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

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Tseng 2004.1.29 13:34

Solovki

7005 Robson / SOLOVKI / sheet 1 of 320

Tseng 2004.1.29 13:34 7005 Robson / SOLOVKI / sheet 2 of 320


Solovkı

The Story of Russia Told Through Its Most Remarkable Islands

R o y

R .

Tseng 2004.1.29 13:34

Yale University Press

R o b s o n New Haven and London


Published with assistance from the Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund. Copyright © 2004 by Roy R. Robson. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed by Sonia L. Shannon. Set in Joanna type by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Printed in the United States of America by Vail-Ballou Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Robson, Roy R. Solovki : the story of Russia told through its most remarkable islands / Roy R. Robson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-300-10270-4 (alk. paper) 1. Solovetski Islands (Russia)—History. 2. Solovetskii monastyr’—History. 3. Solovetskii lager’ osobogo naznacheniia—History. I. Title. DK511.S75R63 2004 947'.17—dc22 2003020212

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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For my parents




CONTENTS

Preface

ix

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Note on Illustrations 1.

Stones

2.

Saints

3.

Prosperity

4.

Struggle

5.

Guardian

54

6.

Triumph

68

7.

Defiance

81

8.

Rebellion

9.

Emperor

1 6 26

41

94 115

10.

Prison

11.

Reform

12.

War

13.

Pilgrims

14.

Revolutions

132 146

155 170 186

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C O N T E N T S

15.

Gulag

16.

Life

17.

Denouement

202

226 240

Epilogue: Memory Notes

261

Essay on Sources

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Index

252

297

291

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P R E FAC E

This is a story of labor and suffering and, I think, miracles. The Solovki archipelago has been a prism for Russia, with history somehow focusing and intensifying on these small islands nestled at the southern edge of the White Sea. I hope that an account of Solovki will help to illuminate the bigger experience of Russia’s past. Hundreds of books, pamphlets, articles, and poems have been written about Solovki. Oddly, though, there has never been a singlevolume history—nothing tracing the broad sweep of years from the founding there of a monastery in 1429 (or from even earlier, as far back as the Bronze Age) to the twenty-first century. Perhaps this book will be a catalyst for further study, since it can in no way be the definitive treatment of such a huge subject. No doubt scholars will find deeper insights into Solovki’s history based on newly emerging sources and methods of analysis. So, though many have helped me in this project, its faults remain my own. Natalia Kuziakina, in her introduction to Theatre in the Solovki Prison Camp, has contemplated the vagaries of human memory. I echo her sentiments, hoping for ‘‘the leniency of readers of the book before them, for it is . . . bound to contain some errors of ignorance.’’ By way of acknowledgment, I would like to share the story of my own minor miracle. In 1996, I went to Moscow for my first summer’s research on Solovki. I stayed, as always, at the home of two exceptional historians, Irina Mikhailovna Smilianskaia (a specialist in the history ix


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of Palestine) and Elena Borisovna Smilianskaia (a scholar of Russian religion). Settling down in their bright kitchen, I described my new project over tea. That weekend, Irina Mikhailovna left for her dacha. She trundled off on the train with Bekke, the dachshund who always traveled with her, to spend a few days with old friends. I did not know at the time that these ladies—all of them retired historians—would devote their evenings to discussing my new project. When she arrived home, Irina Mikhailovna announced that she had mapped out a trip to Solovki for me. She had telephone numbers, contacts, and letters of recommendation, written out longhand and stuffed into open envelopes in the Russian fashion. These senior scholars, whom I had never met, had placed their imprimatur on my work. And so I was off, in the company of Elena Borisovna and a small crew of historians from Moscow State University. Along the way, extraordinary things began to happen. Renowned historians arrived at midnight to take our baggage after having received a letter of introduction; an artist whose husband worked on the islands contacted the monastery’s own ship to take us to Solovki. We arrived safely at the monastery after a storm arose on the White Sea, leaving all the passengers—except me—seasick. On the island, there was one more remarkable episode. We arrived at the traditional beginning of the pilgrimage season, Pentecost, and spent three days studying, wandering the lakes, and taking photographs. The last evening on the island, I met a final time with the local historian A. A. Soshina. Toward the end of the evening, Madame Soshina brought out a large card file, stuffed with hundreds of citations on Solovki’s Gulag history. I was stunned—I had no idea that such a bibliography existed. There was no way, however, to get a copy, no photocopy machine within a hundred kilometers. ‘‘Don’t worry,’’ said my hostess, ‘‘I’ll copy out the bibliography for you.’’ ‘‘That’s impossible,’’ I countered. ‘‘Plus, I leave on the monastery cutter at 7 a.m. tomorrow.’’ ‘‘Fine, my brother-in-law works on the cutter and I’ll have him pick up the bibliography in the morning. It’s the white nights—it’ll be


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easy to stay up.’’ The next morning, as if on cue, a sailor called out to me as I approached the boat. He held out a sheaf of papers covered with hundreds of references. I had received yet another small miracle from Russian scholars, many of whom had aided my work without previously meeting me. Elena Borisovna Smilianskaia has continued to be an indispensable source of information and good counsel regarding this book. Up to the last weeks of writing, she sent books, articles, and citations to me, offering her own data and ferreting out volumes published in tiny press runs and practically impossible to find in Moscow, let alone Philadelphia. Without her, I am sure that I would not have finished this study. Since this book is aimed first at the general reader and only then at scholars of Russian history, I have cited English-language versions of Russian texts whenever they have been available. Likewise, I have used Russian texts in their most accessible versions rather than, say, the earliest imprints. There are times, especially in the early chapters of this book, when it is hard to distinguish fact from legend, saintly story from actual events. I realize that much of my version of Solovki’s early years is pastiche, with bits of information gleaned from many places, and sources varying in time or intended audience. Instead of uncovering the ‘‘real’’ Solovki (if that were possible), I am content to tell the story as it has been handed down across the generations. To let Solovki speak for itself, I have included long quotations from relevant documents in almost every chapter. A note on form: in transliterating Russian, I have followed the Library of Congress convention, with a few significant departures. Starting with Tsar Peter I, I have used the English equivalents of emperors’ and empresses’ names (for example, Alexander rather than Aleksandr). Likewise, where there is a commonly used English form of a Russian place name, I have used that form—Moscow rather than Moskva. I have also deleted diacritical marks (Kem rather than Kem’) for the ease of readers unfamiliar with Russian. For dates, I have followed the Julian calendar until the October Revolution of 1917 (except in quotations from western sources that used the Gregorian calendar), after which I give all dates in the Gregorian calendar.


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I am indebted to a number of institutions, each of which has helped to make this book possible. The International Research and Exchange Board supported the earliest stages of research through a shortterm travel grant. At the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, Dr. Robert Boughner has supported my research in innumerable ways with patience and humor. In addition, I received three grants from the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. My research assistant, Marina Asviyan, jumped into the study of Solovki with wit and hard work, remarkably so for a fourth-year doctor of pharmacy student in professional training. The National Endowment for the Humanities honored me with a Fellowship for College Teachers, enabling me to concentrate on Solovki for an entire academic year. My host in Helsinki, Merja Pentikäinen, opened her home to me whenever I arrived to study at the peerless Slavonic Library of Helsinki University. She gave good counsel and a warm welcome at least once a year for the last six years. During the long gestation of this book, two friends on opposite sides of the country have kept up good-natured support, even when it seemed the project would never get finished. Thank you, Michael Friedland in Seattle, and Robert Dillon in Sanford, North Carolina. In Philadelphia, a fellow member of the Fairmount Rowing Association, Robert Galli, never failed to ask penetrating questions and to support this work. Many colleagues have commented or discussed parts of this work with me—Gregory Bruess, Robert Crummey, William Husband, Nadieszda Kizenko, Georg Michels, and Christine Worobec have been instrumental in this way. Francis Conte invited me to take part in a conference at the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne) entitled ‘‘The Island and the Sacred in the Russian North.’’ He was a gracious host, especially since the meeting was held in Paris shortly after September 11, 2001, and his American colleague was nervous about flying to France. Likewise, Heather Coleman and Mark Steinberg asked me to participate in their exceptional NEH-sponsored conference on religious narratives, ‘‘Sacred Stories.’’ Aleksandr Bobrov helped me to contact Dmitrii Likhachev shortly before the academician’s death. I must also thank Jennifer Spock and T. Iu. Samsonova, whose excellent dissertations deepened my understanding of Solovki’s his-


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tory. Jennifer Spock has commented graciously on later versions of my text—I hasten to point out that her interpretations do not always match my own, though I have deeply mined her work for this book. My agent, Charles Everitt, has patiently waited for the book to be finished, then tirelessly advocated my work. Yale University Press, especially Lara Heimert and Keith Condon, has dedicated its resources to the project, producing a handsome volume. One of Yale’s outside readers, Caryl Emerson, went far beyond her responsibilities by giving me detailed, incisive, yet sympathetic comments on my text. While I was taking time off from teaching to research and to write, I had the honor to become reacquainted with a cousin, Karen Trupkovich, who died young and tragically of cancer. Her wisdom born of suffering has been a great source of strength to me. The award for biggest advocate for this book goes to my wife, Kim Robson. For too long she has endured my frequent absences and constant fretting about the latest conference paper or journal article. During the last year, when I have been writing nonstop, she has read drafts, commented on ideas, and kept my focus on the task of telling Solovki’s story in an accessible way. Finally, I want to thank my parents, Joe and Anita Robson. Their love and unquestioning support have been foundations for my career. This book is dedicated to them.



N O T E O N I L L U S T R AT I O N S

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The majority of historic photos in this book were taken by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, a scientist and photographer who pioneered color photography in Russia during the early twentieth century. His patron, Tsar Nicholas II, sent Prokudin-Gorskii across Russia to document its people and places, giving the photographer a specially equipped train car for his work and travel. After Prokudin-Gorskii’s death in Paris in 1944, the U.S. Library of Congress acquired a huge collection of his works. Many are now available on the Internet at the Library of Congress on-line exhibition ‘‘The Empire That Was Russia: The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Re-Created’’ (http://www .loc.gov/exhibits/empire). Architectural historian and photographer William C. Brumfield has dedicated his career to studying and preserving on film the sacred architecture of northern Russia. His many publications include A History of Russian Architecture, Gold in Azure: One Thousand Years of Russian Architecture, and Lost Russia: Photographing the Ruins of Russian Architecture. He is Professor of Slavic Studies at Tulane University. Tomasz Kizny, a Polish freelance photographer, has traveled the breadth of the former Eastern Bloc capturing everyday life in postcommunist lands. His work has been shown across Europe and published in numerous books and magazines. More of his work on Solovki can be found at ‘‘Forced Labour Camps: Online Exhibition,’’ produced for the

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Open Society Archives at the Central European University in Budapest (http://www.osa.ceu.hu/gulag/). Other photographs of Solovki are ones I took while on a trip to the archipelago in June 1996.


[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Detail from ‘‘Carte de Muscovie,’’ an early-eighteenth-century map by the famous French cartographer Guillaume Delisle, published in Amsterdam, showing the White Sea region, including Solovki (‘‘Isles de Solofki’’) and Anzer (‘‘I. d Anzer, Anzerska Pustina, ou Hermitage d’Anzer’’). Kem (‘‘Kiemi’’) and Sumskii Ostrog (‘‘Soma’’) are on the shore just west of Solovki, with Sumskii Ostrog labeled as the winter quarters of the Solovki garrison. East of Sumskii Ostrog is ‘‘Niuchtchenskaia Pristen, where the tsar set off in 1702’’; also marked is Peter the Great’s overland portage from there south to Povenets (‘‘Povenza’’), after which he went on to defeat the Swedes. Farther east lie Archangel and the ‘‘Island of Solombol, where ships are built.’’ St. Petersburg, still a small city in the early 1700s, appears in the southwest corner of the map.

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Solovki’s major islands in 1893, showing pilgrimage sites and hermitages (Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims)



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S T O N E S

The glaciers came and went, the granite boulders littered the shores of the lakes; the lakes froze during the Solovetskii winter nights, the sea howled under the wind and was covered with an icy sludge and in places froze; the northern lights blazed across half the sky; and it grew bright once again and warm once again, and the fir trees grew and thickened, and the birds cackled and called, and the young deer trumpeted—and the planet circled through all world history, and kingdoms fell and rose, and here there were still no beasts of prey and no human being.

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—Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

T

he stones and the sky and the water—these are the things that created Solovki. Children of the Ice Ages, the islands nestle in a southern bay of the Arctic Sea, separating Finland and Russia, called the White Sea. The islands are only one hundred kilometers from the Arctic Circle, where the night never comes in June and the daylight never arrives in January. They are not very big—Great Solovetskii Island is less than twenty-five kilometers long and about sixteen across. All together, the surface area of 1


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the islands is just 347 square kilometers. They are impossibly rocky— glaciers deposited huge boulders across the flat landscape, leaving trees and plants to grow around and atop them. One of the most successful plants is the lichen, which covers the rocks and seems to change color in the sun or shadow. In the midst of the cold all around lies a meteorological rarity—an island microclimate. Though snow can sit in crevasses into June, the islands nevertheless rarely bear the full brunt of Arctic winter. Because of this, Solovki has become home to hundreds of plants and animals, some of them unique to its shores. Winds whip down on Solovki so regularly that stunted little ashes and birches are called ‘‘running trees,’’ growing bent over like sprinters frozen in mid-stride. Yet, given the opportunity, cherry trees can also thrive on the island and cabbages are so sweet that they are known as ‘‘Solovki apples.’’ Amid the rocks and lichens and birch, miniature flowers bloom. Winter comes early, though, sometimes in September or October. Herring, seals, and beluga whales all live near the island. The herring feast on plants and the seals feast on the herring. And the fish, the seals, and the whales are all prey to fishermen. In the Bronze Age, people came to Solovki. Though they kept no written records, they did leave tools, burial mounds, and labyrinths, clues to what their life might have been like. Lacking written sources, we can nevertheless imagine one of these first human inhabitants, a fisherman paddling along the lakes, waiting for his prey. The freshwater lakes were extraordinarily clear—home to hundreds of species of fish, sheltered from tides and storms. The lakeshore was strewn with rocks, mostly granite tumbled about by ice floes thousands of years before. Even inside the forest, rocks cropped up everywhere, littered by the retreating ice as it created the islands, the sea, and the Arctic ice cap. The fisherman used either a dugout canoe or a flat-bottomed wooden vessel with upturned ends. Though this design did not make the craft very fast, it did offer a steady place to stand while pulling in the fish. In the nine months of the year that snow fell on the sea, a flat-bottomed boat could also slide across patches of ice and onto the open water beyond.1


S T O N E S

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The ‘‘running trees’’ of Solovki

The man was not large and his seafaring life kept him slim. Though it was a difficult life paddling from island to mainland and back, plenty of fish supplied most of the food he needed. His dark hair set off lighter skin. In later millennia, his kind would be called Saami, or Lapps. The fisherman’s descendants would mix Mongol and European looks and language. The Saami would stick together in family groups but be wary of settled civilization—theirs was to be a life of fishing in the summer, hunting in the winter, and revering the earth as a sacred place, a home for gods. These folk also built houses, whether near the sea or deep in the interior forest. Though they often wandered from island to mainland, they needed substantial dwellings to keep them warm through the long dark winters. After erecting poles at each corner, held up with stones wedged into the ground, the fisherman and his clan would split lengths of lumber just like those needed for making a boat. Clay or wattle-anddaub held the wood together. One big room resulted, with a fireplace right in the middle, though sometimes a smaller hearth in the corner provided extra heat. The family could sit out most any kind of storm in such a dwelling. Farther south, some of the fisherman’s kin settled down to lives of


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Labyrinths like this one were built on Solovki in the third millennium to the first millennium b.c.e. (Photograph by Tomasz Kizny)

farming and herding. Cultivation of rye or vegetables helped to feed the settlers, but they often took to the woods to find nourishment. When they had to, they would kill one of their pigs or goats for food, more rarely a cow or a sheep. This was done only as a last recourse— domestic animals were much too valuable to kill for food unless there was no alternative. Fish were a better source of protein than animals that offered milk and wool. Most food—whether cultivated, caught, or hunted—simmered over open fires in iron pots. Mixed with wheat or rye porridge, fish and vegetables provided a passable dinner during the short summer and fall, eaten with fingers, knives, and wooden spoons. In the winter, the fisherman and his family had to live from roots and vegetables saved in earthenware pots and game killed in the forests. Fishing here on the islands was equal parts choreography, religion, and survival—a complicated dance where stones, water, and flesh all played a part. The fisherman began the process of catching fish before actually going to sea, by walking through a stone labyrinth, moving toward the middle of the maze. The structure’s design did not trick


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5

the fisherman but rather guided him from its mouth (facing the sea) toward its center. He re-created the boat’s slow circling toward the prey, the stillness needed to use a four-pointed spear, and probably also the path of the fish swimming into his woven traps. The mouths of the traps faced into the tidal flow, which helped to pin the fish inside.2 Likewise, walking through the labyrinth may have calmed the souls of the fisherman’s ancestors and even the spirits of fish he had caught previously; perhaps he even hoped to catch spirits of the dead inside the labyrinth, leaving them there while he went off on a new expedition. To build a labyrinth, the fisherman had to start above the highwater mark but near the water’s edge. He began by drawing a spiral in the dirt. For the most simple labyrinth, it was enough just to lay stones along the tracing, selecting rounded stones of nearly the same shape and size but using larger ones every so often as markers. Really impressive labyrinths had multiple looping lines, sometimes resembling a brain schematic with an open lower lobe and many byways above it. On the islands, the fisher folk created more than a dozen labyrinths (some rounded, some with angled corners), the largest with 4,855 stones. If there were many people on the island, labyrinths did not take too long to build. Thirty people could set up a large labyrinth in one day, but it could take weeks for one person to perfect a maze.3 Leaving the islands, the fisherman and his mates took their flatbottomed boats westward toward land masses later to be called Finland and Sweden. They clung to the coastline as they traveled, more at home among the fish and the waves than with the animals and forests of the interior. On occasion, the fishermen inscribed pictures of labyrinths on a rock face, etching human figures among them. And then he and his kind departed, leaving almost no trace except the large, intricate circles of stones along the shore.


