Solovecký NPT

Solovetsky correctional labor camp / Соловецкийисправительно-трудовой лагерь




Economic activity:
- logging and timber processing
- peat extraction
- fishing and fish processing
- rendering of lard
- agricultural work
- work in a brickworks, tannery, limekiln, pottery, pitch factory and engineering plant
- loading and unloading of goods on the Murmansk railway
- construction work on the railways (Belaya-Apatity, Kem-Uchta, Louchi-Kestenga, Vostochnaya Guba-Karmaselga, Parandovo-Tishkozero)
- production of consumables
- start of work on the northern part of the White Sea-Baltic Canal



Number of prisoners:
20.09.23 - 3 049


1923:
4Q - 2,557
1924:
Q1 - 3 531
Q2 - 3,741
Q3 - 4,145
Q4 - 5 044
1925:
Q1 - 5 872
Q2 - 6 369
Q3 - 7 093
Q4 - 7 727
1926:
Q1 - 8 289
Q2 - 8 741
Q3 - 9 578
Q4 - 10 682
1927:
Q1 - 10 943
Q2 - 11 831
Q3 - 13 326
Q4 - 14 810
1928:
Q1 - 12 909


01.04.28 - 13 366


1928/29 - 21 900
1929/30 - 65 000


01.01.30 - 53 123
01.06.30 - 63 000
01.01.31 - 71 800


1932 - 15 130
1933 - 19 287



Telegraph code:
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Sources:
- http://memo.ru/history/nkvd/gulag/

The camp was established by a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of 13 October 1923 on the basis of the Northern Forced Labour Camps of the Main Political Administration (GPU) and the Main Administration of Forced Labour of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (GUPR NKVD RSFSR). These camps were moved to Solovki from Arkhangelsk, Kholmogor and Pertominsk. Therefore, the name Northern Concentration Camps was also used for the Solovetsky camp, although the official initial name was Solovetsky Special Purpose Forced Labor Camp (SLON). Regarding the further development of the name, it seems that at the time of the establishment of the OGPU Administration of the OGPU Camps (ULAG OGPU) the official designation of the camp was Solovetsky Correctional Labour Camp OGPU (SLAG) and after the transfer to the subordination of the GPU of the Karelian ASSR the site was listed as Solovetsky and Karelo-Murmansky OGPU Camps (SKMITL), although the designation SLAG continued to be commonly used. After the re-establishment in 1932, the camp was again designated as the Solovetsk OGPU correctional labour camp.



On the main Solovetsky Island, the camp was housed in a former monastery (which, incidentally, had a long history of use as a prison for opponents of tsarist power), which had already been completely confiscated and stripped of all valuables in 1920. All remaining property was transferred to the OGPU. The planned number of prisoners was 8,000. The camp was exempted from taxes and other fees.


The camp was located on the Solovetsky Array. On the main Great Solovetsky Island, the monastery's kremlin housed the headquarters and the main prison building, next to which an experimental botanical garden was maintained for a time. The main island also housed the power station, the Savvatev Monastery, which initially housed political prisoners from the Socialist ranks, and the Sekirka Church on Sekyrnaya Hill. This church housed the punishment cells. On the island of Velika Muksalma, the prisoners kept silver and black foxes, from which the skins were obtained. On Anzer Island there was a camp for former monks, women with children and invalids. Finally, there was a women's penal camp on Rabbit Island.


The Solovetsky camp is often referred to as the Mother of all camps, or rather the entire camp system (gulags). While various places of concentration of enemies of the Bolshevik regime existed before the gulags were established, Solovki became the site of the first concentration camp of the Civil War, where forced labour was officially established and where a system gradually took shape that no longer merely sought to isolate or liquidate real or perceived opponents (unless they were shot on the spot), but began to use imprisoned victims in a more "rational" way, i.e. to colonize and economically exploit remote areas of the Soviet Union, to build railroads in inhospitable conditions, to harvest timber for export and domestic consumption, to build mammoth industrial complexes and water cannons that were often passed off as achievements of the Soviet Five, and other activities. The Solovetsk camp and the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal represent two of the fundamental elements of the change in the treatment of prisoners. Instead of staying in prisons, they became slaves in correctional labour camps. In a massive system of camps referred to by Soloveki as the Sousotrov Gulag.


The Solovetsky camp was for a long time the only one of its kind. Change came only in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It was then that several decisions were made at the central level (primarily, but not exclusively, in connection with the collectivization of agriculture) that spurred the rapid development of the gulag system. Thus, between 1929 and 1930, several more camps were established - the Northern Camps, the Visser Camp, the Siberian Camp, the Far Eastern Camp, the Kazakhstan Camp and the Central Asian Camp. And gradually many, many others were established. The cancerous Solovetsky ulcer metastasized to other areas, geographically and administratively.


In connection with the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Waterway, the Solovetsky NPT was reorganized into the White Sea-Baltic NPT in November 1931. One of its camp detachments was located at Solovki. In January 1932, this detachment was reorganised into a separate correctional labour camp, which for a short time again created the Solovetsky NPT. After the NPT was dissolved again at the end of 1933, only the camp ward of the White Sea-Baltic NPT, which was intended for groups detained on special orders, remained again at Solovki. In February 1937, this camp department was transformed into the Solovetsk Special Purpose Prison (STON) of the Main State Security Administration (GUGB NKVD). STON was thus not under GULAG, but under GUGB. In November 1939 this prison was abolished.








Sources:
- http://memo.ru/history/nkvd/gulag/r3/r3-317.htm
- CHLEVŇUK, Oleg V.: History of the Gulag from Collectivization to the "Great Terror", BB/Art, Prague 2008
- APPLEBAUM, ANNE: GULAG: A History, Anchor Books, New York 2004
- http://www.solovki.ca