Rehabilitation of the Orthodoxy on the Solovetsky Islands

Perestroika changed people’s attitude toward the church. Persecution of the clergy ceased, and lost traditions began to be gradually restored. In 1988 the parish was restored, followed by the monastic cloister in 1991.

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Ludmila Averianova

The first traces of civilization on the Solovetsky archipelago date back to the second millennium BC, when the island was inhabited by the Sami, a Finno-Ugric. These ancient people believed that the island bordered the other world, where chieftains and heroes went after burial.

Ludmila Averianova

In the 12th-13th centuries Slavic colonizers came to this White Sea region. In the 15th the monks Savvatiy and Herman also arrived. They established a secluded settlement. Half a century later Savvatiy's disciple Zosima founded a monastery.

Ludmila Averianova

Monasteries in medieval Russia were major landowners. In political terms, they remained independent of the local princes. Therefore, the church was often the engine of economic development in newly colonized lands.

Ludmila Averianova

The monastic settlement developed quickly. By 1460 three wooden churches, cottages and a refectory had been built. The monks learned how to fish, produce salt and construct canals between the local lakes.

Ludmila Averianova

Through the efforts of Father Superior Philip, who lived in the era of Ivan the Terrible, the monastery gained ownership of land on shore too, becoming the largest landowner in the White Sea region; the wooden churches were replaced with stone ones.

Ludmila Averianova

The growing power of the monastery in the 17th century led to an inevitable confrontation with the state. The Solovetsky monks resisted the religious reforms of Patriarch Nikon and for eight years held out against tsarist troops.

Ludmila Averianova

After the breakaway the monks were brutally murdered. The monastery acquired new brethren, however, and remained the largest religious centre, driving the economy and taking over the vast territory of the Russian Far North.

Ludmila Averianova

People came here for different reasons. Some were in search of spiritual rejuvenation and came to live as monks. Some were former convicts who simply found a place to live in the monastery. There was no social security to speak of back then, so monasteries performed this function.

Ludmila Averianova

With the Bolsheviks coming to power in 1917, one of Russia’s oldest monasteries was destroyed. The centuries-old shrine was turned into a detention camp, reputed to be the worst in the whole system of the Soviet Gulag. The church on Sekirnaya Hill was the most horrendous penal colony of them all.

Ludmila Averianova

In the 1940s the church buildings here came under the jurisdiction of the army. Free settlement began only in the late 60s, when the Solovetsky archipelago was given the title of museum-reserve.