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wo men stood at the shore of the White Sea in the year 1429, some two thousand years after the labyrinth builders had left Solovki. One was named Savvatii, an old monk in a tattered cassock held together by years of darning and patching. His face was gaunt, made even thinner by the long, tangled beard that fell down to his chest. His whiskers had begun turning white years before, but Savvatii hardly noticed. In fact, he paid little attention to his appearance, a product of decades-long refusal of bodily comforts and pleasures. The other man, German, viewed Savvatii with a mixture of fear and awe. Fear, because German was about to risk his life in company with this man; awe, because Savvatii was himself a man of extraordinary discipline in Orthodox monasticism. If German had to travel to a distant island with anyone, Savvatii was a good choice—he needed little food and almost no rest, his wiry frame belied his age, and his mental capacity was sharpened by a lifetime of asceticism in the northern woods. When German had learned that Savvatii sought the most distant possible place to begin a hermitage, German had chosen to travel with him. Savvatii’s mission was, in one sense, a paradox. For most of his 6


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monastic life, he had lived in one of the first northern cloisters—the Kirillo-Belozerskii monastery. Though it was only a few decades old when he arrived, Savvatii found the monastery of St. Kiril to be a magnet for men who hoped to leave the world behind, to become more like angels than men. To be angelic, after all, meant reducing to a minimum many human activities, including eating, sleeping, resting, and playing, and forgoing any pleasures like sex. Instead, the men who sought refuge in monasteries believed that hard labor, little food, and almost unending liturgical prayer would lead them to the plane of deification—becoming like angels or even realizing the true image and likeness of God. ‘‘God became man,’’ one saint had written, ‘‘so that men could become God.’’ Although Savvatii may not have been schooled in formal theology, these words provided the basis for his form of monasticism.1 What could make someone leave life behind, seeking an existence of unremitting toil and prayer, where sleep and food were considered weaknesses of the flesh? The answer lies in part with the word podvig, a Russian term with no real English counterpart. Some people translate the word as ‘‘ascetic act,’’ others as ‘‘heroic exploit.’’ The complete meaning is a mixture of ‘‘cross to bear’’ and ‘‘fate’’ and ‘‘epic deed.’’ In northern Russia, asceticism took on an active tone, where the monk constantly performed feats that helped him to fight off diabolical power. The life of a monk was a life of podvigi—acts designed to strengthen his ties to heaven as they simultaneously led him away from earthly cares. Physical work played a particularly important part in the ascetic life—it was the classic podvig. Almost any kind of labor was appropriate—turning virgin earth into cultivated fields; building churches and monastic buildings; traveling long distances on foot; toiling in the kitchen. Even prayer was a podvig, for in a Russian monastery it, too, was physical. Liturgical services occurred regularly from early morning to midnight, taking hours to finish. Monks and priests stood throughout, often in darkness lit only by a few beeswax candles, which dripped onto their books. Reading and chanting made up much of the services. In addition, monks raised their arms ‘‘in evening sacrifice,’’ prostrated themselves hundreds of times a night, and stood upright


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while never leaning against a column or wall. Perhaps a simple monk like German might not understand theology, but he could always feel the glory of God in his exhausted limbs and aching back. These were reminders of his carnal limitations and badges of his spiritual exercises. They were his podvigi no more nor less than felling a tree or hauling in a fishing net. Savvatii gained fame as a relentless ascetic and respected elder. Younger monks eagerly waited for his spiritual guidance in the struggle with worldly desires for sex, food, and sleep. Savvatii seemed to have conquered the longings of the flesh. He found, however, that the fame heaped on him at the monastery was itself a temptation, and he received his abbot’s approval to move out to the distant Valaam monastery. In 1427, after living most of his adult life at the monastery of St. Kiril, Savvatii began his trek to Valaam. To most observers, leaving St. Kiril’s monastery for Valaam would seem absurd. With a few exceptions, the North was wild territory, mostly void of people. Birch forests—stand after stand of white trunks —spread for hundreds of miles in all directions. The birches were so ubiquitous that their bark was even used as a writing material— some of the oldest Russian manuscripts still exist on birch bark. Closer to the White Sea, birch trees began to intermingle with beeches and evergreens. As the forest gave way to the rocky seacoast, trees became smaller and more gnarled. They clung to the rocky shoreline, buffeted by the winds sweeping down the peninsula from the Arctic Circle. Curiously, orchids thrived on the leafy green forest floor, the white centers of their flowers turning into petals veined with deep purple and drooping downward in classic orchid style. The delicate flowers made a counterpoint to the shades of gray and green that covered most of the land. Along the water, tough sea grasses grew amid the rocks, further mixing the two colors against the backdrop of the waves. Set like a rare flower in the northern woods,Valaam was even more remote than the monastery of St. Kiril. Perched atop a series of hills in the middle of Lake Ladoga, Valaam beckoned only the most hardy souls. An ancient cloister, it was closed to all but the most devoted monks. Even among the most intrepid men, Savvatii stood out. His hagiographer wrote that ‘‘just as in St. Kiril’s monastery, Savvatii sur-


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passed all in ascetic labors, so his virtuous life began to be known to all in Valaam, since he mortified his body to the utmost and . . . manifested himself as an abode of the Holy Spirit.’’ 2 By 1429, Savvatii again began to feel uncomfortable with his ascetic renown, which grew even in this remote corner of the world. He attracted younger monks who needed his wise counsel—among them a future bishop. The more that the brothers needed Savvatii, though, the more he worried that his reputation would lead to his spiritual downfall. As his fame spread, Savvatii found that he craved simplicity. He had spent only two years at Valaam, but already he feared that he was in danger of accepting too easy a life in the monastery. He came to realize that he wanted the most remote place possible—an island like Valaam but even farther away and more inaccessible, a place to find peace for his soul without the temptations of flattery or fame.3 According to his Life, Savvatii pondered the problem: ‘‘It is better for me to remove myself, because I receive honor and comfort from men like me. All my labor will be in vain as if I had not exhausted my body; rather, I will be deprived of reward.’’ 4 Finally, waiting until the ‘‘quiet of night,’’ as the Life says, Savvatii ‘‘stole away from the monastery. . . . And he was very glad.’’ 5 Traveling eastward from Valaam toward the White Sea, Savvatii sought a place to settle as a hermit. It was solitude he craved, simplicity of life that left time for constant prayer and fasting. Apparently, an organized monastery was just too loud a place to hear the still, small voice of God—it was going to take a trip to a desert, not barren of life but barren of people. On his way, Savvatii met his future companion German, who had built a small cabin in the woods, a solitary monastic cell near Soroka on the Vyg River, not far from the village of Belozersk. Hearing of Savvatii’s plan, German was willing to join a master ascetic in building a hermitage. The right spot, Savvatii believed, was Solovki. Rumors and stories about the islands drifted across the northland because Solovki offered exceptional anchorage, plenteous fresh water, limitless fishing, and berry patches full of black and red fruit. Every so often, fishermen would make landfall there and stay a little while. If they did not leave with their catch by early fall, though, the winter storms meant that


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they would die on the islands or suffer until they could return home. Though people told tales about the archipelago, they did not live there permanently. The first real challenge Savvatii and German faced as monastic partners was sailing to the islands. The White Sea, where the Solovki archipelago lay, was sheltered from the rest of the Arctic Ocean by the Karelian peninsula to its north. Nevertheless, the sea was punished by fierce Arctic winds, quick storms, and dangerous ice floes that continued well into springtime. In fact, most of the year the sea was impassable—only from June to August could a person chance crossing it. The local fishermen, knowing how difficult the voyage to Solovki could be, tried to dissuade the monks from making it. It would take two days of rowing even in good weather, they said. Savvatii was an old man, they pointed out. Savvatii and German had never seen Solovki before and didn’t even know its exact location. And even if, by some miracle, the novice oarsmen made it to the island, there was no reason to think that they could survive the winter. Who would take care of them when food and firewood ran out? How could two men hope to live out their days in such a wilderness? The locals, unacquainted with Christian asceticism, were finally exasperated by the monks’ foolishness. The writer of the Life of Savvatii imagined this conversation between the Karelians and the monk: ‘‘How will you feed and clothe yourself on the island, since you’re already so old and have nothing?’’ they asked. ‘‘How will you live . . . when you already have no strength to do anything for yourself?’’ Savvatii, believing that he would find the essentials of life on the island, replied, ‘‘I have a God who makes the nature of an old man young.’’ This both baffled and impressed them.6 The monks traveled by karbas—a long rowboat common along the northern seacoast. The design of the boat had remained largely unchanged for centuries—a wooden craft with sharply upturned front and square back. It had a couple of canoe-style seats in the bow and stern and a place in the center where one could erect a makeshift sail if the wind was right. Two men could handle the six-meter boat with ease when the waves were gentle, but whitecaps (for which the White Sea was named) could easily slosh over the gunwales until the boat sank.7 Into the little craft, Savvatii and German piled only their essen-


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tials—a few bags of food (flour, root vegetables, and the like), some seeds, tools, and possibly an icon of Mary, Mother of God. They rowed for two days in relatively smooth waters until they came upon Solovki and landed two-thirds of the way up its shoreline, on the west side of the main island. The Life of Savvatii says that Solovki had ‘‘many lakes in the middle of it, and fish in their various kinds. . . . And around it fishing grounds. . . . The island was grown with various trees, and there were many kinds of berry patches and great pines for the building of churches and for everything, good building supplies.’’ 8 Having thanked God for their safe arrival, the two monks immediately set about erecting a cross on the spot where they landed. Their main job was to pray, beginning the cycle that regulated their lives. Some of the peacefulness—the stillness—that people perceived in monks came from the endless sequences of liturgical life. On Solovki, it might have been tempting, even easy, to fall into the trap of working day and night without taking time out for scheduled services. After all, who would question the need to chop more wood, to pick more berries, or to finish building a monastic cell? Savvatii believed, however, that his sense of peace derived from the cyclic and predictable nature of church services. Though a monk tried to ‘‘pray without ceasing,’’ as the Church Fathers enjoined, it was good to know that special times each day would be devoted to spiritual life. Living in the wilderness, the balm of liturgy (no matter how long or tiring) helped to keep a monk’s life in perspective. There was a problem with this system. A full service cycle in the Orthodox Church had to be celebrated by a priest. Some rituals, including the Eucharist itself, could not be performed by a layman. Savvatii and German, though monks, were not priests, so they had to live for years without taking Holy Communion and make do with abbreviated services. This was a real problem for Christians living in the middle of nowhere—the most precious part of their religious life was largely absent from everyday existence. German and Savvatii, like other hermits, tried to make up for this lack by redoubling their own efforts at prayer. When the church traditions forbade them to conduct full ceremonies, they substituted chanting of psalms and prostrations in their cycle of prayers. Tears of regret for their human frailties and con-


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templation of death, they believed, could lead them toward the heavenly life while still on earth. Savvatii was particularly adept at this kind of life—the rhythm of prayer, fasting, and work suited him well. He knew that solitude and silence could help to create a peaceful heart in a monk, and finally he had found a spot to practice the ultimate in spiritual exercises. While Savvatii and German were taking up their new monastic life on Solovki in the 1430s, monks across the Russian north were beginning a debate over the ascetic life that would last for centuries. On the one hand, it seemed clear to many that simplicity, poverty, and solitude provided the best opportunity for prayer, even if it did not include the Eucharist. Monks who preferred this kind of life took as their models the great desert ascetics of Christianity’s first centuries— men and women who lived alone in the searing heat and bitter cold of the Middle Eastern sands. The most famous of these ascetics lived in the Thebaid, the desert region near the Egyptian city of Thebes, and the Russian monks would receive the name ‘‘Northern Thebaid.’’ 9 The problem, however, as Savvatii surely understood, was that monks who developed great ascetic abilities also acted as a magnet for other Christians. No matter how much they wanted to be alone with their spiritual travails, the great monastic fathers (not to mention their monasteries) had to contend with many other men and women of lesser spiritual strength who wanted to learn from them, to be near them, hoping to acquire at least some of their asceticism. To make matters worse for the great ascetics, they were bound to accept humbly the praise of their disciples; they believed in ‘‘mild humility, voluntary poverty, and charity,’’ which sometimes obscured the goal of solitary contemplation.10 The search for personal salvation, after all, made up only half of a monk’s job. The second half was far more social: a monk prayed for the salvation of his neighbors and the whole world. The angelic life brought with it responsibility for the salvation of all Christendom, and this in turn inexorably exposed monasteries to the perils of worldly goods. Tsars, princes, merchants, and peasants all hoped that gifts to monasteries would spur monks to pray for their benefactors’ fami-


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lies, especially those who had died. These were not favors that the laity sought—rather, land, jewels, vestments, or sacral vessels might serve as constant reminders to the monastic brethren to commemorate the laity in their daily prayer life. Gifts could pile up in a monastery, especially if charismatic monks lived there or saints had been buried there. This was particularly difficult for those who counseled against all worldly goods as obstacles on the path to redemption. St. Kiril came to mind—here was an abbot who despised all possessions. Yet even his monastery received vast amounts of farmland in gifts from Christians who hoped the monks would commemorate them in prayer. It was this dilemma that led to the struggle between different forms of monasticism, which in turn had theological, practical, and political implications for Russia. By tradition and personality, some monks tended to tolerate many opinions and to emphasize charity over judgment—having nothing, they worried little about the niceties of religious organization. Their simplicity and disdain for wealth, however, played directly into the hands of political leaders, who sometimes competed with monasteries for control of land and peasants. The princes of this earth liked monks to own little, not for the sake of holiness but so that they would not become a political threat. The monasteries that acquired wealth, on the other hand, often saw themselves as defenders of Christianity and guardians of faith and doctrine. Having received gifts, monks sought to glorify God and to use their power to further God’s work on earth—socially, doctrinally, and politically.11 These were not the problems of Savvatii and German on Solovki— they would have trouble enough growing food to keep themselves alive. After scouting the area, they decided to settle about a mile inland near the highest point on the island, a tall hill later to be called Sekirka—Poleax Hill. They had to settle quickly into their secluded life, since the long days of summer had to ripen the crops in their garden before winter arrived. Unfortunately, they had little luck in that first year, or for many years after that. Summer storms hurled hail at young wheat and vegetables, leaving little behind to store for the winter. In-


