Russia’s dichotomy

Coming from the west, a journey to the Soloveckie ostrová — commonly called Solovkí — usually begins in St Petersburg, from where one finds a direct connection to the White Sea, bringing one already very close to the destination. If, however, we consider the two Russias once distinguished by the poet and publicist Vasilij Vasilʹevič Rózanov, one undertakes within ten minutes an incomparably vast journey simply by departing from the Ladožsky vokzál in St Petersburg, leaving the metropolis behind and entering the infinite solitude of the Russian Empire.

Rózanov described this part of Russia as that of vidimostʹ — the visible, aspirational, imperial, at times absolutist Russia that appeals to its deeds and its data — and that of mátuška, which reflects the ancient, deeply devout, and Byzantine-shaped homeland, the Rusʹ. These two sometimes wholly opposed entities simultaneously embody Russia’s existence, which often appears irreconcilable to the newcomer, yet to the native seems a system-immanent dichotomy without which Russia could not exist at all. The question, therefore, is not which side gains the advantage over the other, but to what extent the two forms of existence complement one another.

The Solovetsky Islands lie like a thought at the edge of the world: stone, water, wind. Long before chronicles were written, people came here: hunters, fishermen, seafarers. They left behind stone circles and labyrinths, traces of an understanding of the world in which nature possesses a transcendence through which the divine reveals itself. The islands were never comfortable, never friendly — and perhaps precisely for that reason a place where one sought what lay beyond the ordinary.

Neolithic artefacts attributed to the 2nd and 1st millennia BC fade, however, beside the stone spiral labyrinths on the island of Bolʹšój Zájackij, whose diameters reach up to 25 metres and which rank among the most significant testimonies to prehistoric human presence on the Solovetsky Islands. For the medieval, pre-monastic period there are indications of Sámi and Karelian presence, including a silver fibula from the 12th century found on the island of Anzer.

The archipelago’s great flourishing began in the 15th century, when monks settled this landscape, built the Solovetsky Monastery, and initiated the cultivation of the land. With monastic settlement, solitude became a spiritual resource; the monastery grew, attracted pilgrims, and increased its wealth and influence. Behind the mighty walls, asceticism merged with organisation, prayer with labour, the search for God with political reality. Solovki was not a place removed from the world — it was a centre on the periphery.

Yet early on, a darker function mingled with its religious significance. Those who fell into disfavour in the Tsarist realm, those who contradicted or disturbed, could be sent here. Isolation became punishment. This became particularly visible during the great Church Schism of 1666/1667, when the reforms of Patriarch Nikon divided the land. In this context it is essential to mention the movement of the Old Believers (Russ. staroobrjádcy). They saw in Nikon an enemy of Orthodoxy — the “true faith” — who had replaced the traditional rites with new, re-Hellenised ones and thereby desecrated the God-given order.

The differences from the schism of the Western Churches — the Reformation — were far less drastic and profound, making it difficult to comprehend how liturgical procedures, gestures, and spellings could provoke such rigorous persecution and manhunts. The monastery, too, resisted the innovations, was besieged, starved, and ultimately broken. Solovki thus came to stand not only for faith, but also for resistance — and for its suppression.

In the 20th century, its meaning shifted decisively. After the October Revolution the monastery was brutally desecrated, forcibly secularised, and transformed into one of the first camps of the Soviet system of repression. The Solovetsky camp is regarded as the blueprint for the later dehumanising, human-devouring Gulag mechanism, in the course of which the name “Solovki” — above all through Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago — became worldwide a synonym for forced labour, violence, brutality, tyranny, humiliation, and ultimately dehumanisation.

Intellectuals, clergy, political opponents, and the arbitrary alike suffered here — in a landscape that had once been regarded as a path to God and now embodied precisely the opposite: hell on earth. The walls remained the same; only their meaning had become utterly meaningless.

Today, the Solovetsky Islands are once again a place of remembrance and ambivalence. The monastery exists anew; pilgrims come, as do tourists. At the same time, museums, cemeteries, and quiet sites recall the suffering of the 20th century. Solovki is not a reconciled place. It carries its layers openly: settlement, monastery, exile, schism, Gulag, present. Perhaps therein lies its particular power — that nothing here can be forgotten, because everything remains perceptible at once.

Etymology of Solovéc

In onomastic research concerning the White Sea region, Solovki is attributed a non-Slavic origin. This is supported by the typical phonological structures of the name and the historical presence of Finno-Ugric population groups in the region. Earlier scholarship partly discusses a Sámi or Karelian-Finnic origin, for instance through connections with lexemes meaning “island” or “land in the water”. However, a clear and universally accepted single derivation does not exist.

The most informative comparative evidence relating to the Finno-Ugric dialect continuum can be found in Matveev’s Substrate Toponymy of the Russian North (2001), where it states:

Baltic-Finnic or Sámi; cf. Finnish salo “large forest, taiga”, “wooded island”, “large island”; Karelian-Livvi šalo, salo; Ludic salo “inaccessible forest”; Estonian salu “small wood, grove; islet in a bog”, “elevation situated in a marsh” = Sámi (Lule) suolō, suolōv; Norwegian suolo; Kildin Sámi suel “island” (in Norwegian Sámi and in the Lule dialect also “islet in a bog”, “wooded island”).

The ending -ovo arose on Russian soil (analogous to the endings of possessive adjectives). This may have been facilitated by the phonetic form of the absolute word ending in the source language (*-ov, *-ow, *-ou, etc.). Notable are the forms Vanʹgasolo, Kumosolo, which could be regarded as (shortened) derivatives of Vanʹgasolovo, Kumosolovo. On the other hand, it is also possible to consider them primary (cf. Baltic-Finnic salo).