gulag
- From: x terminator <manassetecsico@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2007 19:29:12 -0700
Gulag site: museum to purges and spiritual haven
By Conor Sweeney
Wed Aug 8, 6:36 PM ET
BOLSHOI SOLOVETSKY ISLAND, Russia (Reuters) - Russian author Alexander
Solzhenitsyn called it the "mother of the Gulag" -- the spot near the
Arctic Circle where the Soviet Union built one of its first camps for
political prisoners.
Now the site has gone back to its pre-revolutionary use as a
monastery, and part of it has been turned into a museum that pays
homage to the camp's inmates, and the unknown millions killed
nationwide in Soviet purges.
Few of those, mainly Russians, who visit this island in Russia's White
Sea come to see the gulag. Most are attracted instead by its religious
history, wildlife and white summer nights.
That may be because Russians are still deeply ambivalent about Soviet
repression, which turned them into victims but which was also done in
their name.
Historians estimate that, at the height of the purge, up to one in 10
Russians may have been imprisoned in the thousands of Gulags -- a
Soviet acronym for its prison camp system -- across the vast country.
Many died.
"There is an attempt to suppress the interest in this topic and this
is the state policy, to put it in shadow," said museum curator Olga
Bochkaryova, standing in front of a display of photographs of people
who died in the camp.
"The authorities in Russia are not interested in revealing the
terrific scale of what happened here in this country. This was the
destruction of its people by the state," she said.
"It's impossible to ignore this history, though, especially amongst
the Russian citizens who lost their relatives, who search for those
who died here," said Bochkaryova.
DARK HISTORY
The island now is a tranquil beauty spot but it has a dark history.
Thousands of Stalin's enemies and others caught up in the purges --
some as young as 15 -- were incarcerated and died there between 1923
and 1939.
Many inmates were literally worked to death, with little protection
against the winter cold. Troublesome inmates were tied to a stake
during long, hot summer days, so mosquitoes could feed on them as
punishment.
"Many of the deaths were registered as 'death by illness' in thousands
of cases so we do not know how some they really died," Bochkaryova
said.
The island was first used as a political camp when White Army officers
were held in a Tsarist-era jail there after the Russian revolution.
The regime was not harsh at first, but the worst time was 1937-39 when
it became a formal prison camp, Bochkaryova said.
Prisoners were not allowed talk to each other -- even though there
were often six to a room -- to try to prevent information spreading
between the inmates. The island even used its own currency to prevent
prisoners bribing the guards.
Elsewhere on the site, there are other reminders of its darker legacy:
in one remote corner of the complex is a prison doorway, and next to
it a heavily-barred window. Guards forced inmates to build their own
cells.
In recognition of the island's place in the grim history of the Gulag,
a boulder was shipped from here to the square outside the former
headquarters of the Soviet secret police in Moscow as a memorial to
the victims.
A few times a year, small groups of people gather next to the rock
with candles to hold a vigil.
RELIGIOUS PIGRIMS
Today, Bolshoi Solovetsky island does not dwell on its grim past. The
site is now home to 40 Russian Orthodox monks who have resettled the
pre-revolutionary monastery.
On a sunny morning last month, many visiting tourists appeared to be
religious pilgrims, with a small fraction choosing to look inside the
gulag museum.
The museum's director, Mikhail Lopatkin, says the island is more
closely associated with the gulag system in the minds of foreigners
than among Russians.
"Most of the Western people accept it as a gulag museum and Russians
think of it as a spiritual, holy place.
"Young people come here in search of something spiritual -- to find
something for their soul and not necessarily this monastery," he said.
"Instead, they want to escape from modern life, like the hippies
did."
Sergei Oyama, from St Petersburg, was making his third trip to the
island. He and two friends rented a boat to cruise through the
island's network of canals and lakes.
"(We come) for all the reasons, including its time as a prison camp,
its religious history," he said. "But now mostly for its nature."
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