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stead, the two monks had to make do with the gifts of Solovki—berries, mushrooms, and fish. The hermits’ little encampment lay quite near two large lakes and not much farther from the string of freshwater ponds, streams, and lakes that crossed the island. Savvatii and German left little behind to tell us about their life for the next half-dozen years, with only a couple of exceptions. German periodically traveled back to the mainland in the karbas, battling the White Sea alone because of Savvatii’s advanced age. Among the Karelians, word got out that the monks were thriving (or, rather, surviving) on Solovki and the locals began to worry about the intrusion into their territory. The author of Savvatii’s Life imagined the elders of the White Sea Karelians who had once tried to dissuade the monks from their voyage deciding to eject them: ‘‘‘We are the nearest neighbors of the island,’ they claimed, ‘more or less its owners, being the natural inhabitants of the Karelian Land. Therefore we, and after us our children from generation to generation, should have this land, and the newcomers should be exiled from it!’’’ 12 To claim Solovki, a Karelian fisherman and his wife took matters into their own hands, traveling with their children and setting up a home not far from the monks’ own cells. The monks, enclosed in their own world of prayer, fishing, and planting, never even noticed their new neighbors. One day, though, Savvatii heard a yelp as he made his usual rounds with a censer, blessing the land and the dwellings that the monks had erected. Frightened that there was a demon nearby, Savvatii quickly made the sign of the cross and hurried back to tell German. The younger monk followed Savvatii back to the spot and he too heard moaning and crying. Instead of a devil, though, the monks found the Karelian woman, badly shaken. The woman had been out near the monks’ cell that morning, accompanying her husband to the lake. Out of the air, she said, there suddenly came two young men in resplendent clothing, carrying sticks with them. Seeing the man and his wife, the youths beat them and told them to flee Solovki, since they were trying to live on land consecrated by God. Leave quickly, the angels told the Karelians, or expect to die an ‘‘evil death.’’ The monks must have been stunned—suddenly there were Karelians on their island and now they had been miraculously


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warned away. Savvatii and German did not disagree when the Karelians quickly made their way back to the mainland. Who knows what really transpired that day? No matter what the Karelians saw—or made up in order to go home—this incident highlighted the potential problems between Solovki’s monks and the other people of the region. Though remote and cold, the White Sea offered a bountiful catch and safe harbors. It attracted many kinds of ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups, among them Zyrians, Saami, Karelians, and Russians. As long as they didn’t interfere with each other’s fishing and farming, the groups coexisted. When their livelihoods did interfere with one another’s—as on Solovki—tensions often simmered for decades. The multiethnic, multilingual, and remote nature of the White Sea area—including Solovki—contributed to its reputation as a ‘‘desert,’’ different in detail but similar in experience to the desert of Egyptian monasticism some thousand years before. In fact, the word pustyn means both ‘‘desert’’ and ‘‘hermitage’’ in Russian, a reminder that the great hermits fled into deserted regions. Like the wilderness in Palestine where Jesus went to fast and pray, the northern woods of Russia were full of diabolical power. Some of the demons came with the monk himself—inattention to prayer, desire to sleep, eat, or rest. Just as the devil tempted Jesus in the desert, so too did Savvatii feel tempted when left alone on his deserted island. Russians lived in a sea of unseen forces shaping their lives. Church and civil statutes constantly railed against sorcery, black magic, and using herbs or potions to foretell the future. Life in a wild forest faced innumerable threats from animals and weather. It was not hard to believe that the trees, the rivers, the air, and one’s home had supernatural forces working in them and around them. Why couldn’t a Karelian woman, living on an unknown island with no friends or neighbors, see (and feel) an angel guarding holy men she had hoped to displace? Why wouldn’t a monk himself, constantly weakened by lack of sleep and food, fall prey to malignant forces? Savvatii’s weapon in the battle against demons was his ability to pray for hours on end, moving his thoughts away from his problems


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and focusing them, instead, on his relationship with the divine. This discipline stood him in good stead during his last days on earth, when he was again alone on Solovki. German was making one of his periodic trips to the mainland, where he had been caught by the early onset of winter. Savvatii’s hagiographer explains that German wanted to get back to Solovki, but couldn’t: ‘‘it began to get cold, the weather turned bad, snowfalls began, and on the sea the water became choppy.’’ 13 Afraid for Savvatii’s well being, German was stuck on the mainland without any means to return. Savvatii, meanwhile, feeling ‘‘in deep old age,’’ began seriously to contemplate his death. But how, he wondered, could he die at Solovki, without the aid of German and without the final blessings of a priest and the Eucharist? While contemplating this problem as he walked along the shoreline, Savvatii came upon another karbas, one he had not noticed before. He took this as a sign from God and impetuously set out for the mainland, not even returning to his cell for his few belongings. He was rewarded for this rash act by particularly calm seas and reached the mouth of the Vyg River in record time, just one day. There he hiked to a small spit where a chapel stood. By luck, according to the Life, a certain priest-monk named Nafanail was also passing through this area, on his way to give Communion to a sick man. When Nafanail and Savvatii met at the chapel, they made the usual monastic salutation: each one bowed to the other and kissed his right hand while also embracing him. (Though it might look a little awkward, the ritual lets each monk simultaneously humble himself and greet the other man.) Savvatii was thrilled to have happened upon a priest who could celebrate the Eucharist; Nafanail was surprised to meet up with ‘‘the honorable gray hairs’’ of a famed ascetic. Though Nafanail wanted to go first to the sick man, hoping that Savvatii would wait for him, the elder pleaded with the priest to hear his confession and give him Communion. Savvatii was sure he was about to die. Shortly afterward, a third man happened along the shoreline—a Christian merchant named Ioann carrying his wares. He stopped by the chapel and was surprised to see a priest and a monk praying and chatting inside. Learning of Savvatii’s identity, Ioann immediately offered


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a gift to the monk, who refused it and asked instead that Ioann give something to charity. The refusal hurt Ioann’s feelings, but he brightened when Savvatii promised that after prayers, Ioann would witness God’s grace. As darkness fell, the weather turned for the worse. Savvatii was pleased to have made it so quickly to the mainland and Ioann was happy to spend the night in a warm chapel with the saintly man nearby. Early in the morning, just before dawn, Ioann knocked on the door to Savvatii’s room, hoping for a blessing before continuing his travels. When no one answered, Ioann knocked again, assuming that Savvatii was deaf or sleeping. When he opened the door, Ioann found Savvatii sitting alone, a sweet smell permeating the room. Savvatii had died in the night, sitting near the fire and the censer, finishing his nighttime prayers. When Nafanail returned from the sick neighbor, he and Ioann sang funeral prayers and buried the monk, facing eastward, near the mouth of the Vyg River. It was 27 September 1435, six years after Savvatii had first traveled to Solovki. Distraught, German pondered what to do. Though German was the younger and stronger of the two men, he had relied on Savvatii for spiritual guidance and friendship. Deciding not to return alone to Solovki, German struck out on a mission to the northern monasteries, searching for another man to join him on the island. He tried appealing to a younger man, someone who could continue on Solovki after German too had died. Tramping from monastery to monastery, German expounded on the advantages of living on Solovki—tranquillity, freedom, and the blessed memory of Savvatii. Though spiritual issues surely came first, German did not forget to mention that Solovki abounded with opportunities to farm, find mushrooms, and pick berries, never failing to note the excellent fishing. Near the Rozhdestvenskii monastery in Paleostrov, German met a young man named Zosima. German must have seen this as a sign—the youth was named for the great Zosima who had ministered to the most ascetic of all the desert mothers, St. Mary of Egypt. Though he had lighter hair than Savvatii and was much younger, Zosima resembled


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the dead monk. As he got older, Zosima would look even more like Savvatii, with a long pointed beard. Zosima was intrigued with the description offered by German. He and German conversed about the opportunities Solovki afforded for building a communal monastery rather than a hermitage. Unlike German, Zosima had been called to the monastic life from a well-to-do family. The family had recently moved to the small village of Shumga (or Tolvui, a nearby settlement) on Lake Onega. Young Zosima grappled with the incongruity of the family’s wealth and the commandments to give up worldly goods in order to find inner peace. He found a ready mentor in German, in whom he began to confide. Not long after the two men met, Zosima’s parents suddenly died, leaving him to manage the family’s affairs. Zosima decided to bury his parents, discharge the servants, and give away the animals. Having done all this, Zosima could then become a monk. For his part, German had been transformed from ascetic protégé to monastic mentor. He had lost his own spiritual father but had found a son in Zosima. In 1436, then, two monks again approached Solovki in a karbas, thanking God for a ‘‘blessing of good weather’’ on their trip. As they neared the southern part of the main island, Zosima had the opportunity to see Solovki’s bays, harbors, and hills covered with trees. Instead of making their way directly to the old monastic settlement, Zosima and German explored the island a little more, until Zosima saw a spot that was ‘‘surpassingly beautiful: a lake nearby, and not far from the sea, not far as the bird flies, and a quiet bay, a perfect anchorage and a place for catching fish.’’ 14 Excited by their find, the monks stayed up all night in prayer, considering whether or not to found a monastery there. As morning broke, according to Zosima’s Life, he suddenly had a vision of a blinding beam of light and a gorgeous church in the east. Noticing that Zosima was visibly shaken, German asked simply, ‘‘What’s wrong with you?’’ When Zosima described what he had seen, German immediately remembered that the Karelian woman had foretold that a great monastery would be built on Solovki. Convinced now that this was the best spot, Zosima and German began to build cells and a chapel, next to the bay.


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Zosima found that the beautiful lake and peaceful life did not save him from tribulations and temptations. Like Savvatii, Zosima felt besieged by demonic forces whenever German returned to the mainland and he was left alone. Maybe it was the loneliness of a deserted island that conjured up the demons. On one occasion, Zosima remembered, he began to see ‘‘unclean spirits . . . gnashing their teeth; and one with the face of a serpent, others turning into snakes and reptiles, scorpions, and lizards and others creeping on the ground.’’ 15 He battled them with prayer and meditation, holding out his hands and asking for deliverance, which didn’t seem to arrive. The demonic assault seemed now mental, now physical, and Zosima grew weaker and weaker, waiting for German to return with supplies. German, however, was again stuck on the mainland, waiting for a break in the weather that did not come until springtime. Without German, Zosima grew ill. As the winter months progressed, he became ever weaker, barely able to move around the cell; food had begun to run out and he did not have the strength to forage or fish in the bitter cold. He lay on his hard wooden bench and wept in fear of death and out of sadness at a mission left unfinished. Then, one day in the middle of winter, two men appeared at Zosima’s cell pulling a sledge. They brought supplies and food. As they arrived, the fisherman seemed to have expected to find Zosima. They said: ‘‘We were out fishing on the sea—if it turned out that you didn’t have enough to eat, you could eat this flour, oil, and bread, and then we could, God willing, return to you.’’ 16 Not leaving their names, they disappeared back onto the black winter waters. Confused—were they really men or angels?— Zosima began to eat and, little by little, to gain strength. When the ice floes finally began to break up in spring, German rowed and pulled his karbas across water and ice until he returned to the little monastery. There, he found Zosima revived and thrilled to have company again. German had brought more than just supplies. While waiting to come back to Solovki, he had befriended a man named Mark, who decided to throw in his fate with the monks. (Perhaps German suspected that he would find that Zosima had died during the winter. Perhaps Mark was attracted to the excellent fishing as well as the peaceful life.)


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Immediately finding his vocation—his personal podvig—the muscular young man began to catch far more fish than the monks could eat. For the first time, it appeared as if the little monastery of Solovki might step back from the brink of disaster. Effortlessly, it seemed, the three men began to attract others to the islands. First a few, then more and more men arrived there, all hoping to work alongside Zosima, German, and their companions. With wood cut from the forest and stones hauled from the fields, the monks began to fashion a monastic settlement. They built cells and a wooden chapel dedicated to the Transfiguration, standing on the site where Zosima had seen his vision. They built a refectory where they could eat common meals. Thus began the transformation of Solovki from hermitage to monastery. During the construction of the church, according to legend, a terrible fire swept across the site, reducing everything to ashes. Zosima worried that this had been a message from God—a reminder of their sins and a caution against pride in their handiwork. When they had prayed, fasted, and cleared the building area, they began again. This time, though, legend recounts that the angels themselves decided to help. Returning from a lunch break, the monks found that the jobs they had left undone had been miraculously finished. Since the community did not have its own priests and structure— the brothers lived under the unofficial spiritual tutelage of German and Zosima—Archbishop Ion of Novgorod acted as titular head of the little group. As such, the archbishop had to decide if Solovki would be chartered as an official monastery with its own priests and abbot or if it would remain an outpost in the White Sea. This was no easy decision, for although Novgorod itself was largely Christian, much of the northern seashore had few Christians and in sparse settlements. Offering precious resources, including priests to hear confession and celebrate Communion, to a monastery meant that other believers would have to go hungry for the sacraments. Finally, though, the sheer energy of Solovki’s brothers persuaded Ion to have the Chapel of the Transfiguration consecrated as a church, to provide a Novgorod priest named Paul to serve as father superior—the title of the leader of a small monastery—and to charter Solovki as an official monastery in his diocese with land enough to support it. In fact, both the first and second fathers


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superior were sent from Novgorod by Ion. Only after their terms were finished did Zosima submit to the monks’ general will and receive the title of father superior. Solovki was far from simply taking precious church resources from the northlands; in fact, it became the foundation for Christianity in the region. From the time that the local Karelians had been scared off the island, the monks of Solovki sought to spread their own faith to the local population. This included both pagan tribes that fished throughout the White Sea and even Russian Christians themselves. After all, in a land this forbidding, it was rare to find a priest or a monk who could teach even rudimentary Christianity. Some monks, like German, labored all their lives but never learned to read. Once, three merchants came to Solovki to take part in the church services. Afterward, priests offered them blessed bread from the Liturgy and Zosima invited them to stay for dinner. When they did not come to the refectory, Mark (by now the cellarer of the monastery) told Zosima that the merchants had left early, not wanting to take time for a meal. Suddenly, the monks heard a monastery dog barking and growling near the shore. Mark left the table to investigate. He found the dog trying to hold back the merchants with his teeth, while the merchants pelted it with rocks, and, he said, a strange ring of fire burned on the ground where the dog growled. Inside the circle of flames, Mark explained, lay blessed bread from the Liturgy, cast off by the merchants but guarded by the holy flames. The flames would not go out until the monk had retrieved the blessed bread from the ground. The merchants, though Christian, simply did not understand the sanctity of the prosphora, small loaves that were mixed with wine in the chalice during the Eucharist. This was a harbinger: Solovki’s prosphora were to become famous for their miraculous powers, and saved and cherished for generations. For forty years, his Life says, Zosima lived ‘‘from work to work, from feat to feat’’ at Solovki. Monks fished and farmed. They built new monastic cells as the old ones filled up. They erected a wooden church, dedicated to the Dormition of Mary, on the east side of their refectory, which had to be rebuilt so that all the new brothers could dine together. They built a new, larger church on the spot where Zosima had


