall, with open eyes, with hands on knees. It was allowed to walk up to 30 minutes a day, use books from the prison library. For the slightest violation, a punishment cell for up to five days or deprivation of a walk for up to 10 days followed. Prisoners were taken around the yard only for interrogation under escort. Everyone was dressed in the same black robes with the inscription "STON". Boots were supposed to be worn without laces. In the Solovetsky prison, mostly "enemies of the people" Trotskyists were imprisoned, i.e. former Leninists. O.L. Adamova-Sliozberg, a STON prisoner, wrote that "she is a communist and, wherever she is, she will obey Soviet laws." Many of the arrested communists asked other prisoners before their death to hand over to freedom: "I'm not guilty, I'm dying a communist." The revolution devours its children.

Eyewitness accounts are always subjective. But there is also objective evidence of the nightmare that was in Solovki during the camp period from 1923 to 1939, these are mass graves. I have already mentioned one of them. In 1929, a group of prisoners from the former members of the White movement decided to organize a rebellion in the camp: disarm the guards, seize the ship and break through to Finland. But the conspiracy was revealed, and all its participants were shot at the monastery cemetery, the corpses were thrown into one mass grave. It was their remains that were discovered in 1975 during the construction of a house for village teachers. On the island of Anzer in the Solovetsky archipelago, in the former Golgotha-Crucifixion Skete, during the camp period there was a medical isolation ward. The prisoners who died during the winter were dumped in one mass grave in the spring on the elephant of Mount Golgotha. Thus, the whole mountain is one solid mass grave. In winter since 1928/29. there was a terrible epidemic of typhus in Solovki, during this winter more than 3,000 people died of typhus, among them was a saint. Peter (Zverev), Archbishop of Voronezh. In 1999, a special commission found his relics and discovered mass graves on Mount Golgotha. In the summer of 2006, a mass grave of executed prisoners was found on Mount Sekirnaya, where during the years of the camp there was a punishment cell.

In the summer of 2007, Bishop Ambrose of Bronitsky visited the Solovetsky Monastery, here is what he said in an interview:

“When on Mount Sekirke I made a litiya for all the innocently killed in this place, the head of the skete told me about how the excavations were carried out. The remains - light and yellow bones and skulls were reverently stacked in coffins and properly buried. But there is a place where it was impossible to excavate - the terrible black bodies did not decompose and emit a terrible stench. According to testimonies, the very same punishers and torturers of innocently killed people were shot here.

In 1939, the camp-prison life on Solovki ceased, because. the Soviet-Finnish war was approaching, and it could turn out that the Solovetsky archipelago could fall into the area of hostilities. It was decided to evacuate the prisoners and the entire apparatus of the camp. And since 1989, a revival of monastic life began on Solovki.

Summarizing the above, we can draw disappointing conclusions. The Solovetsky special purpose camp is a terrible black spot in the history of Russia. Tens of thousands of tortured and executed people, broken destinies, crippled souls. This is evidenced by the former prisoners of the Solovetsky camp themselves, and archival documents, and mass graves. According to rough estimates, about 40 thousand prisoners died in the Solovetsky camp.

The tragic meaning of the abbreviation of the last name - STON - reflected the conditions of detention of prisoners. Sophisticated bullying, torture, physical destruction of thousands of people gave the very word - Solovki - an ominous sound.

It is quite obvious that M. Gorky's enthusiastic remarks about camps like Solovetsky are pure profanity. This only shows that at the heart of the totalitarian system, which was in the Soviet Union, there is not only merciless cruelty, but also monstrous hypocrisy. What motives prompted the great writer to lie? Sincere delusion or fear of the system? We will never know the answer to this.

SOLOVETSKY SPECIAL PURPOSE CAMP (ELEPHANT)

Story

About "prisoner-of-war camps", "internment camps" or, in a modern manner, "filtration camps" have been known since the time of the pharaohs, when captured enemies were kept locked up, in pits, in ravines, in gorges guarded by archers. Captured and disarmed soldiers died in them in large numbers, they were not given food, they were killed or turned into slaves. The slaves of ancient Egypt, Greece, ancient Rome were replenished with captured soldiers. Their professional skills were used in gladiator camps.

It was these camps that were created everywhere on the territories of countries waging war. They were also in Napoleonic France, Tsarist Russia, Imperial Japan, Kaiser's Germany ... in a word, wherever wars were fought. And this is the bitter reality of any war. Agree that the same "Swedes near Poltava" Russian soldiers had to disarm somewhere, search and contain, before Emperor Peter the Great let them go home.

Such camps for prisoners were in the United States during the Civil War (1861-1865). They write that in the camp near Andersonville, up to 10 thousand captured soldiers died of starvation. It was he who has recently been intensively called the "first concentration camp", forgetting that a year ago the camps for the Boers during the Second Anglo-Boer War of 1899 were called the "first concentration camps". Big Russian money came to London and the Kremlin political wind immediately blew to the west.

