Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki 1923-1930: The Paris of the Northern Concentration Camps

In 1923, the Soviet state decided to create a prison camp on the Solovki archipelago, the site of a former monastery. It became the laboratory of the Gulag, where the techniques of labour-camp exploitation were developed. Prisoners died by the hundreds both within the walls of the monastery and in the frozen forests beyond. Yet the camp’s activities in cultural re-education were surprisingly extensive. With the connivance of part of the administration, Solovki became a unique cultural citadel, where the values of a dying intelligentsia were reflected in the works and words of the prisoners, who numbered not only poets and actors but also scholars such as the revered Russian linguist Dmitrii Likhachov (1906-99)