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his vision of a floating monastery in the sky. And they revered the aging Zosima, crooked from his years of Arctic labor and leading all-night vigils. In 1471 Zosima received a letter from the monks of the Kirilov monastery, telling him that Savvatii was buried on its grounds. According to his Life, on receiving this news—since Savvatii’s resting place had been a mystery—Zosima asked: ‘‘Brothers, how can we, stupid things, forget about this?’’ and he began an expedition to recover Savvatii’s body and bring it to Solovki. After two days’ travel, Zosima arrived at the monastery and asked that Savvatii be exhumed. Miraculously, he reported, the grave smelled sweet, like fragrant oil. Agitated, the monks opened Savvatii’s casket and found his body perfectly preserved. Orthodox tradition says that an uncorrupted corpse is the surest sign of sanctity. So it was with Savvatii’s body, as the monks gazed down on it after decades in the grave. The overwhelmed Zosima knew that this event would cement Solovki’s reputation, since its founder was so obviously a saint. He organized an immediate transfer of the body to Solovki, where he and his companions were met by monks lining the shore, candles flickering, and incense billowing out to meet the karbas holding Savvatii’s remains. The procession of monks brought Savvatii up to the monastery and put him in a place of honor, near the altar. Looking at Savvatii lying there, home at last, Zosima spoke directly to the bones: ‘‘You have allowed us to bring your holy remains to your place . . . where you worked many years.’’ This ‘‘translation’’ of a holy man’s body was not common in Russia, but the church calendar marked occasions when a saint had been moved from place to place. St. Nicholas, for example, a patron of fishermen in the north, had been moved from his first resting place to a grander cathedral. Now, Solovki’s founder had been translated home. It took many years before the church officially recognized Savvatii’s sainthood, but local believers needed no more proof than his reputation and his uncorrupted bones. In those days, cults of saints sprung up across Russia like mushrooms, never planted by the church and always a bit of a surprise. Local people seemed instinctively to know which men and women were holy, revering them without any leader-


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ship from church authorities. Only later did the authorities officially acknowledge these saints. The archbishop of Novgorod was not the only person to take notice of Solovki’s burgeoning reputation. Some of the elected leaders ( posadniki) of Novgorod took pride in a new monastery on their lands. Merchants and peasants often perceived the monastery as a blessing on their region and a potential help on the road to salvation. Some great landowners, merchants, and peasants, however, could not help but see Solovki as a threat to their own holdings. They reasoned, correctly, that as Solovki grew, it would need more land to feed its monks. Father Superior Zosima complained to Archbishop Ion, himself a most powerful man in Novgorod, that peasants abused his monks, tried to keep them from fishing in freshwater lakes, and trespassed on monastic lands, all the while hurling insults. Sometimes peasants did this of their own accord, Zosima said, but often they acted on orders from the boyars themselves. Though he refused to name names, Zosima intimated that some of the local elite, especially Marfa Boretskaia, instigated the attacks on Solovki’s monks and their legal rights. In response, the archbishop nudged Novgorod’s elite into providing land and usage rights to the monks. In a proclamation, the bishop and a number of local boyars offered fields, forests, and lakes (with all the animals and fish living therein) to the monks to use as they saw fit, saying that neither ‘‘Novgorod boyars nor children of Karelia nor others may trespass on those islands . . . and those who come to the islands to fish or to boil salt or for skins or other things must give one tenth to the House of the Holy Savior and St. Nicholas.’’ 17 To underline their determination, the charter signers also posted a hundred-ruble fine for anyone who disregarded the monks’ rights.18 The posadnitsa (mayoress) of Novgorod, Marfa Boretskaia, remained a problem for the monastery. Boretskaia was an immensely rich woman who held land, salt boiling facilities, and fishing rights across the northern part of Novgorod’s lands. Though no one is sure, she may have owned more than a thousand peasant villages and more than two thousand serf households. Her sons took active part in Novgorod’s affairs and she was a center of intrigue involving Novgorod’s relations with Moscow. Without the support of Marfa, whose husband


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the mayor had died years earlier, it would have been nearly impossible to live peacefully on Solovki or to travel the White Sea.19 During the 1470s, Novgorod was at war with Moscow. In earlier times, Moscow and Novgorod had been two equal principalities. However, Moscow’s ruling princes began to centralize power for themselves, while Novgorod had a republican government run by elected boyars. It hoped to maintain its independence from Moscow and had ties to the Hanseatic League, trading regularly with northern European countries such as Lithuania. As Moscow encroached on Novgorod’s power and trade routes, the grand princes of Moscow also fretted over possible entanglement in a war between Moscow and the powerful King Casimir of Lithuania. Likewise, Moscow worried that victory for Casimir would mean the conversion of northern lands to Roman Catholicism. Worse still, Moscow felt that it could not become the dominant political power in Russia if Novgorod sat on its border, controlling trade with European countries. Marfa felt the pressure of Moscow’s designs and did not want to jeopardize her riches by having a potentially powerful monastery near her lands. She was thus the most recalcitrant boyar when it came to accepting Solovki’s monks, the quickest to denigrate them and slowest to support them.20 Nevertheless, when it was clear that Novgorod’s other great landowners had agreed with the archbishop to charter the monastery on Solovki, Marfa finally gave in. After having snubbed Zosima in her own house by refusing to accept a clerical blessing, Marfa later granted land to the monastery and began inviting Zosima as a guest. The deed of grant states that ‘‘Martha Isaakova of Great Novgorod the Posadnitsa, hereby giveth to the Holy Savior, on Solovetskii, to the Hegumen Zosima and the holy men and monks thereof, her manor on the seacoast, fisheries, earth and water, harvest land and woods possessed by me, Martha, to be possessed by the Father Superior and monks for ever, and whoever taketh away my land from them, he and I shall be judged before Christ.’’ 21 Perhaps to mend the relationship with Zosima and to stay in the good graces of the powerful archbishop, Marfa asked the monk to share a grand dinner at her home. Sitting at her dining table, so different from the austere monastery refectory, Zosima had to marvel at


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the wealth and abundance surrounding him. According to legend and his later Life, Zosima suddenly received a prophetic vision: as he looked around the food-laden table, heads of six guests fell off their bodies. And indeed, in that same year, 1478, Zosima died, and Grand Prince Ivan III subdued Novgorod and brought it under Moscow’s control. To prove his dominion over the independent-minded local nobles, Ivan had those same six men beheaded for opposing him. The monks left sparse information on their lives in the years after Zosima’s death, other than their leaders’ names. In 1485, fire again swept through the monastic compound, ruining churches, burning monks’ cells, and destroying their collection of books, icons, and holy objects. Luckily, the graves of Savvatii and Zosima were left untouched. The monks took solace from Zosima’s last promise: if they prospered spiritually and economically, he said, it would be God’s sign of his pleasure with Savvatii and himself. With that faith, and help from the grand prince of Moscow, the metropolitan of Russia, and the archbishop of Novgorod, the monks began building anew.


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n 1507 (maybe February, maybe June), Stefan and Varvara Kolychev were blessed with the birth of their first son, Fedor. Fedor, the eldest of four boys, and his brothers were expected to grow up to be both pious men and good servants of Moscow. The Kolychev clan was prominent in Moscow and Novgorod, owning land and serfs. One of the influential families in the capital—though not moving in the very highest circles—the Kolychevs sometimes served the tsar himself and sometimes were in conflict with the ruling family. Without doubt, though, the Kolychevs were politically astute, well connected, and very wealthy. Legend has it that Fedor even played with the young Grand Prince (later Tsar) Ivan IV during his early years, while the boy was still under the tutelage of his regents.1 By the time Fedor Kolychev was thirty years old, one of his clan’s many reversals of fortune had just taken place. That year, 1537, some Kolychevs were executed for rebellion. While his immediate family retained their place at court—Fedor’s father was apparently a highranking tutor—the brutal death of uncles and cousins must have affected the young man. On 5 July 1537, just after his thirtieth birthday, Fedor was moved by the following words from Luke 16: ‘‘No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the 26


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other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.’’ On that day, according to legend, he chose to give up serving the tsar and to place his hope in serving the church. Fedor decided to become a monk. He fled northward, toward the Kolychevs’ ancient estates—and toward Solovki. Over the next months, Fedor made his way to the islands. Like St. Savvatii, Fedor had crept away, telling no one about his intentions. On his way (according to the Life written much later), Fedor continued the Christ-like life that he had already adopted; he lived humbly, possessing only the clothes on his back and stopping at the village of Kizhi to work as a shepherd for a man named Subbota. Later, the author of his Life would say that Fedor shepherded ‘‘wordless sheep’’ that he might later become pastor of ‘‘speaking sheep.’’ 2 In the century after Zosima’s death, Solovki had weathered many political and military upheavals in the territory that surrounded it. The leaders of Novgorod the Great were butchered by the Muscovite Grand Prince Ivan III in the course of his drive to consolidate all the grand principalities of Rus. The land owned by Novgorod’s political elite, including that of Marfa Boretskaia and her family, was taken by Ivan III and given to Muscovite princes. This had put Solovki’s holdings into question until Ivan III himself proclaimed that the monastery should retain its land ‘‘and catches and fisheries and belongings and fields and lakes and harvestable land.’’ 3 Except for the fire in the winter of 1485, little more is known about the next century. Solovki’s chronicle calls this the period of ‘‘the fourteen fathers superior’’ and gives little information. The monastery was apparently in stasis.4 In 1534, Aleksei Iurnov was elected father superior, and it was he who welcomed the young man to Solovki. Fedor arrived without the pomp that often accompanied a Moscow aristocrat when going to a monastery. Hiding his surname (which was well known) from the monastic brethren, he revealed it probably only to the father superior, who accepted him as a novice. Perhaps to foster humility, the father superior gave Fedor some of the most onerous jobs at the monastery—moving huge stones from the fields, carrying manure, and cutting wood. Seeing that Fedor did not recoil from hard physical labor nor try to buy his way into the monastery, Father Superior Aleksei


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agreed to accept Kolychev as a monk at Solovki, giving him the monastic name of Filipp.5 The new monk’s work continued to be difficult. Instead of the harshest labor, Filipp received the most demeaning. He toiled in the monastic kitchen and bakery, jobs usually given only to sick brothers who could not do strenuous labor outside.6 While cloaked in obscurity, Filipp received Father Iona Shamin as a tutor. Father Iona had been the spiritual son of St. Aleksandr of Svir and was renowned as ‘‘an elder of an elevated life.’’ 7 The mentor may have been aware of Filipp’s background, since he set Filipp to mastering the intricate rituals and liturgical observances of an Orthodox monastery—work that was fit for a person of good education. Filipp excelled at this task; his mixture of piety and ability led Fr. Iona to prophesy that the young monk would someday become father superior of Solovki. The main cloister was not the only place for monks to live on Solovki, as hermitages dotted the forests and lakes. This was the other monastic tradition in the Russian north—outposts spread across the region where monks could live quiet lives of contemplation and work, coming to established monasteries only to receive the holy sacraments. If Solovki was remote, then hermitages were practically cut off from all human interaction, offering seekers the furthest refuge from earthly cares. The existence side by side of the communal cloister and the hermitages was the result of the complementary philosophies of Sts. Zosima and Savvatii. The larger community sprang from St. Zosima’s vision of brothers working together toward the economic and spiritual security of Solovki. The hermits were the spiritual children of St. Savvatii, who had fled his monastery in the night, looking for a place of physical hardship and mystical promise, a desert where he could live out his podvig. It seems that Filipp was attracted to both of these worlds. Named to the position of ecclesiarch (overseer of rituals), he had a responsibility to the brotherhood. Yet he also yearned for the simplicity of St. Savvatii’s ideal, a place where he could pray in stillness and peace. Indeed, after serving in the cloister, Filipp asked to be let go, mov-


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ing to the forest near the main monastery and secluding himself from everything but confession and Communion. No one knows exactly how long Filipp lived as a hermit, but he was not forgotten by Aleksei or the other brothers at Solovki. As he aged, Aleksei felt the need for help and called Filipp back from his podvig life in the forest to aid in monastery administration. After ten years watching Filipp grow as a leader of the monastery, Aleksei chose him as his successor. Filipp agreed and, after his first trip to Novgorod since taking vows, was ordained a priest and named father superior of the monastery. He served his first Liturgy at Solovki, amid all the pomp the monastery could muster, on 17 August 1548.8 The Life takes pains to show that Filipp ‘‘spent every day extraordinarily with great humility, virtue, and diligence.’’ 9 The problem for Filipp (like Savvatii a century before) was how to juggle the personal desire for humility and stillness with the social needs of monastery leadership. After a short time as father superior, undoubtedly affected by the whirl of ceremony and social obligations in Novgorod when he was ordained, Filipp again left for the forest, letting Aleksei take over as father superior once more. Only upon Aleksei’s death did Filipp return from his hermitage and regain the position of father superior.10 Tsar Ivan IV, who had been crowned just the year before, commemorated Filipp’s elevation by giving Solovki new bells. The largest of these, weighing over three tons, became the centerpiece for a new tower built for the monastery.11 The ringing of the bells became a hallmark of life at Solovki. In good weather, the bells could be heard all the way to the mainland. Filipp’s leadership of Solovki received a blessing at its very beginning. In 1547, Makarii, the metropolitan of Moscow, canonized Savvatii and Zosima as saints. Makarii had been archbishop of Novgorod and himself a donor to Solovki, so he knew that Savvatii and Zosima were revered along the White Sea shores. Believers had prayed to them for generations—merchants, peasants, and fishermen who had been miraculously cured or delivered from peril through the intercession of their local protectors. ‘‘These believing people,’’ wrote the author


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of St. Zosima’s Life, ‘‘who lived close to the sea, held great faith in the Solovki monastery because they saw many miracles of the founders.’’ 12 In the twenty-five years after Zosima’s death, some twelve people were healed at his and Savvatii’s shrine, usually after prostrating themselves at Zosima’s or Savvatii’s grave. A tax collector, for example, was made whole after praying at the tombs and three merchants who could not travel to Solovki regained their health after monks prayed in their stead.13 Zosima and Savvatii were accessible saints, helping out with real life problems and especially aiding peasants. Of twenty-six miracles attributed to the saints over the course of a century, only two were bestowed on nobles, eight on merchants, and the rest on peasants.14 A typical story: somehow, a salt-boiler (a common job in the region) was swept into the stormy White Sea while inside his chren, a very large flat iron pan used to evaporate liquid from brine. As it was not really a boat, the man had to lie down and clutch the edge of the chren, unable to stand, sit, or sleep. Afraid of being taken farther into the ocean or falling out of the chren, he called on Savvatii and Zosima to save him. Shortly thereafter, the chren was grounded and the man saved.15 Zosima’s and Savvatii’s miracles seemed to come in three forms. Most of the time, the wonder-workers (Orthodox terminology for such saints) saved sailors from drowning or healed the sick. At other times, the saints called down the power of God to glorify their monastery. Finally, Zosima and Savvatii regularly interceded on behalf of believers in exchange for a vow—to live a life of contemplation, to make a donation to the monastery, or to work there for a season or a year.16 This last kind of miracle, bestowed in anticipation of a sacrifice as thanks for the saints’ intercession, held particular power in the north. The idea behind it was simple and timeless: believers would offer their labor in exchange for the health or salvation of themselves or a loved one. Solovki’s saints were strongly inclined toward helping Christians who kept promises. One story ends with this admonition: ‘‘When one who is in need comes to [Zosima and Savvatii] with faith or who makes a bequest to give something to the cloister of the venerable ones, or makes some other promise, all these the saints notice and assure salvation and a healthy soul to the one who is promised. . . . It is praise-


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worthy and good to effect the promised affair, but who does not fulfill a promise sins. Then it is better not to make a promise.’’ 17 Almost comically, there was some competition among saints in the north—or rather, competition among the monasteries. It seems that once, many years after Filipp’s time, a certain monk had promised to make a pilgrimage to the Troitsa Lavra near Moscow. On his way, he suffered from a nosebleed that scared him so much that he made a side trip to Solovki to ask for Zosima’s and Savvatii’s help. They refused to aid him, however, and the monk was not restored to health until he fulfilled his original promise. When he arrived at the Lavra, his nose stopped bleeding.18 Once he became father superior of Solovki, Filipp felt a particular bond to Savvatii and Zosima. Especially when he touched objects owned by the abbots, he felt himself to be a kindred spirit with them. The abbot carefully revised Zosima’s psalm-book with his own hands. He found Savvatii’s stone cross and his long-lost icon of Mary. Filipp had it placed above the saint’s tomb with an inscription reading: ‘‘This icon of the Most Holy Theotokos was found by Father Superior Filipp but first brought to the islands by Savvatii, the wonder-worker.’’ 19 Most important, Filipp served the Liturgy clothed ‘‘in the ancient vestments of the saint, that he might be more penetrated by his spirit.’’ 20 As a final glorification of the saints, Solovki received as a gift the church building ‘‘where the reposed Blessed Savvatii had been buried, the Wonderworker of Solovetskii.’’ The church deed included income from the land and river surrounding it.21 Filipp threw himself into the economic aspect of his job, fixing problems that had arisen during Aleksei’s administration. ‘‘Under Father Superior Aleksei,’’ says the Life, ‘‘economic activities were at their most piteous level.’’ As if underlining these setbacks, lightning hit the monastery just as Filipp arrived and fire swept through the monastic buildings. Though later histories claimed that the main church was saved, Solovki’s own account lamented that the entire church was burned and very few icons or liturgical vessels remained.22 Twentyfour books, given in 1539 by Tsar Ivan IV, helped to rebuild the monastery’s liturgical library. The tsar also presented the cloister with in-


