A new type of camping
When creating the Solovetsky camp, the state set three goals. The first two of these are the isolation of dangerous elements, including political rivals, and the re-education of them as useful individuals for society. Such duties have been met in one way or another in the prisons of all nations and ages, but the maintenance of such correctional institutions has always been an item of expense in the budget. The camp in Solovki was supposed to be different.
“The third objective facing the Solovetsky camp distinguishes it from previous places of detention. The camp had to not only cover its own expenses, but also earn money for the state. Accordingly, prisoners had to work by force and always in a profitable job. This became the prototype of the entire Gulag system,” Gulag History Museum expert Olesya Sirichenko told socialbites.ca.
Modern prisoners also work, but their work does not bring profit, is safe and is determined more by educational concerns. On the contrary, under the Tsar, hard labor could sometimes be fatal, but its economic component never came to the fore; isolation and punishment remained the main objectives.
Before Solovki, Soviet concentration camps were established on the basis of former prisoner of war camps, as well as monasteries taken from the church or other isolated places. Opponents of Soviet power and hostages taken as part of the Red Terror policy were imprisoned here. Already in 1918, the camps were given the task of paying for their maintenance, but it was fundamentally impossible to fulfill this – there was no place for profitable business in the places where the camps were located. Prisoners often set up the camp themselves or did light work in the city, such as repairing buildings and roads.
Therefore, the Soviet government decided to conduct a political and economic experiment on the Solovetsky Islands to reform the system of isolation and punishment and turn it from an expense item into a profitable one. The main author of this idea was Felix Dzerzhinsky, and its executor was Joseph Unschlicht.
Why Solovki?
At the end of the Civil War, there were three largest concentration camps in the Arkhangelsk region: in Kholmogory, Shenkursk and Pertominsk. In 1923 they decided to unite them and move them to the Solovetsky Islands and use the Solovetsky Monastery and its farm as a base. The name of the camp was SLON – Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp.
This archipelago is located in the White Sea, which serves as a more reliable barrier than barbed wire and machine gun towers. To reach the nearest point on the mainland, you have to swim 45 km, which is unrealistic even in summer because the water temperature only rises to 11 degrees. Even if the prisoners managed to get a boat or raft, the complex current system and unstable weather would prevent them from reaching their destination. Also at the disposal of the guards were speedboats, a seaplane and a radio communications system. Prisoner checks were carried out twice a day, and when an escape was detected the guards notified the entire archipelago. Finally, from October to May, Solovki is surrounded by a mixture of water and ice, in which navigation on ordinary ships is in principle impossible. During the entire existence of the elephant, not a single prisoner escaped from it.
Due to the island’s isolation from the mainland, the monks developed an autonomous and very wealthy economy on the island.
“The camp took over the entire infrastructure of the monastery. As well as the main estate and farm, the monks had their own industries, including a sawmill, brickyard, tannery and lime factory. The monastery was very rich and was actively trading with European countries, so it had its own hydroelectric power station (the first in the North), a radio station, a merchant and passenger fleet of several dozen ships, because the monks themselves transported pilgrims. There was even a pier for the repair of ships,” explains Sirichenko.
Such a closed economic system was ideal for developing the technology of labor camps. The Bolsheviks needed to find out whether the prisoners could make a profit and whether this would cover the cost of their care. In addition, it was necessary to check: how many guards are needed, where and how the prisoners should live, what is the optimal duration of the working day, how we will take people to and from work, how the camp staff will behave, as well as many other aspects that can only be learned in practice.
occupational therapy
During the first expedition in 1923, three thousand prisoners were brought to the camp, the main part of which was settled on the territory of the monastery. By 1926 the number of prisoners reached 10 thousand. In general, the ratio of criminals and political prisoners in Solovki was 70 to 30 for all years, although this number could fluctuate greatly.
The camp gradually developed not only Big Solovetsky, but also other islands with all their farms and hermitages. The main type of business for profit was the harvesting of timber, which was exported to European countries. Since the 16th century, monks banned logging on their islands and transported wood from the mainland, so for centuries a dense and ancient forest grew on the archipelago. The reserve supply did not last long – the Soviet government exhausted the reserve within six years, so that by 1929 the earnings were exhausted and the camp had to be relocated.
They also mined peat in the swamps and tried to establish production at a brick factory for sale to the mainland. The brick idea failed; the clay was of very low quality, so it made sense to use them only in local agriculture. Prisoners worked 15 hours a day, but the seriousness of the work depended largely on the tasks. Competent people could even be appointed to the positions of accountants or accountants, someone could prepare food, someone could sew boots, but the most difficult work could be considered felling forests and extracting peat, standing knee-deep in water. Many internal security guards were also recruited from prisoners.
Since the prisoners were forced people, the problem of motivation to work quickly arose. According to the research of modern historian Maria Shulgina, disciplinary measures prescribed by law were widely used in the camp: restriction or deprivation of rights to correspondence, visits, food and parcels, transfer to reduced food rations, punishment cell. Up to 14 days with hot meals served two days after the third day, and up to 30 days with hot meals served every other day.
However, the dominant methods of coercing labor remained “illegal” measures. It was implemented by auditors who were responsible for monitoring the development of the standards. They beat them, left them out in the cold in the forest for a day or longer until the quota was met, and inflicted other forms of torture and abuse. For example, guards may force people to run and dive in icy water in the cold, and in summer they may tie them to a tree without clothing for mosquitoes to eat. Over time, camp management made prisoners’ rations directly tied to the results of their labor. In exchange for overtime and good work, they may be given time off or rewarded with an unsupervised appointment.
Solovetsky’s power
The islands had a special atmosphere due to isolation. The first head of SLON, Alexander Nogtev, greeted the arriving prisoners with the words “your power here is not Soviet, but Solovetsky” – but on the mainland this phrase alone could cost a person his freedom. On the one hand, in the event of an uprising, no one will come to the aid of the guards, which limits the obvious cruelty of the guards. This is why historians, for example, disbelieve reports of targeted public executions of prisoners, which would amount to a direct provocation of rebellion.
On the other hand, ELEPHANT’s cruelty and lawlessness impressed even the Soviet authorities. The Gulag Museum provided socialbites.ca with a document dated 1933 from the Main Directorate of OGPU camps. It describes the facts of the camp discovered by an inspection commission from the OGPU led by Matvey Berman.
“[Аппарат охранников, состоящий из заключенных] He not only did not fight crime, but on the contrary, he himself rotted, his employees mingled with the criminal element, systematically drank alcohol, took bribes for illegal termination of criminal cases and stole property. evidence, I had an orgy with s/c womenencouraged prostitution among them in every possible way, provided criminals with weapons to steal […]
[Лагерное начальство]Having lost the party and the KGB talent, through absolute inaction they plunged the camp into a state of complete collapse, […] He terrorized a group of prisoners who were trying to uncover crimes in the camp, […] Covering up the true situation of the camp, etc. They allowed systematic deceptions such as: and such.”, – says the document.
The commission also reported systematic bullying, beatings, robberies and stabbings carried out by a local gang of criminals with the connivance of camp officials. Considering the low standards of legality and humanity among the employees of the OGPU, we can only imagine what kind of a picture actually opened up before them, as they were so impressed by the course of events.
But the economic part of the Solovetsky experiment was considered completely successful, so in the late 1930s forced labor camps began to appear throughout the country, where production could be developed. In 1930, the Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps (GULAG) was established, the prototype of which was the Solovetsky camp. In 1933, SLON was disbanded and its remains were dumped into BelBaltLag, which built the White Sea-Baltic Canal.
About how this construction took place and how it was supposed to “beat” people – material “socialbites.ca”.