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

Solovki: The Story of Russia Told Through Its Most Remarkable Islands
ISBN-10
0300102704
ISBN-13
9780300102703
Category
History
Pages
328
Language
English
Published
2004-01-01
Publisher
Yale University Press
Author
Roy R. Robson

Description

"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 story 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."--Jacket.

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