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come from villages along the Vyg River. This helped to rebuild Solovki’s buildings.23 As father superior, Filipp also had to dispose of the many gifts that the monastery received. When Marfa Boretskaia had given land to the monastery, she entered a tradition that lasted from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. Believers from every walk of life gave gifts to Solovki, ranging from poor peasants who left pittances at the saints’ shrines to the tsar himself.24 Ivan IV continued to bestow contributions to the monastery, offering munitions, churches, weapons, cash, land, and liturgical items.25 Many people gave large gifts to the monastery, especially peasants who had become well-off through fishing and trade. When they died, Orthodox Christians hoped that their memory would be maintained forever through commemorations during the Eucharist and on special days. To that end, people with means regularly granted Solovki the rights to income from farms, salt works, fisheries, and other economic concerns. In return, the monks of Solovki agreed to pray for the souls of the departed and their kin. In one typical example, Kazarin Dubrovskii and Leontii Ananin offered the quit-rent proceeds from land in the Kargopol and Turchasovskii districts. Likewise, on 29 May 1565 one Filipp Andronov, son of Burak, deeded the proceeds of his fishing rights in the village of Zolotitsa to Solovki.26 Having grown up in a landholding family, Filipp apparently had a clear vision for the economic well-being of the land, people, and income entrusted to him. Undoubtedly, he also understood that Solovki’s burgeoning landholdings often came at the expense of other White Sea residents; Solovki’s archives held records of many disputes with disgruntled peasants or merchants. On the very day of his elevation to father superior Filipp promulgated his first administrative charter. In it, he laid out the appropriate financial obligations for people working on land owned by the monastery. While expecting income from real estate, Filipp was also concerned with servants’ and peasants’ rights, which were not to be infringed on by any other party. Through these charters and savvy stewardship, Filipp was able to make Solovki more productive than ever before.27 Increasing revenue let Filipp begin ambitious projects for the mon-


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astery. The twin demons of fire and water had vexed Solovki from its outset, and Filipp hoped to exorcise them both. Filipp planned to ameliorate flooding by building a system of canals to link Solovki’s lakes, drain its marshes, and concentrate water in places that were useful for the monastery. This was a huge task. Monks, servants, and hired workers had to dig long ditches in the rocky soil. As the canals were dug, thousands of stones were put aside for later use as lining for the banks, to reduce erosion. The work could be done only during the short summer, because darkness and cold kept crews from digging between October and May. Unfortunately, the summer was also Solovki’s short growing season, so the monastery had to find enough workers to complete both tasks. When finished, the canals were wide enough for a small karbas to pass, with oars sticking out but not hitting the sides of the waterway. In all, Filipp directed the linkage of fifty-two lakes on the main island. With trees arching overhead, these canals became one of the most enduring images of Solovki. As the water drained away from marshes and through the canals, it emptied into a newly dug lake at the edge of the monastery. This reservoir, eventually linked to the monastery through large underground passages big enough for a boat, provided fresh water all year round. Fish were stocked in the lake and fish ponds to assure the monks some food no matter how poor the growing season. Solovki’s chronicle noted that ‘‘Filipp the Father Superior . . . brought water to the monastery of fifty-two lakes, and heaped huge stones for their sides, and erected on them a large and high cross.’’ As if to adorn the new canals and Holy Lake, a herd of reindeer were let loose on the island.28 Ironically, given the amount of water there, Solovki’s biggest worry was fire. In the first hundred years of its existence, Solovki had been repeatedly ravaged, since winds off the White Sea assured that any building catching alight would quickly engulf its neighbors. There was only one answer: to build of stone and brick. To do so, however, was a huge task that included developing a brickworks, importing masons, training local workers, and creating plans to fit the material available on Solovki. The new brickyard, built near the cloister, introduced novel production techniques, including the use of oxen to help dig clay instead of relying only on human labor.29


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The first building erected from these materials was the Church of the Dormition, which the monastery built between 1552 and 1555. The new church had four sections, creating a central focus for the entire monastery and echoing the monks’ needs: the church, a cellarer’s chamber, a refectory, and a bell tower.30 Its oddest outdoor element was a large clock, originally made for Father Superior Aleksei in 1539 but installed by Filipp. A church bell tower with a clock symbolized Filipp’s vision for Solovki—the timelessness of faith joined to the exacting needs of worldly economy.31 The Church of the Dormition was constructed under the supervision of two master craftsmen from Novgorod named Ignatii Salka and Stalypa. Looking from the east, the church was quite tall; the building swept downward in a graceful curve, dropping from three stories to two. Churchgoers climbed a bank of stairs on the west side of the structure, built of brick laid on top of huge boulders and covered by a wooden roof. The nave was almost a perfect square, with the east side slightly smaller than the west. Inside, the Church of the Dormition was airier than the wooden Church of St. Nicholas that it replaced. The high central dome let in light, and the walls (where not covered with icons) were far brighter than ones made of wooden logs. Unconventionally, the royal doors, leading through the icon-covered barrier, or iconostasis, that separated the congregational area from the altar space, were offset to the right of center. Just to the left of the doors was an icon of the Odigitria (She Who Shows the Way) Mother of God, in which Mary gestured to Jesus held in her arms, showing the way to salvation. (As Solovki built new churches, a version of this icon would occupy the same place on every iconostasis.) To the right of the royal doors were three icons celebrating the altar-feasts of the monastery, the Dormition of Mary, the Transfiguration of Christ, and St. Nicholas.32 To the side of St. Nicholas, symbolically beginning to edge him out, was an icon of Sts. Zosima and Savvatii. Above the large icons hung at eye level were rows of smaller images that commemorated major feasts and monastic saints. The sides of the building were imposing, with white walls rising sharply from the ground. Its facade was punctuated by windows rising in three tiers, set into the wall and capped with arches. A wooden


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Interior of the Dormition Church Refectory, featuring its huge central pillar (Photograph by William Brumfield)

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roof covered the building and supported wood-shingled cupolas. The refectory was set off to the side of the church along with the cellarer’s rooms. The refectory itself was the largest room in Muscovy to be supported with just a single column. This offered a huge amount of space —some five hundred square meters—for eating and prayer. Under the refectory were a bakery and storage cellar; the bakery helped to warm the refectory during the winter months. In fact, the refectory was so large that it could be used for both eating and prayer. Liturgical services followed different rules when they were celebrated in the warm dining room rather than under the cold, soaring dome of the upstairs cathedral. The chronicle of Solovki made sure to note all the improvements in comfort: ‘‘above the refectory a bell tower; under the altar and under the church a prosphora bakery; under the refectory a bread and kvass [fermented bread drink] cellar; and under the cellarer’s room a bread bakery and flour mill.’’ 33 Seeing the great success of the Dormition church complex, Filipp was keen to begin building again. His Life related that the brothers supported the first effort but balked at building a grand cathedral right away. Filipp paid them no heed, according to his chronicler, and told


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them that God would provide if the monks were truly doing His work.34 The Cathedral of the Transfiguration was to become Solovki’s crown jewel—a unique, massive structure that could be seen for miles across the water. Filipp ordered the foundation to be laid in 1558, just two years after the Dormition church was finished. The cathedral was well named: it transfigured the monastery in almost every way. Larger, more grand, and more distinctive than anything built along the White Sea, the Cathedral of the Transfiguration created an aura of holiness and wealth that was unprecedented at Solovki. Its design, though not unique, was highly unusual: a large rectangle (thirty by twenty-four and a half meters) of white stone and brick, tapering as it reached upward like an unfinished pyramid. Massive and high, the building dominated the view of Solovki from the sea; for this reason, its Novgorod designers created an imposing western facade to be seen from incoming boats. On the top of the building, two tiers of arches led the eye toward a huge sloping drum topped with a massive onion dome, looking a little like a mushroom top but more like a Turkish turban. From the western approach, the main dome seemed to be centered on the building. From the north or south, however, one could see that it was actually nearer the eastern side, just above the royal doors that led to the altar. (Later observers might remark on the building’s resemblance to a lighthouse, and indeed it became a landmark for sailors on the White Sea.) Windows on each side of the octagonal drum flooded the interior with light. Four smaller onion domes sat atop straight drums, marking chapels in each corner of the cathedral. The brickwork, while not overpowering, was intricate along the friezes and arches that outlined each tier of the building.35 The Transfiguration cathedral’s iconostasis far surpassed that of the Dormition church. Four tiers high, much longer and more formal than the Dormition’s, the iconostasis was a symmetrical lattice of icons held together by an ingenious system of frames. As in the Dormition church, the Odigitria Mother of God icon held a special place just to the left of the royal doors. In the cathedral, however, there were eight large icons on either side of the doors, double the number in the smaller church. The deacons’ doors, usually set close to the center of the iconostasis, were set far toward the edges to emphasize the size of the space.36



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Transfiguration cathedral, east facade (Photograph by William Brumfield)


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Three side chapels in the cathedral were dedicated to Zosima and Savvatii, St. Theodor Stratelate, and St. John of the Ladder. Only the chapel of Sts. Zosima and Savvatii, however, had a full four tiers of icons and a set of centered royal doors.37 Climbing up the stairs and entering, one was immediately struck by the size and lightness of the Transfiguration cathedral. Unlike most monumental churches of this period, which had four columns, Solovki’s cathedral had only two. These stood to the side of and slightly behind the main dome, giving a feeling of spaciousness and leaving a clear path toward the altar. The great columns held up an arched ceiling, and large windows pierced the sides of the building in two tiers. The windows were set in such a way as to catch sunlight from any angle, an important concern during the short days of fall, winter, and spring. The windows were set deep into the thick walls, but too high for a lazy novice to fall asleep on the sill.38 Though Filipp was never to see the completed cathedral, it was his pride. The Life reminds its readers, ‘‘With particular love, Filipp was devoted to the building of this temple . . . he took part in the work with his own hands, his excited zeal an example for the workers.’’ 39 While looking after Solovki’s spiritual needs, Filipp also turned toward its bodily ones. Health was a problem at the monastery, one that Filipp tried to correct. First, he built covered walkways from the monks’ cells to the church and refectory so that the brothers did not have to walk in the snow. Second, Filipp introduced a change in diet to help the monks, pilgrims, and workers to complete their assigned tasks. Monks gave up meat as part of their vows; they subsisted largely on vegetables and bread. At Solovki, however, fish was served more often than in other monasteries, and not just on holidays. The rule promulgated by Filipp for Easter Week, Orthodoxy’s greatest holiday, gave some idea of the role of fish in the monks’ diet: ‘‘In Bright Week on all days, fish three times a day on the brothers’ table. From Thomas Week [the second week after Easter] for the entire fifty days [to Pentecost], on Saturday and in the week on Tuesday and Thursday the table has fish twice. On Monday the table has fish once and on Friday on the table once also. On Wednesday and on the leave-taking of Easter [the


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final day of celebrations], the table also has fish. If there is a holiday with an all-night vigil, eat fish.’’ 40 Indeed, Filipp generally made sure that the monks received plenty of food, for platters were shared between only two monks, rather than among four, as was typical in most monasteries. Filipp’s agenda included a complete overhaul of Solovki’s farming. He increased rye production, improved its drying and transportation, and freed up many monks who had previously been employed in grinding grain by building a new flour mill.41 Most dramatically, Filipp modified Zosima’s injunction against female animals on Solovki by developing a dairy farm on neighboring Muksalma Island. From the large and warm brick barns built on the island, the monastery received a year-round supply of butter and eggs, which helped to supply the vitamins and protein lacking in a diet short on leafy vegetables and meat. The Solovetskii Chronicle sounded almost joyful, reporting that ‘‘Under Father Superior Filipp we gained: shchi [cabbage soup] with butter, and also other butter dishes, pancakes and pies, and fritters, and fish rings, and also blancmange and fried eggs. . . . And under Filipp as father superior we gained, brought to us, cucumbers and saffron milk-cap mushrooms.’’ 42 Under Filipp’s leadership, the monastery also devised a system for clothing its members according to their needs. The father superior received the most extensive wardrobe, but none of the 122 brothers in the cloister were forgotten. According to the Rule of 1553: Filipp, the Father Superior, with the priests, and with the cellarer, and the elders of the council and with all brothers, consulting in the refectory, came to agreement amongst themselves on the quantity of garments they shall own: two mantles, and a third one smaller, and two head covers, and three fur coats with a fourth one fur-lined, or with a half-length coat. Loyal elders who regularly attend services shall be given the aforementioned collection or any other articles upon need. To those who wish it so may be given a fur coat of excellent quality and also a medium-quality one, and a fur blanket in addition. And for those brothers living in the monas-


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tery, they shall keep three fur coats, and the elders who do not go on distant trips shall keep three fur coats as well. And the brothers who attend meetings but cannot attend services— they shall keep two fur coats and two cassocks. And those who wish to obtain an additional garment shall be given a third one upon discussion. All brothers shall keep two cassocks and those who wish may obtain an additional linen garment. And those brothers who prefer wearing a linen garment at services shall be given a third one as needed. And those brothers who cannot attend services due to feebleness shall keep one fur coat and one cassock.43 Filipp’s interest in the well-being of his monks is best expressed in a letter of his from Moscow, after he had already left the position of father superior. In it, he linked some of his main interests— building, waterworks, and health—admonishing the monks to keep up his work.44

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And I have sent you ten rubles in coin with the servant, Seliuga, to be used for the pond that is behind the court [later to be called the Holy Lake]. You should clean it well, for the pond will be great and laudable and to abandon it because of human litter would be a sin before God. All former labor would be lost. The dam is ready as well. It only needs to be cleaned. I have ordered the elder Misail and Seliuga the servant to do this. They will make it ready for you and it will bring praise to the monastery. You will then begin to put in fish, for fish will keep well there and will multiply. . . . I sent to you through Gerasim and Seliuga eight rubles worth of kvass. . . . And you, Father Superior Paisii, for the sake of God, prepare a feast for the brethren and the servants, and the children. Serve kvass. . . . May God’s grace and our humble blessing be with you unto ages. Amen.