Now about the "concentration camps" as a state body. Their homeland is the USSR. The camps, which later transformed into concentration camps, first appeared on the territory of present-day Russia in 1918-1923. The term "concentration camp", the very phrase "concentration camps" appeared in documents signed by Vladimir Lenin, wrote Anatoly Pristavkin. Their creation was supported by Leon Trotsky. It was only after Lenin's Russia that concentration camps arose in Hitler's Germany and in Pol Pot's Kampuchea.

A concentration camp is not just a place surrounded by barbed wire

The Solovetsky Camp for Forced Labor for Special Purposes (SLON OGPU), including two transit and distribution points in Arkhangelsk and Kemi, was organized by a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars (Minutes No. 15 of the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars of October 13, 1923, chaired by Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars A.I. Rykov) on the basis of the Pertominsk camp forced labor, which by that time already had its own branch in Solovki.

According to the draft resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (prepared by the OGPU in June 1923), 8,000 people were supposed to be placed in the Solovetsky camp.

The total number of prisoners in Solovki grew from 2,500 people at the end of 1923 to 5,000 at the end of 1924, then stabilized - about 8,000 people at a time.

The period 1925-1929 of the existence of the Solovetsky Camps found the greatest reflection in memoirs. At the same time, the image of Solovki was formed, which gained fame far beyond the borders of the USSR.

During these years, Solovetsky prisoners worked: on the construction and operation of the railway (the Kremlin-Brick Plant branch and the Kremlin-Filimonovo branch), in logging (the central and northern part of Bolshaya Solovetsky Island), in peat extraction (the northwestern part of Bolshaya Solovetsky Island ), in the fishing industry (catching lake and sea fish, slaughtering sea animals - M. Muksalma, Rebolda), in the solkhoz (extraction of salt from sea water), in agriculture (dairy farming, pig farms, vegetable growing - the Kremlin, B. Muksalma, Isakovo) , in fur farming (rabbit breeding, breeding of muskrat, arctic foxes, foxes, sables - Deep Bay Islands), iodine industry (extraction and processing of seaweed - Anzer, Muksalma, Rebolda); for the maintenance of factories: brick, leather, mechanical, pottery, tar, lime, lard and a number of workshops.

On Solovki, an Operational and Commercial Unit (headed by N.A. Frenkel) was organized, aimed at using free "labor" in the resource-rich undeveloped region. The most profitable for the GPU is logging for export.

By 1929, logging from Solovki was finally transferred to Karelia, and after the threat of an embargo in connection with the "use of the slave labor of prisoners" was carried out through the Karelles trust.

The Solovetsky camps gradually grew, moved to the mainland with the Directorate in Kem (since 1929), the number of prisoners, taking into account mainland business trips, by 1929/1930 reached 65,000 people, while about 10,000 people were kept on the Solovetsky Islands proper.

By this time, the work of prisoners from forced for the purpose of "re-education" finally became a slave labor, the development of the North was transformed into colonization, which was carried out by the forces of the Gulag. Organized "colonization villages" from among the prisoners who served part of the term (depending on the article) with the mandatory call of the family. Production activity is concentrated on the mainland, in 1930-1933 several large groups of Solovki prisoners are known to work on the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, in the Ukhta and Vaigach expeditions of the OGPU.

During these years, Solovki served to isolate the "special contingent", political isolators - special isolators (Trotskyites, Ukrainian "Borotbists", communists) were again created. Disabled people and “reachers” were also sent here.

The mass executions of 1937 affected mainly the category of prisoners of the Solovetsky camp, who were transferred to the prison regime without a decision. From October 1937 to February 1938, 1825 prisoners of the Solovetsky prison were sentenced to death by the Special Troika of the UNKVD in the Leningrad Region: 657 people were sentenced on October 9, 1937 (shot on October 27, November 2 and 3, 1937); On October 10, 1937, 459 people were sentenced (shot on November 1 and 4, 1937); On November 10, 1937, 84 people were sentenced (shot on December 8, 1937); On November 25, 1937, 425 people were sentenced (shot on December 8, 1937); On February 14, 1938, 200 people were sentenced (the date of execution is unknown). The place of execution and burial of the first stage - 1111 people (from October 27 to November 4, 1937) - the Sandormokh tract (near Medvezhyegorsk), the rest of the burial places are unknown. Presumably, on December 8, 1937, a group of 509 people was shot in the Leningrad region, and in February 1938 the remaining 200 people were shot in Solovki (presumably in the area of Isakovo or Kulikov Bolot).

