Crime and Punishment in the Solovietsky
After the visit to the island of Kizhi, our nordic travel guides They offer us a tour of the nature and history of the republic of Karelia to our next destination: the White Sea and the Solovetsky Islands , already in the province of Arkhangelsk.
As in the first installment, starting point is Petrozavodsk , whose splendid and careful stalinist architecture puts the counterpoint to the shadows that that same period left in the region, as we will see according to we move north.
Continue the journey through the Republic of Karelia
First, crossing the channel between the White and Baltic Seas (across Lake Onega), built by forced labor (up to one hundred thousand inmates) in 1933 and portrayed by the avant-garde artist Alexander Rodchenko , in an iconic propaganda work on this achievement of the first five-year plan.
While Rodchenko took photos and theorized about aesthetics, next to one of the nineteen locks of the canal the drama of Sandarmoj grew, the gloomy forest in which more than seven thousand prisoners they were shot in full Stalinist terror.
Today, memorial plaques and memories brought by visitors and relatives are like an inconsistency between the luminous and rich nature of the place. In a small chapel (of course, made of wood) , you can read the convictions of the victims.
They are just the sinister story and the beauty of the landscape the two premises that push us to the Solovetsky archipelago.
MORE THAN AN EXCURSION
Reaching the Solovetsky has an expedition point. Both by train and by car, you must first get to the distant city of Kem , in the northern reaches of Karelia.
Such is its location, that rumors attribute its toponym to the acronym for K Ebyanoi Materi (to your damn mother), phrase that Peter I I would hum as I sign the convictions that exiled their enemies here.
traditional houses
Whether true or not, what is proven is that this was where two centuries later the inmates of the soviet regime (the same ones that would end up building the White Sea-Baltic Canal) they waited for the sea to thaw so they could embark towards the Solovetskys.
As a sad legacy of that dark time, in Kem we are received by old and demolished military installations , a disused airport and a large railway infrastructure. Presents a sparse urbanism , with houses emerging from between the forest
As we get closer to the sea, the mosquitoes attack our neck. Next to the jetty, a hotel and a restaurant They offer the only touch of hospitality for the visitors we spend the night to take the morning boat towards the archipelago.
If in winter it is Aurora borealis those that surprise with their colors, in summer the omnipresent light of white nights ends up disorienting those of us who are not used to it.
the sun, which in Petrozavodsk or St. Petersburg It comes to hide behind the horizon, here it only traces a few small circles in the most sky high. The days and nights do not differ much more than by the schedules of some smoked fish shop or by the routines of the locals.
History and nature in the White Sea
The tourism is mostly Russian and completes this difficult route with very clear intentions: motivated by religious issues , passion for russian heritage history or eagerness adventurous. However, in this 2021 of restrictions and closed borders , some clueless sneaks in and asks if you can't arrive by car to the islands.
There is no car worth. And don't expect the typical cruise ship , they warn you. We check it the next day: we board closed ships , with small windows and covers without seats, which protect the passenger from the temperatures and usually hostile climatic conditions.
It is these extreme conditions that keep the islands as a wasteland of tranquility and also those who began to forge their legend.
As the ship advances through the waters of the White Sea , accompanied by some whale and dodging flat islands and as if shaved by the cold, you can imagine the history of the monks German and Savvati , who came here in the fifteenth century to be able to pray without the distractions of the great religious centers of Novgorod.
ORTHODOX FAITH AND COMMUNISM
An inaccessibility that remains and is recognized today: in 1992 the islands were registered in the unesco world heritage list as an "exceptional example of monastic settlement in the hostile northern european environment , which beautifully illustrates faith, tenacity and entrepreneurship of the late medieval religious communities.
Getting on a boat is an essential experience
If for the asceticism of the monks this location was a paradise, for many others it was a condemnation: in 1923 created one of the first Soviet prison camps (GULAG) , which in their initial stages recycled the abundant Russian religious infrastructure.
It is manifest in the little museum which, from inside an old barracks, tells us the story of how the initially model prison (with cultural activities, its own press and production of goods) became a overcrowding, cold and exploitation camp.
Paradoxically, sanctions were implemented in the monastery compound , which since its creation had punishment cells.
There, the guides recreate the evolution of monastic life and the transformation of these spacious and bright rooms into a prison. To such an extent that some hole in the wall recalls the arrangement of the frescoes (now already covered), whose icons served as shooting targets for the military to test their marksmanship.
Solovetsky Monastery
Unfortunately, the current management of the complex favors pragmatism over conservation of these historical curiosities , which costs more than one disgust to UNESCO and the historians.
Through the corridors of his wall we suffer, in the middle of June, the cold of arctic currents . In its rooms with small windows and rough walls, we understand how its first inhabitants not only sought a place for seclusion , but also for imprisonment, punishment, exhumation of guilt.
The unrepentant faith of the monks made these islands one of the last bastions of resistance for the old believers, who faced the Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexei I to preserve traditional orthodox practices, in the face of a remodeling of rituals imposed on 1653.
Most of the old believers current reside in Latin America or the Caucasus , but here the doctrine is preserved, as a hotel employee tells us.
Hence many of the tourists are still pilgrims that as soon as you disembark gather and isolate in shelters adapted for them, in the depths of the island.
TUNDRA AND HERRINGS
However, customs are modernized and many of us opt for visits to nature, whose Karelian birches (twisted and short) They reach the sea and mix with the predominantly tundra landscape.
And from the outside, we go inside: small family restaurants put an end to the days or help weather the blows of wind and rain.
Architecture invites us to travel back in time
They prepare in the best possible way the exquisite White Sea fish: fried or smoked , with no more dressing than a piece of bread or some boiled potatoes. own monastirskaya trapeza (his canteen) accepts visits to offer more traditional dishes than eating habit.
Walking through the empty rooms of the monastery or through the streets drawn between old prison barracks , the sensation of incoherence, of discord, that the landscape and the white nights give off is repeated.
The little architectural evolution not only makes it easy to clearly visualize the stages of the history of this archipelago, but also of Russia itself: the orthodox pillars , the utopian communist heritage and the process of dismantling of the nineties.