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s Solovki prospered, its father superior could not help but attract the attention of Moscow. Tsar Ivan IV was a deeply religious man and was undoubtedly impressed by the rising reputation of the monastery, Filipp’s personal charisma, and the long-standing ties between their families. Because of this, the monarch bestowed major gifts on Solovki during Filipp’s leadership, including twenty-five new salt works in 1556 and six other major land grants.1 It was Ivan’s largesse that gave Filipp the opportunity to dig canals, build churches, and raise the standard of living of his monks. Ties between the islands and the capital became closer during the 1550s. As Moscow took on the mantle of the ‘‘Third Rome,’’ Tsar Ivan based his actions ever more on Byzantine political traditions, including the custom of calling a church council to deal with pressing religious questions.2 Ivan used this precedent to bring together leaders from across Russia, charging them with a hundred questions relating to church-state relations, rituals, and property ownership by monasteries. The meeting was nicknamed the ‘‘Stoglav’’ because of the ‘‘hundred chapters’’ of questions posed by the tsar. In 1550–51 Filipp went to Moscow to take part in this church council. Though he left no record 41


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of his time in the capital, Filipp must have made a good impression on the court, since Ivan continued to give liberally to the monastery after Filipp’s return home.3 Shortly after the council, in 1555, Ivan commanded Solovki to take on a new role as a monastery jail for exiled priests. The tsar sent an important prisoner—the former father superior of the Trinity Lavra, Father Artemii. Artemii had been accused of following the heresy of Matvei Bashkin, a Novgorod rationalist who condemned all monastic landholding. Though little is known about Bashkin, it seems that he may have also questioned two central tenets of Christianity, the Trinity and Christ’s divinity. Artemii was condemned for his unwillingness to censure Bashkin, making his own inappropriate statements, and being too lenient by eating fish during Lent. As punishment, Artemii was sent to a ‘‘quiet cell’’ at Solovki where Filipp might ‘‘punish him and teach him Holy Scripture.’’ Filipp was probably not a very harsh jailer—Novgorod clerics were often known for their leniency in cases of heresy. Furthermore, Artemii was the highly respected former abbot of Muscovy’s most powerful monastery. In fact, Artemii was able to escape from Solovki and later turned up in Lithuania, Novgorod’s old trading partner.4 Ironically, five years after Artemii was sent to Solovki, one of his accusers ended up there too. The priest Silvestr arrived at Solovki in 1561 after a somewhat blurry history at court. He was a man of considerable talent and intellect, taking part in religious, political, foreign policy, and legal discussions. He may have been the tsar’s confessor. He may also have authored (at least in part) the Domostroi, a famous manual for the smooth management of upper-class households in Muscovy.5 Officially, Silvestr served as a priest in the Kremlin’s Annunciation cathedral. Unofficially—along with the Metropolitan Makarii— the priest may have provided moral stability to the monarch, holding him back from excesses. Silvestr, it is said, was one of Ivan IV’s closest advisers, a constant companion whom the tsar trusted. In fact, the priest was one-third of an informal council that helped to develop Ivan’s views on landholding, legal reform, and the church. A contemporary of Ivan and Silvestr wrote: ‘‘At that time, at that time, I say, there came to [Ivan] a man, a priest by rank, by name Silvestr,


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a newcomer from Novgorod the Great, divinely rebuking [Ivan] with the holy scriptures and sternly conjuring him in the terrible name of God. . . . [Silvestr] healed and purified [Ivan’s] soul from leprous sores and rectified his depraved mind, in this way guiding him to the right path.’’ 6 Silvestr’s position was actually quite tenuous. As a senior adviser to Ivan, he influenced the young tsar, though Ivan became less dependent on his advisers as he aged. Then, around 1553 a crisis developed, in which an ailing Ivan asked that his closest advisers ‘‘kiss the cross’’ to swear loyalty to his son, Dmitrii, if Ivan were to die. A number of advisers refused, perhaps fearing a long regency. Ivan recovered his health and began to suspect that his advisers were disloyal, scheming to replace him with some other prince to their own liking. Silvestr, as one of the inner circle, came under suspicion. Nevertheless, the priest’s downfall was not quick. He continued to serve the tsar until 1561, when he was banished to Solovki on trumped-up charges of plotting to poison the tsar’s wife. Arriving at the monastery, Silvestr undoubtedly regaled Filipp with stories of Ivan’s military entanglements, disenchantment with his advisers, and increasingly erratic behavior. Ivan’s banishment of Artemii and Silvestr illustrated the changing relationship between church and throne in Moscow. The Byzantine concept of symphonia called for religious and political leaders working together to create a just society and to prepare subjects for heavenly rewards. The church was expected to provide both moral guidance and political support for the state in order to expand Christendom. Under this system, Metropolitan Makarii had no difficulty supporting, for example, Ivan’s war with the Muslim Turks and the taking of Kazan. Likewise, church officials signed on to Ivan’s legal reforms. It was harder, however, for church leaders to sanction Ivan’s personal crusade to centralize his power at the expense of the boyars, whom the tsar trusted less and less. During Lent of 1566, Filipp received a letter asking him to leave Solovki and return to Moscow—but this time as metropolitan. It was an auspicious invitation, since no father superior from Solovki had ever risen to the Russian church’s highest office. If he accepted the offer,


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though, Filipp would have to leave his peaceful islands and go back to a life he had fled decades before. There were conflicting forces affecting Filipp’s decision. First, the father superior was a monk with strong tendencies toward a contemplative life. He had twice fled into the forests of Solovki, following St. Savvatii’s example, to develop his own spirituality. The model of life offered by Savvatii—removal from the world and contemplation— would have counseled staying far away from Moscow. Yet Filipp had also come out of the forest and followed St. Zosima’s guidance, building the monastery into a successfully administered organization. These were golden years for the monastery: the Church of the Dormition was finished, the Transfiguration cathedral almost complete. The mill churned out rye flour, and bricks from the new factory were piling up. The salt trade had grown. Monks had better food and warmer cells, linked to one another through wooden walkways as shelter from the winter storms. Zosima’s example, contrary to Savvatii’s, seemed to indicate that Filipp should use his superior administrative skills in Moscow, if for nothing but the greater glory of Solovki. In other words, the two newly canonized saints offered contradictory guidance to the father superior in his dilemma. To make his decision even more difficult, Filipp must have known that his tenure would not be calm. News had swept from Moscow to Novgorod and then on to Solovki that the tsar’s behavior had turned erratic. In fact, the tsar’s new political organization, the oprichnina, threatened to upend the political and social order of the entire realm. Political life at the very top of sixteenth-century Moscow was guided by three forces: the tsar; princes and boyars from the oldest aristocratic families; and the metropolitan of Moscow, head of the Russian Orthodox Church. The tsar held the greatest military and political authority. He could bestow honors, he could give or take land and life, and he was the final arbiter of political decisions. He was also defender of the faith. Ivan IV, after all, traced his heritage back to St. Vladimir, who had introduced Christianity and baptized his people en masse. Ivan used the title ‘‘tsar,’’ derived from ‘‘Caesar,’’ perceiving himself as a chosen vessel, the protector of Orthodoxy against Roman Catholi-


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cism and Islam, both of which had made significant gains against the Eastern church. Princes and boyars served as both warriors and bureaucrats, defending their vast landholdings and serving the crown in exchange for land to pass on to their sons. (There was no system of primogeniture in Russia. This meant that noble families had to increase their landholdings as their number of sons grew.) By tradition, the tsar decreed his decisions in cooperation with the boyars; official pronouncements included the words ‘‘the boyars advised and the grand prince resolved.’’ 7 All boyars were not equally powerful, though. The system of precedence among families was called mestnichestvo, an arrangement originally based on how close each family sat to the tsar on official occasions. Legal relationships were codified in 1497 as the Muscovite Law Code (Sudebnik), formalizing the structure of Russian political life. The metropolitan, as head of the church, was moral arbiter, unifying force, and source of pride for Muscovites. Bishops of the church had substantial power: they held land, consecrated priests, and shepherded their flocks. They were usually among the topmost members of the elite in any city. Highest among these was the metropolitan of Moscow. Foreigners from Europe even referred to him as ‘‘the Russian pope.’’ The tsar, the boyars, and the metropolitan took part in an intricate dance in which positions, leaders, and partners changed frequently. As with all formal dances, traditions and rituals provided the rules of conduct between partners. When petitioning the tsar, for example, his subjects used the diminutive form of their names (such as ‘‘Ivanka’’ rather than ‘‘Ivan’’) to show their subservience to him. The higher up on the social ladder, the bolder a petitioner might be in his supplication for the tsar’s ‘‘mercy.’’ Innumerable nuances of honor, conduct, and tradition helped to delineate power and responsibility in Muscovy.8 Rituals and symbols also played a vital role in the relationship of the tsar to the metropolitan. Every year on Palm Sunday, for example, the tsar led the metropolitan through Moscow on a donkey, walking while the prelate rode. Their way was cleared by scores of priests, deacons, and sacristans carrying icons, censers, and banners. The people


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of Moscow lined the streets to see the spectacle and to relive, ritually, Christ’s most triumphant public act, his entrance into Jerusalem. The procession also reaffirmed the relationship of church to state in Moscow. Like Christ, the church (symbolized by the metropolitan) was the presence of God on earth. The tsar symbolized the Christian community. Following the logic of the metaphor, however, it was clear that the metropolitan was expected to serve the tsar, just as Christ was a servant to all people. Moreover, the metropolitan might even be called on to suffer for the good of the people, just as Christ had suffered for the salvation of others.9 Clothing was an especially powerful symbol in Muscovy. Monks wore black robes and some of them—the most devout—had skulls and bones embroidered on their robes as reminders of being dead to earthly cares. Bishops had ornate robes, woven to specifications for their particular dioceses. Only the metropolitan wore a white cowl, the legendary symbol of Byzantine ecclesiastical power. Boyars had their own clothing, including dramatically tall fur hats and long, warm coats. No one but the tsar, however, could don the Cap of Monomakh—the fur, leather, and gemstone crown that declared his sovereignty and his linkage to the Byzantine empire. Formal clothing was like a military uniform, illustrating (to those who could read the symbols) each person’s place in society. Even with its elaborate rules, customs, and symbols, the dance of power in Muscovy often had an improvisational feel. It would seem that the relationship among the groups would have been well defined. In fact, this was not the case. As the tsar gained power, he did so at the boyars’ expense—a fact not lost on the old families, who constantly took part in intrigues to raise their status at court. And what about the church? It provided a moral compass (one of the most famous books of canon law was called The Rudder) but often bumped up against the prerogatives held by the other groups. Could the metropolitan, for example, reprimand the tsar for his sins? Could the church hold land to pay for its own needs? Which was more powerful—the religious suasion of the church or the political power of the tsar? Dance partners also changed. First one boyar family, then another, acted as regents for Ivan when he was a child. As regents were replaced, the balance of


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power was altered. The Kolychevs, for example, went from favor to disfavor a number of times in the first half of the sixteenth century.10 The relationship between church and state became even closer during the time of Metropolitan Makarii and Ivan IV. Through his compilation and editing of two important texts, Makarii had underlined the tsar’s linkage to both secular and spiritual antiquity. These books, called the Great Reading Menaion (Velikie Chestii-Minei) and the Book of Degrees of Genealogy of the Tsars (Stepnaia Kniga Tsarskogo Rodosloviia), provided historical and theological arguments for the tsar’s position as defender of Orthodoxy and leader of a people chosen by God— the ‘‘Third Rome.’’ 11 The two books were not rarefied texts—they were organized to be read daily, often out loud. Taken together, they helped to make the tsar stronger than the metropolitan but also dependent on him—the defender of the faith could hardly disavow the church’s most important representative. The entire delicate balance of Muscovy’s dance of power was undermined by Ivan’s creation of the oprichnina. Ivan used this term, which originally meant the widow’s portion of an estate, to describe his private realm—a principality within Muscovy where he had total control. This domain, with its capital near Moscow at the Alexander Settlement (Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda), was meant to give Ivan a respite from the attacks he imagined from everyone in the zemshchina, the name for all the realm outside of the oprichnina. Servitors and courtiers in the oprichnina were not taken from the great families but rather from lesser nobles who pledged a personal allegiance to the tsar. These men wore black capes like monastic cassocks and adorned their horses with symbols of dogs’ heads and broomsticks. It was their responsibility—with Ivan’s blessing—to sweep away all the dogs who were not loyal to the tsar. In the largest sense, the oprichnina was the tsar’s method for concentrating power upon his own throne. If the boyars’ power could be broken, then Ivan, chosen by God, could centralize his kingdom and rule it in a Christ-like way. Ivan thought of himself as a Christ figure, the father of the Muscovite people. The tsar interpreted his role through the lens of Paul’s words in Ephesians 5:23—‘‘For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is


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the savior of the body.’’ Ivan interpreted the ‘‘husband’’ to be the tsar, heading the sacred people of God. As such, he reasoned, the tsar could ‘‘save the body’’ of Muscovy from evil. Any action against the tsar was, therefore, a blasphemy against God Himself. On the basis of this ideology, Ivan believed that only he could save the kingdom. He seems to have developed a vision of himself as both martyr (to the boyars’ disloyalty) and judge. If the boyars did not bow to his desires, they made him suffer because they refused to suffer. He had no choice but to sit in judgment, meting out punishment to those who did not follow him. In the restrained words of one chronicler, Ivan ‘‘came to hate the towns of his land’’ and declared that ‘‘part of the people should be ravaged and put to death.’’ 12 The oprichniki, who ranged in number from a thousand to six thousand, were Ivan’s avenging angels, wreaking terror, rape, and pillage across Muscovy.13 They ran rampant, mixing hours of prayer each day with frequent whipping, beating, and murder of Ivan’s opponents. Combining piety with debauchery, the oprichniki would sit quietly at meals while the tsar himself read from the Lives of the Saints. Having eaten, they would then tear across the land on their huge warhorses, making martyrs of innocents, peasants and aristocrats alike. A favorite torture: dousing the victim first with boiling, then freezing water— over and over ‘‘until his skin came off like an eel’s.’’ Only then would they return to the Alexander Settlement for more penitence, religious ritual, and rest. If all of this sounds insane, perhaps it was. One biographer of the tsar wrote that Ivan IV ‘‘had a connoisseur’s appreciation for the skill of the torturers and the endurance of the sufferers. Coming away from Mass, his head still filled with angelic music, he enjoyed the contrasting pleasure that came from following the slow death of his victims. The spurts of blood, the cracking of bones, the screams and rattles of drooling mouths—this rough cookery smelling of pus, excrement, sweat, and burnt flesh was pleasing to his nostrils. . . . To him, prayer and torture were but two aspects of piety.’’ 14 Many noticed the deranged look in the tsar’s eyes, the satanic glee with which he skewered servants with his own dagger, and the selfdestructive murder of his own heir. Terms such as ‘‘paranoid’’ and


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‘‘schizophrenic’’ spring to mind whenever Ivan IV’s name is mentioned. In fact, he may have been as mad as a hatter, for when his body was exhumed in the mid-twentieth century, extremely high levels of mercury were found in the tsar’s bones. Mercury poisoning, which causes insanity, was perhaps the side effect of a treatment for spinal disease.15 Ivan’s madness and the oprichnina were the main background features of the life that awaited Filipp when he became metropolitan. Leaving Solovki in July 1566, Filipp had to travel through Novgorod on his way to Moscow. According to his Life, the father superior was besieged by Christians supplicating him to save their fatherland from the wrath of Ivan IV, now often given the title ‘‘Ivan Groznyi’’—Ivan the Terrible.16 The tsar’s rages, blood lust, and bizarre behavior had touched all of his realm since the creation of the oprichnina. Filipp knew that his work would be difficult and he hoped to influence the tsar. When the monk arrived in Moscow, according to a chronicle of the period, the tsar and an assembled church council ‘‘compelled Father Superior Filipp to the metropolitan’s position. And Father Superior Filipp said that the Tsar and Grand Prince should leave aside the oprichnina. And should the Tsar and Grand Prince not abandon the oprichnina, it would be impossible for him to be metropolitan.’’ 17 The tsar, not surprisingly, was outraged at Filipp’s stipulation— his ‘‘royal anger’’ was inflamed because a churchman had dared to question the monarch. Filipp showed remarkable self-assurance. He was being asked to serve in the highest church position in the land, yet he chose to make a moral stand immediately, although he knew that the tsar could not accede to such demand, since it would have shown the tsar’s inferiority to the metropolitan. Filipp apparently gave in almost immediately, realizing that he could not force the tsar to stop the oprichnina. Instead, Filipp must have concluded that it was better to influence the tsar for the good— perhaps even slowing the rate of murders—than to make an untenable stand before taking up the crosier. Having decided to accept the position, Filipp was immediately ‘‘commanded not to interfere in the Tsar’s daily affairs. . . . And that upon accession he would not leave the metropolitanate because of the oprichnina or the Tsar’s daily affairs.’’ 18 In


