Solovki: The Story of Russia Told Through Its Most Remarkable Islands - Hardcover

Robson, Roy R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300102704 ISBN 13: 9780300102703

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2004

Synopsis

Located in the northernmost reaches of Russia, the islands of Solovki are among the most remote in the world. And yet from the Bronze Age through the twentieth century, the islands have attracted an astonishing cast of saints and scoundrels, soldiers and politicians.

The site of a beautiful medieval monastery—once home to one of the greatest libraries of eastern Europe—Solovki became in the twentieth century a notorious labor camp. Roy Robson recounts the history of Solovki from its first settlers through the present day, as the history of Russia plays out on this miniature stage. In the 1600s, the piety and prosperity of Solovki turned to religious rebellion, siege, and massacre. Peter the Great then used it as a prison. But Solovki’s glory was renewed in the nineteenth century as it became a major pilgrimage site—only to descend again into horror when the islands became, in the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the “mother of the Gulag” system.

From its first intrepid visitors through the blood-soaked twentieth century, Solovki—like Russia itself—has been a site of both glorious achievement and profound misery.

About this title

About the Author

Roy R. Robson is associate professor of history at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.

From the Back Cover

"An extraordinary book. All of the great traumas of Russian history viewed through the lens of a tiny island: Ivan the Terrible, the Great Schism, Peter the Great's war with Sweden, the Decembrist Revolt, the Crimean War, the long shadow of Stalin, and the shock of recovery in a post-Communist world. For the rocks of Solovki this history was a blink in the divine eye, but for the rest of us it is a remarkable journey."-Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

Reviews

More than half a millennium ago, a gaunt Russian monk named Savvatii stood on the shores of the White Sea, gazed toward the Arctic Circle, and, after deep contemplation, made the daring decision to head north. Along with a trusted acolyte, he paddled a makeshift canoe to a landmass of granite, earth, and wild vegetation, where he established a hermitage of gruelling labor and prayer. This tiny, ascetic redoubt evolved into one of Russia's greatest monasteries, a fortified complex known as Solovki. The settlement became a chrysalis for Orthodox Christianity and, in subsequent centuries, a military outpost, a tsarist prison, and, most tragically, a Soviet labor camp of unparalleled cruelty. Robson's chronicle of the archipelago is intimate enough to capture Solovki's many sad ironies, and expansive enough to consider its place in Russian history. The result is an epic drama of spiritualism and savagery, set in one of the world's most extreme frontier territories.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300102704
• ISBN 13: 9780300102703
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320