Based on excerpts from `The Solovetsky Islands, the Cradle of the Gulag´, a mini-documentary in Radio Netherlands' Wide Angle series, produced and presented by Geert Groot Koerkamp - 9 February 2000
At least ten million Russians lost their lives under Stalin's dictatorship. Many were executed or starved to death at the concentration camps he set up in the so-called Gulag Archipelago. The first such camp was built on the remote Solovetsky islands, just south of the Arctic Circle and arguably one of the most beautiful areas in Russia.
With its breathtaking scenery and almost unnatural silence, the Solovetsky or Solovki archipelago is a place of stunning beauty. Behind the lovely façade of the lakes, the lush forests and the ancient monastery, there is little to remind us of the atrocities committed in these very same forests during the early years of Soviet communism.
Reign of Terror
After the Russian revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks unleashed a wave of terror against their ideological enemies, including the church. Monasteries and churches were closed; the clergy was killed or sent to prison camps. 
The Solovetsky monastery, an important place of worship for the Russian Orthodox Church was ransacked and turned into a concentration camp in 1923.
Hundreds of thousands perished here, only some where lucky to survive. Sergey Shchegolkov, now 84 years old, is one of the few survivors who are still alive.‘They arrested me at night and took me to another town where they interrogated me. Their first question was: "Do you know Stalin?'" At first, I thought: "How can I not know him?" So I answered: "He is our leader, we believe every word of him, and he'll lead us to a happy life, something like that. Then they said: "And now tell us how you wanted to kill him.'"Shchegolkov was 17 years old when the secret service seized him. And he was not the only one that night. Thousands of youngsters were arrested in their beds, all accused of plotting to kill Stalin. Most of them ended up in the Solovki.
Stalin's Death Camps
Joseph Stalin was the architect of the Gulag Archipelago, the system of labour camps, which emerged from the camp in the Solovetsky Islands. Many millions of innocent Russians would disappear in the camps. They were teachers, writers, priests and workers; peasants and soldiers; men, women and children.
Conditions at the camps were appalling. Most of the prisoners in the Solovki were crammed in the overcrowded cells of the monastery, and in its narrow corridors. The Arctic winters were devastating. The prisoners slept on top of each other in several layers to keep warm. They took off the rags they wore and put them on top of this pile of human flesh. In the morning, those who had died overnight were removed from the bottom layer. Some had suffocated, others had been trampled. But the rest had survived another night. During the day, the prisoners were used for hard labour in the woods. Some were taken to the mainland, where Stalin had ordered the construction of the White Sea Canal. Many perished. Others were simply executed, most of them in 1937 and 1938, the final years of the Solovetsky camp.
Glasnost
For decades, the country's Stalinist past remained a taboo in the Soviet Union. But then in 1986, a new style of leadership emerged. Mikhail Gorbachov introduced glasnost, a policy of openness, which paved the way for a full re-examination of Soviet history. For the first time, many Russians learned the true story of the Solovetsky Islands.
Nine years ago, a piece of rock was unveiled during a modest ceremony in Lubyanka Square in Moscow, outside the former KGB headquarters. The stone came from the Solovetsky Islands and became the first monument for the victims of Communist terror in Russia. At last, the people of Russia had a place to express their grief over the millions who perished in Stalin's death camps.
Sergey Shchegolkov remembers a poem written by one of his fellow inmates :
Sergey sighs, "some sixty years have passed since he wrote that poem, and my whole life, for more than half a century, this feeling has stayed with me."
 |  |