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compensation for Filipp’s promise, Ivan IV offered the metropolitan a large consultative role. In other words, Filipp was to have more political influence than his predecessors while also being faced with a far more difficult situation than they had had to deal with. On 24 July 1566, Filipp became metropolitan of Moscow. In a long ceremony attended by the tsar, his family, and hierarchy, Filipp was made a bishop, served the Liturgy, and finally was invested with the white cowl of his office. To the cheers of ‘‘Bless, master!’’ he stood before the assemblage in the Kremlin’s Dormition cathedral. Filipp carried two candlesticks—one with two candles and the other with three—with which to make the sign of the cross over the crowd. This form of blessing was reserved only for bishops. Stepping down from the royal doors in front of the altar after his final blessing, Filipp walked to the front of the cathedral where an entourage awaited him—a donkey to ride and priests to assist him as he processed around the city, blessing poor and rich alike, until he finally arrived at Ivan’s palace and then his own quarters. The next eighteen months of Filipp’s life have been largely hidden from record. He was confronted almost immediately with a deadly plague that ravaged the entire land. Churches had to be closed, people quarantined, and travel forbidden. Once the plague had taken its course, the metropolitan got busy with the administrative chores of his position—consecrating priests, overseeing the metropolitan’s extensive landholdings, and writing opinions on religious and political matters. In this last capacity, Filipp supported Ivan’s ongoing hostilities with Roman Catholic and Muslim leaders—the ‘‘godless Crimean Khan, Devlet-Girei—with all his Muhammedanism and Latinism— and the Lithuanian King, Sigismund Augustus, and the heathen Germans who have fallen into many different heresies—particularly Lutheranism.’’ 19 Between the plague and the military campaigns, Filipp had little time to worry about the oprichnina. Always present, it nonetheless seemed less hideous than before. Then events turned for the worse. The tsar came home from his conflict with the Lithuanians. His oprichniki again began to terrorize the Muscovite population. Ivan’s archenemy, Prince Andrei Kurbskii, wrote of one such massacre: ‘‘And they say that they were all led to


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the slaughter straightway, altogether eighty souls with their wives and children; and the babes, sucking at the breast, who could not yet talk and were still playing in their mothers’ arms, were carried off to the slaughter.’’ 20 In two famous incidents, the metropolitan Filipp remonstrated with the tsar. The first time occurred on 22 March 1568. One chronicle simply states that ‘‘Metropolitan Filipp began to quarrel with the sovereign about the oprichnina.’’ Other descriptions, however, are much more dramatic. On that Sunday, Filipp was serving near the altar when the tsar and his retinue arrived at church. The metropolitan was resplendent in his liturgical robes but the other men were all wearing the semimonastic garb of the oprichniki. Clothed like them ‘‘in black robes,’’ and a hood, the tsar approached the metropolitan for a blessing. Filipp, facing the altar, refused—three times!—to turn and bless his monarch. Why? The tsar was wearing not the clothing appropriate to his station but rather the quasi-religious garb of his henchmen. Filipp could not abide this affront to the symbols of both monasticism and monarchy. Having been ‘‘penetrated by the spirit’’ of St. Zosima by wearing the saint’s poor and tattered robes, Filipp would not recognize his sovereign masquerading as a holy man while acting as a murderer. A contemporary traveler described the exchange between Filipp and Ivan: ‘‘How long do you wish to shed the innocent blood of your loyal Christian people?’’ asked Filipp. ‘‘How long will falsehood reign in the Russian realm? . . . Realize that, even though God has elevated you in this world, you are still a mortal man and God will inflict punishment on you for the innocent blood being shed.’’ Ivan, outraged by such effrontery, countered that ‘‘until now I have been humble before you, Metropolitan, and I have been humble with your followers and with my realm. Now you shall come to know me!’’ 21 With this encounter, the relationship between the two most powerful men in Moscow turned a corner. Filipp fled his official Kremlin residence for a monastery on Nikolskaia Street in Moscow. Whenever he could, the metropolitan openly upbraided the tsar’s men, mocking them as ‘‘Mohammedans’’ for wearing caps in church. The tsar responded by searching out a way to get rid of the cleric so opposed to


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the oprichnina. According to Prince Kurbskii, he gathered ‘‘together against the bishop his foul councils of the priests of Beelzebub.’’ 22 Finally, the tsar sent out four men—including the archbishop of Novgorod, Pimen, who had consecrated Filipp as metropolitan—on a mission to find something terrible about him. The conspirators concocted a weak story of ‘‘indecorous’’ behavior, perhaps even sorcery, seeking out witnesses from among monks at Solovki who did not like Filipp. Among them was the new father superior of the cloister, the monk Paisii. Though no one knows their reasons for speaking against Filipp, greed and ambition may have played a part. Some of them were offered money, while Pimen could have succeeded Filipp as metropolitan, leaving Paisii to take over as bishop of Novgorod.23 Filipp, not surprised by the accusations of his tormentors, offered to shed his robes of office in November 1568. They declined to let him step down, instead waiting to pass sentence until he was next publicly serving Liturgy. On the next day, 8 November 1568 (the feast of St. Michael), Filipp was again standing at the altar in the Dormition cathedral when the oprichniki stormed in. This time, however, he was not able to ignore them. Interrupting the service, one of Ivan’s lieutenants opened a scroll and read out the judgment against Filipp. Other oprichniki took their cue and swooped down on the metropolitan, ripping off his bishop’s robes while beating him with brooms. The faithful of Moscow shrank back, weeping as their advocate was carted off to a monastery prison. Having imprisoned Filipp, Ivan continued his wild mood swings. He apparently set aside a few coins every day for Filipp’s upkeep but also took vengeance on members of the Kolychev clan. In all, some ten men were murdered because of their kinship to the metropolitan. Having beheaded a certain Ivan Kolychev, the tsar reportedly had the head sent to Filipp wrapped in a leather bag with a note: ‘‘This is the head of your kinsman. Your sorcery did not help him.’’ 24 Kurbskii wrote that chains dropped from Filipp’s limbs, and a starved bear, put into Filipp’s cell to eat him alive, instead lay down and slept. Ivan, however, allegedly saw these miracles as evidence of black magic rather than holiness. Caught in the last steps of their dance, however, neither Ivan nor


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Filipp could avoid the other. The tsar sent Filipp away from Moscow because crowds had begun to form near the prison, waiting to glimpse the holy man if he were moved out of his cell, where he was guarded by a particularly boorish lout named Stepan Kobylin. Ivan therefore had Filipp transferred north to Tver, at the monastery of Otroch. At the same time, the tsar began preparations for a final military campaign against the northern cities of Tver, Pskov, and Novgorod—the last being the historic home of the Kolychev clan and a rival to Moscow. Arriving in Tver, Ivan again encountered Filipp, who was imprisoned there. In an act of murderous irony or schizophrenic piety, two days before Christmas the sovereign sent a messenger (an infamous oprichnik named Maliutka Skuratov) to the holy man’s cell. The tsar, it seems, wanted Filipp to bless the campaign. Filipp refused to take part in such mockery and said he would not see the tsar until he had repented of his evil. Whether by design or in rage at Filipp’s impertinence, Skuratov took matters into his own hands and suffocated the monk. The martyred metropolitan was the first of thousands to die in Novgorod, Tver, and Pskov that winter. Ivan ‘‘indulged his wantonness,’’ wrote one oprichnik, and ‘‘had monks tortured, and many of them were killed. There are three hundred monasteries inside and outside the city and not one of them was spared. Then the pillage of the city began.’’ 25


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he rape of Novgorod, Pskov, and Tver was a symbol for Ivan the Terrible’s murderous rule during the oprichnina. The oprichniki ran wild, looting and burning as well as slaughtering nuns, monks, priests, and children in this bid to humiliate the proud northern cities. And then, as if spent from his excesses, Ivan took his minions back to his ‘‘personal realm’’ and settled down for the winter of 1570. In the last two years of the oprichnina, 1571–72, Ivan vacillated between ruthlessness and piety, between the Alexander Settlement and Moscow, even between wives. As he aged, Ivan took on and then repudiated one woman after another, a total of eight wives in all. As if to curse the future as well as the present, Ivan’s conduct also affected the succession to the throne. The tsar hated any check on his royal power from the boyars, yet in his last years he could not assure an heir. On 19 November 1581, Ivan murdered his eldest son, Ivan Ivanovich, as the prince defended his young wife against the tsar’s rage. The heir died in Ivan’s arms, the father immediately repenting his sin but unable to bring his son back to life. Within two years, Ivan was dead and his throne passed to another son, Fedor Ivanovich, who was mentally retarded, physically sick, and too young to rule. 54


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Russia’s neighbors took advantage of Ivan’s erratic behavior and often made military incursions into Muscovite territory. Poland and Livonia were constantly at war with Ivan IV, who also proposed a crusade against Muslims in the south. It was in the north, however, that Ivan was most seriously challenged, engaging in almost continual warfare with the Swedes from 1570 until the peace of 1583 when he was forced to cede large sections of the Baltic (including all of Estonia) to Sweden. When word of his death in 1584 arrived in Stockholm, the Swedes again prepared to attack Muscovy, pushing their way into the White Sea region. War begat war for the next thirty-five years. Playing a part in the defense of Muscovy, Solovki became the final outpost against Swedish invasion, the northern outpost of Orthodoxy. A repentant Ivan the Terrible had cleaned house at Solovki after Filipp’s murder, sending into exile Father Superior Paisii and the others who had slandered the metropolitan. In between fits of terror, the tsar gave the cloister gifts amounting to 5,372 rubles to commemorate those killed by the oprichniki and another 2,493 rubles to remember his family members in prayer. Oddly, though, the penitent tsar never gave money to commemorate Filipp, the one victim most closely associated with Solovki.1 The gifts bestowed on Solovki by Ivan the Terrible and others helped to make up for the loss of income from the monastery’s landholdings during the wars with Sweden. In 1571, Swedish ships appeared near Solovki. By 1578, a contingent of ninety-five musketeers was placed at Solovki under the command of Mikhail Ozerov. The monastery was expected to pay for its own defense, and its chronicle bluntly stated that ‘‘From this time onward the upkeep of the musketeers was on the bill of the monastery and was therefore unfairly managed separately from the abbot of the monastery.’’ 2 A battery of harquebuses—small cannons of about 160 kilograms—arrived the next year. The ‘‘German War’’—so called from the word nemtsy (‘‘mute ones’’), which at this time denoted all non-Orthodox foreigners but eventually came to mean ‘‘German’’—dragged on across the White Sea region. Though Solovki was rarely in immediate danger, its lands on the mainland were ravaged by ongoing hostilities. In 1579, the Swedes killed Mikhail Ozerov and many of his men, and they were replaced im-


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mediately by Commander Andrei Zagriazhskii and a slightly smaller contingent. The area around Kem, a settlement on the mainland immediately across from Solovki where the monastery owned much of its land, was taken over completely by the Swedes, who moved in thousands of troops. Finally, in 1581 the Baltic city of Narva, was overrun by mercenaries under the Swedish military leader Pontus de la Gardie and Russia agreed to an armistice.3 The armistice was broken in 1590, and the five years of war that followed were the most disastrous for Solovki’s economy. Up to that point, the monastery had usually been able to collect revenues from trade and salt. During the 1590s, though, the sparse population along the White Sea was largely killed off or fled. The worst fighting was around Kem, an area owned half by Solovki and half by the government. The tsar authorized the transfer of Moscow’s portion of the land to monastery authority in 1591, hoping to calm tension in the area and to repay Solovki for some of its losses. The fighting continued unabated until 1595, however, and from 1593 to 1598, Solovki was unable to collect income from the mainland except for the proceeds of six salt works, three horse farms, some bakeries, and a few other sources.4 The war also had an impact on the building plan for the monastery. Except for one stone church, dedicated to St. Nicholas and begun in 1577, all major new construction by the cloister was designed for its defense. In 1585, for example, Solovki began building a stone fortress at the mainland settlement of Sumskii Posad (later also known as Sumskii Ostrog) to house both monastic workers and musketeers encamped there. Then, in 1584, began the most dramatic and lasting transformation of Solovki itself. An order arrived from Moscow, in the name of Tsar Fedor Ivanovich, ordering the monks to construct ‘‘around the Solovetskii monastery a stone fortress for protection from the Germans and all warring people, often threatening the ruin of the cloister, because of how close the Swedish border has come.’’ 5 The new wall was to become the defining feature of the monastery—a symbol of strength and endurance. Curiously, very little information has survived about the process of building the walls. The name of their designer is known—a Solovki monk named Trifon Kologriev (or Kologrivov), a native of the village


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of Nenoksy. He was aided by a master builder from Vologda named Ivan Mikhailov. They based their design on a wooden stockade built at the decree of Ivan the Terrible in 1578, which itself replaced a fence surrounding the grounds. The walls designed by Kologriev and Mikhailov were a triumph of engineering. The largest stones at the base of the wall were some seven meters long, a foundation for the boulders and bricks set on top of them. Though the stones were selected to fit next to each other, they were not cut; rather, smaller boulders and bricks were inserted between the larger rocks, creating an impregnable wall. ‘‘The walls around the monastery,’’ wrote one chronicler, were ‘‘made only of stone. It took at least two or three hundred men to drag the largest stones.’’ 6 Surely the stones were levered out of the earth during the summer but then moved only during winter, when sledges slid more easily over the frozen ground. As the walls rose, they also grew slightly thinner, and the stones toward the top were smaller than the boulders below them. Atop the small stones were placed bricks from the Solovki brickworks. The fortress towers had tall wooden tent roofs crowned by cupolas. This system of moving from boulders to brick to wood allowed Kologriev to create a strong yet sophisticated silhouette. The walls seemed to rise naturally from the soil, especially as moss and lichens eventually grew up the sides. The colors—gray, blue, green, brown, red, and white— blended seamlessly into the rocks, water, and sky of Solovki. Though not necessarily designed for their aesthetic appeal, the walls of the monastery entranced visitors with their organic beauty. The plan of the fortress was a large pentagon with five corner towers and two side towers. Each tower stood out from the wall, offering 270-degree fields of fire and allowing gunners in the towers to defend their entire side of the wall. The towers were the strongest parts of the wall and the most dramatic. Each of them had five embrasures, wide at the back and narrow toward the front; guns could be swiveled ninety degrees from one side to the other but the opening itself was a small target. Stone walls came about halfway up the gun rooms, with brick-arched ceilings above them to provide defense from incoming cannonballs. Then, above the embrasures, a series of small windows girdled the towers, flooding the gun rooms with light and letting out



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The Transfiguration cathedral rising behind Solovki’s mammoth walls and tower (Photograph by William Brumfield)


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smoke from the cannon. Huge beams hewn from tree trunks supported the floors of each of the four levels of each tower, acting also as braces to hold the structure together.7 Each tower received a name—the Watch (Korozhnaia) and Nicholas (Nikolskaia) were on the northern corners; Archangel (Arkhangelskaia) and Spinning Mill (Priadilnaia) were opposite each other on the southern corners, and the White (Belaia) Tower stood at the point of the pentagon. The Dormition (Uspenskaia) Tower stood in the middle of the western wall, flanking the main Holy Gate. Two more towers stood on the outside of the wall, enclosed by stone but separated from the rest of the monastery. These towers—the Kvass-Brewing (Kvasoverennaia) and Cook’s (Povarennaia) towers—were added later. They were smaller, square structures that guarded the outbuildings, separated from the rest of the cloister for fire safety.8 The east and west walls were about 250 meters long; the short walls of the pentagon were about 90 meters. Along the walls, the builders placed many embrasures, spaced eight to ten meters apart. Inside, wooden walkways hugged the entire structure, making it possible to move troops from one part of the fortress to another with ease. Entrance to the fortress was restricted to a few gates. The most important was the Holy Gate on the west wall, equidistant from the Archangel and Spinning Towers. Shortly after the walls were finished, Kologriev designed a small church above the Holy Gate, dedicated to the Annunciation. Thus, when arriving from the bay through the gate, visitors passed under the ‘‘Gate Church’’ and saw the Cathedral of the Transfiguration rising before them. The walls of the cathedral, which leaned inward as they went up, were mimicked by the walls surrounding the monastery. The Holy Gate was about five meters wide and tall enough to pass through on horseback. Each of the other gates was situated near a tower. Some, like the Nicholas or the Archangel, were large enough to walk through. The entrance nearest the bay—fittingly called the Fish (Rybnye) Gate—was a small archway piercing the wall, too low for a man to stand. All the gates were fitted with thick wooden doors clad in iron, that could be closed quickly. Above each gate the builders made a small niche to hold an appropriate icon. The grand