After the mass executions of 1937, the regime was even tougher (prisoners were deprived of their surnames - they were assigned numbers; after getting up and before lights out, it was forbidden not only to lie down on the bed, but also to lean against the wall and headboards, it was necessary to sit with open eyes, holding hands on knees; walk 30 minutes a day; limited correspondence, received letters were not issued to prisoners - they were allowed to be read once in the presence of the warden).

Solovetsky camp - the first demonstration state concentration camp in the world

For the first time in world history, the Solovetsky camps became a STATE STRUCTURE (state structures were created in the rank of a ministry, managing the camps - the OGPU, the NKVD, the MGB, the Charter of the Solovetsky camp was written, their own monetary circulation was introduced, etc.).
The camps were created by DIRECT INSTRUCTIONS OF THE FIRST PERSONS OF THE STATE, who are PERSONALLY AND DIRECTLY involved in the murders of their own citizens through secret state decrees or orders issued by them. (Secret Decree of the Council of People's Commissars "On the organization of the Solovetsky forced labor camp" dated 02.11.1923. With the participation of Vladimir Lenin, signed by his deputy - Alexei Rykov and his secretary Nikolai Gorbunov. The so-called "hit lists" of Joseph Stalin).
A vile LEGAL BASIS has been created for sending to the camp (Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR). Black becomes white and vice versa. Lies are elevated to the rank of state policy. Without any hesitation, the Justice and the Police openly take the side of lawlessness, and the main enemies of the state are declared to be citizens who dare to declare their rights and oppose state arbitrariness.
A STATE SYSTEM of ideological support for the camps was created - the state media exposed the "enemies of the people" and brainwashed the people themselves, public figures justified and praised terror ... Fear and horror that came from Solovki were established in the country.
The camps were intended to destroy the POLITICAL OPPOSITION inside the country (destruction and exile of prominent members of other political parties, members of social movements and political organizations).
The camps were used for SOLVING ECONOMIC PROBLEMS - prisoners dug canals, built factories, erected settlements, etc., and the concentration camps were integrated into civil institutions, for example, the Ministry of Railway Transport, the Ministry of Construction, etc.
Concealment of crimes in the camps was carried out AT THE STATE LEVEL (Soviet secret decree of the KGB of the USSR No. 108ss). War criminals were covered by the STATE, presenting them with STATE orders, insignia and honorary titles "Pensioner of State Importance" (History of the Solovki executioner Dmitry Uspensky).
Incredible and previously unknown in history SCALE OF MURDER (The clash between the British and the Boers, which "glorified" the British as the first builders of camps for the civilian population - the British drove more than 200 thousand people into the camps - claimed the lives of 17 thousand people only in 1902. Through the SLON concentration camp According to various estimates, up to 3 million people passed, and from 300 thousand to 1 million people died.).
The camps were used for internment and destruction of OWN CITIZENS.
The camps were used for internment of representatives of ALL SOCIETY, and not representatives of certain groups of the population (military, rebels, migrants, etc.).
The camps were used to exterminate people IN PEACETIME.
People of all religions, sexes, ages and nationalities were exterminated in the camps - Armenians, Byelorussians, Hungarians, Georgians, Jews ... Kazakhs ... Russians ... The "International Solovki" arose.

Here are the 12 features that distinguish the SYSTEM of concentration camps from prisoner of war camps, from colonies for criminals, from penal battalions, from labor camps, reservations, ghettos, from filtration camps ...

There was nothing like it anywhere before Bolshevik Russia (RSFSR-USSR). Not in the United States of America, not in England, not in Finland, not in Poland. In none of these countries the camps were brought to the level of a STATE STRUCTURE, a state institution. Neither the Sejm, nor the Parliament, nor the Congress issued laws on the camps. Neither the prime minister nor the president personally gave orders to the punitive organs to "shoot". The ministers of these countries did not communicate to their subordinates the state orders on the number of people being shot. The prisoners of England and the USA did not build factories, canals, power plants, roads, universities, bridges ... did not participate in the "atomic" project, did not sit in "sharashkas". In none of these countries did the economy depend on the "occupancy rate" of the camps and the "economic return" of each prisoner. The newspapers of England did not howl in a wild frenzy "Death to the enemies of the people!" The people of the United States did not demand "Death to dogs" in the squares. And, most importantly, in none of these countries did camps exist for decades, over several generations ... in peacetime.

This was the FIRST TIME in Solovki, in the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp. Communists "have driven humanity to happiness with an iron fist." And "happiness" immediately appeared to mankind with mass executions, typhoid Solovki, Ukrainian famine, Kolyma. Communism gave rise to the monstrous - women-cannibals and torture by children. Communism created a state organization - the Cheka / GPU / NKVD, in which most of the employees were sick psychopaths. They were given control over the Russian people. An unprecedented tragedy began, stretching for almost seventy years and leading to the most severe degradation of the entire population of Russia.