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Holy Gate eventually had a portico attached to it, better to shade people who were waiting to be allowed inside. The fortress walls had water on two sides—the manmade lake on one side and the bay on the other. To facilitate movement of flood water out of the lake and to power grist mills, the monks had built a canal along the north side of the monastery. This was now enclosed in a culvert beneath the walls, as was another waterway toward the southern edge. More than flood control or ease of access, the two underground water tunnels assured the monastery fresh water for an unlimited time, even under siege. With this final addition, Solovki became a state-ofthe-art fortress. It was an outpost of Muscovite authority—both sacred and secular. Halfway through the building process, the father superior (Iakov, who had studied under Metropolitan Filipp) asked that Solovki’s most famous son might be moved to the monastery. Remembering the ignominious role that some Solovki monks had played in Filipp’s downfall, the monastery petitioned the tsar to ‘‘Grant us our citizen Filipp, who was exiled from his throne by the calumny of his disciple and who was buried in a place that was foreign to him. From youth he labored together with the elders of the monastery and now we are bound by duty to rectify the harm that his disciples caused him. Your imperial permission will again grant us that blessing of which we have been deprived.’’ 9 The tsar gave his consent.When Filipp’s body was exhumed in 1591, according to the stylized text of his Life, monks rejoiced to testify that his body was incorrupt. This was an automatic way to establish a saint’s sanctity and thus a reason for great celebration at Solovki. Father Superior Iakov went himself to Tver to translate Filipp’s remains back to the monastery. The procession northward, first by land and then by water, was greeted by believers all along the way. The news of Filipp’s incorruption had traveled quickly along Muscovy’s rivers and the folk wanted to see the miracle for themselves. Finally, after ten years, in 1594 ‘‘the fortress building was completed. It was erected from wild, unpolished, large and medium stones, making one circular-oblong wall. . . . At the end of this, in the entire monastery, for the memory of his work [Kologriev] was entered into


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Reconstruction of the monastery at the end of the sixteenth century. Entrance to the monastery was through the Holy Gate on the western side between the towers marked ‘‘9’’ and ‘‘10.’’ The monumental churches dominate the center of the pentagonal complex. (Drawing by M. Miltchik)

the book of commemoration without charge, for as long as the cloister exists.’’ 10 It seemed that the completion of the fortress, linked with the growing cult of St. Filipp, augured a new era for Solovki. What army could be strong enough to overcome those walls and to defeat a martyred father superior? In fact, the war with Sweden ended on 8 May 1595, offering respite from decades of fighting. Sweden and Moscow signed the Treaty of Teusina on 18 May, which ceded Narva (a town that would remain a sore point between the countries) to ‘‘the mightiest lord King Sigismund and the Swedish Crown’’ while retaining trade rights for ‘‘his royal highness, magnificent lord, Tsar and Grand Duke Fedor.’’ 11


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The peace lasted only a short time. Just one year after Stockholm and Moscow had concluded their pact, the Roman Catholic church instituted the Union of Brest (in Poland), creating an Eastern-rite Catholic church. In other words, Orthodox were offered a place in the Catholic church, complete with their own traditions, if only they allied themselves with Catholic countries and submitted to the jurisdiction of the pope. Moscow was inflamed about the Unia, as it came to be called, seeing a veiled attempt to control Orthodox regions. Just as worrisome was the political union of Sweden and Poland under a single Catholic king—Sigismund—who continued to have designs on Muscovite territory. To make matters yet worse, Tsar Fedor died. His regent, Boris Godunov, maneuvered to take the throne when Fedor’s widow (and heirdesignate) entered a women’s monastery. Godunov may have been the most capable ruler in a generation, but he did not have hereditary legitimacy because he was not a direct descendant of Ivan IV. Additionally, the mysterious death of Ivan the Terrible’s last son—Dmitry—cast suspicion on Godunov and offered the opportunity for pretenders to arrive, each claiming to be the living Dmitry and therefore the rightful heir to the throne. From 1604 to 1613, Muscovy suffered under its most intensive civil war to date. This was the smutnaia vremia—Time of Troubles—that threw all Muscovite society into a cycle of invasion, famine, and suffering. Perhaps because it was both far away from the capital and important to defense, Solovki suffered little as one tsar followed another. During the reign of Boris Godunov, for example, the cloister was ordered by the archbishop of Novgorod to pray that Godunov be preserved from a pretender (the False Dmitry) ‘‘who was a traitor and an offender against the Cross of Christ.’’ 12 Godunov did have some direct dealings with Solovki, but he did not take the same interest as had Ivan the Terrible. In fact, no one in power in Moscow felt obliged to support the monastery significantly during the Time of Troubles. The government aided Solovki in matters of defense but largely forgot about it as a place to bestow gifts. Local people, on the other hand, saw the monastery as a refuge from and bastion against all enemies. Donations from peasants,


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merchants, and monks continued to rise, as did hopes for the intervention of its saints. Russians of the far north, after all, had no great love for Moscow, so when times got difficult it was natural for them to turn to ‘‘their’’ saints for help and succor. In 1601, when a fire ravaged the mill and other wooden buildings, the monastery had funds to rebuild in stone—a better defense against fire but far more expensive than wood. The Church of the Veneration sprang up in just five years (1596–1601), in addition to stone crosswalks, military and monastic storage rooms, and even a stone library—all built during the Time of Troubles. At least twice, the great fortress walls protected Solovki from assault. In 1610, Polish troops had captured Moscow, a catastrophe that led some Moscow regiments to turn to Sweden for help (since relations between Poland and Sweden had soured). The next year, a combined Swedish-Russian force retook Moscow. This, however, only strengthened Sweden’s domination of the White Sea region. Novgorod fell to Swedish invaders in 1611, at which time the Swedes pressured Solovki to support Swedish interests in Moscow. The monastery’s chronicle reports that Father Superior Antonii had written to the Swedish king, saying that ‘‘he did not want to have any foreign tsar.’’ 13 In apparent response to this rebuke, the Swedes set sail for Solovki in 1611. Yet, for some unknown reason (the monks believed the Swedes were rebuffed by Sts. Zosima and Savvatii) the fleet returned to the mainland, never sending troops ashore.14 The Swedes would never again attack Solovki. At least once more, however, the brothers of Solovki were endangered without even knowing it. This time, it was the English who contemplated taking the monastery. English adventurers had arrived in the White Sea in 1553, when they first made the passage from England to Moscow via the White Sea and then the Dvina River southward. Soon, diplomatic relations between Ivan IV and Elizabeth developed. At one point Ivan even proposed marriage to Elizabeth, and then seriously asked for the hand of one of her ladies in waiting! So also did trade between the two countries, and by 1585, the tsar founded Archangel, a town devoted to merchants where foreigners were forced to conduct all their business with Muscovy. Englishmen, who saw their trade


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diminish during the war with Sweden, even helped to negotiate the peace settlement between Sweden and Muscovy in 1595.15 During the Time of Troubles, English merchants, soldiers, and spies saw new opportunities for their country and themselves. Thomas Chamberlain, an English captain, traveled with a huge contingent of mercenaries—some fifteen thousand in all—that had been sent to Russia by King Charles IX of Sweden. They arrived in 1609, at a time when the Poles had invaded Moscow and there was no tsar on the Kremlin throne. Chamberlain realized that northern Russian land was ripe for picking by England, since Moscow could not protect its borders. In 1612, the captain appealed to King James as a savior who could impose order in a troubled land. He wrote that ‘‘the people themselves’’ of Russia were ‘‘without a head and in greate confusion . . . willing and even by necessitie compelled to cast themselves into the armes of som prince that will protect them, and to subiect themselves to the government of a stranger, seeing they have none left of their owne fitt to undertake yt.’’ 16 Without the king’s help, Russia might fall to the Poles, with their crafty Jesuit advisers. In that case, England would be sure to lose its influence in Russia.17 Chamberlain described the trip from Archangel down the Dvina River toward Vologda, remarking on the ‘‘flax, hempe, cordage, pitch, tarre, tallow, and masts (necessary materials for our navy), furres of all sorts, wax, hony, bever for hatts, hides both of oxen, kine, and buffes, sope ashes, oyles both of linseeded and hempseede, caveare etc.’’ He intimated that, once ‘‘salt and fishe’’ came from the north to the Volga River, bound for more-populated central Russia, customs duties alone would amount to ‘‘60,000 pownds a yeare and better.’’ 18 In other words, northern Russia was awash in goods that England needed. There was an obstacle to this golden stream of fur, honey, fish, and oil—the fortress monastery called the ‘‘Abbaie of Solofskie or Sollaveskie.’’ Although English ships did not have to pass Solovki on their way to and from Archangel, the islands did threaten Chamberlain’s plan, since they could be used as a stronghold from which to harass English vessels in the White Sea. What was more, the monastery’s income from gifts and trade made it arguably ‘‘the richest place this daie in the worlde,’’ according to an anonymous author who sent a descrip-


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tion of the monastery to London, outlining the sources of Solovki’s wealth, its walls, and its importance to Russia. The Abbaie of Solofskie or Sollaveskie is situat with in the Whyte Sea uppon the Terretorie of Russia uppon a Peninsula or neck of land stretchinge into the same sea some good distance from the bodie of the main Continent of Russia. It is sometimes in the nature of an Island by reason of a smale brooke crossinge the neck theirof which with the meltinge of the snowe for that time becomes a Sea, and is not to be passed other then by boates to that part where the Abbaie stands. This Abbaie or house of monkes hathe the reputation to be the richest place this daie in the worlde. The veines from whence theise springes of Treasor shoulde flowe does ryse sundrie fountaines. Their Emperors owte of an anncient grounded opinion held of the hollines of thes place have ever used at their deathe to send most rich presentes and much Treasor to it because they maie from the cheif of their Covent receave a Comendatorie billet or scrowle to St. Nicolas the Russ his patron in heaven, shewinge the bountie of their Emporer to his principall howse uppon earthe St. Solofskie. This Abbaie hath also continuall guestes from all partes of that Empire from everie riche man at his deathe for the obtayninge of thise Commendatorie Billetes to their Saint, everie on beinge confident, accordinge to the measure of his grieft to this howse to receave his per ferrmt in heaven. This hause also a great contribution jearlie from 30 other rich Abbaies over whom thies howse havinge a kynde of Metrapollitan Superintendancie swaiéthe, and unto whom they doe yearlie paie móst rich and lardge stipendes. They have by maine other Conduicts great store of per sentes and monies which dailie comes to them from all partes of that lardge Empire. And on thinge is speciallie noted of them that whatsoever Treasor comes into their howse it never sees the light abroad more unless sometimes uppon exstra-


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ordinarie occasion of warr, they send théer Emperor monies which uppon the shuttinge up or end of the same is dulie repaied again. But of this place and of the riches their The Russian merchàntes are able to discorse at lardge, and so can others besydes the merchànts. How the same is to be compassed if the kings mats by yor Grace his procuremt wil be at the chardge of men and shippes, with gods hilpe I will contryve if it be comitted my trust. The howse or Abbaie is in circuite twyce as lardge as the Tower. It is of late within theise 12 yeares fortified with Bulworkes and good store of great ordinance, it had a garnison of 1500 soldiers. I dare not saie good ones the Russes beinge a most Cowardlie nation. It is not good to attempt it with a lesse nomber of soldiers then 5000. The shippes for that place migt drawe no more water those which the Muscovie companie weare wont to send for those seas. It will be best and with the least suspiciow to set forthe the voyadge from which the harbor of Caelbegges and Loghsmille in the North of Ireland which harbors doe open uppon the broad sea the occean even over against the North Cape of Norwàie by which or shippes must pass on their voyadge, their waie lyinge from theme by the loard howse and thence longst the coast of Lapland untile they turne into the whyte Sea. The soldiers maie be raised in Ireland part of companies and the rest of other men. The pretext maie be for some exployt to be done uppon the western Isles. For victualles their maie be butter pork and bisquit, provyded in Ireland and for beef duringe the time the armie shalbe at the water syde and in harbor, and for on Month after, but for the rest of the voyadge it wilbe best to provyde english beef. The victualles their wilbe beter cheape if readie money whylst the shippes lie in harbor, but for no longer time. It will be necessarie to victuall for vj monthes, though I hope the voyadg maie be performed in 3 or 4 monthes.


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Their must be Canon, demy a canon and Culverin for batterie, if otherwyse wee cannot prevaile by scallodoe, and Pettarces. Their must alsoe be some myners if neede be and muntion powder, match and lead with store of great shott.19

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Although the author of this document mistook Solovki for a peninsula that turned into an island only during the spring thaw, he did give an accurate picture of the monastery’s reputation and strength. And though he may have overestimated the cloister’s garrison—surely there were not fifteen hundred soldiers on the island—the Englishman did perceive the symbolic importance of Solovki, claiming that it was St. Nicholas’s ‘‘principle howse upon earthe St. Solovskie.’’ And while he underestimated the Russians as ‘‘a most cowardlie nation,’’ the author did not question the strength of the monastery’s ‘‘Bulworkes and good store of great ordinance.’’ He expected to need five thousand English and Irish soldiers to capture the monastery from its fifteen hundred defenders, even if he ‘‘dare not saie good ones.’’ The project to invade Russia apparently made its way around James’s court through the spring of 1613, when a detailed list of points was drawn up to offer ‘‘the North part’’ of Russia for ‘‘the Kings protection.’’ 20 A French mercenary, Captain Jacques Margeret, continued to push James I, advising him to attack Muscovy through the port of Archangel. The captain appealed to James’s sense of royal legitimacy, the possibility of trade, and his Protestant beliefs: ‘‘One could no doubt,’’ wrote Margeret, persuade the Russian Orthodox ‘‘quickly to acknowledge their error by use of the Old and New Testament . . . and consequently bring them to embrace the true word of God.’’ 21 Perhaps it was this overoptimism that warned off King James from the adventure in northern Russia. Perhaps it was news, arriving in summer, of the accession of a new tsar, Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov. For whatever reason, the attack on northern Russia—and Solovki—was scuttled.


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hat a sight was Solovki in 1614! In that year a new father superior, Irinarkh, was installed. He inherited a monastery that had weathered every storm, natural and political, defended itself from invaders, and become rich and powerful even as Novgorod the Great languished under Swedish rule. Solovki had fulfilled St. Zosima’s promise that the monastery would grow and prosper in all ways, if it followed a godly path. By that year, Solovki had extended its control over thousands of square kilometers of land, received rents or taxes from hundreds of salt-boilers, and built churches throughout its properties. The monastery had thrown up stone buildings and surrounded itself with an impregnable wall. In the middle of the fortress was the Cathedral of the Transfiguration—a proper symbol for a community that had transformed the stony islands into a wealthy fortress monastery. Yet perhaps Solovki had become a little too successful. St. Filipp had been torn by the desire for spiritual stillness and the need for good husbandry of Solovki’s resources, vacillating between forest and cathedral. As Filipp had become a leader and martyr for the whole Mus68


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covite church, Solovki too had become prominent for its defense of the motherland against Swedish aggression. It was, by 1614, a wealthy and powerful place, a destination for pilgrims, soldiers, and prisoners from the rest of Muscovy. How could it retain its original simple life of prayer and podvig? In the first half of the seventeenth century, Solovki was blessed with three new saints: Father Superior Irinarkh and the monks Nikifor and Eleazar. Each of them represented a different aspect of the life of the monastery as it ended its second century. Irinarkh was an emblem of Solovki Triumphant—its walls and cathedral and riches. Nikifor signified Solovki Conflicted—the struggle between desire and obedience. Eleazar symbolized Solovki Repentant—trying to eschew riches for a simple life. Like most of the cloister’s leaders before him, Irinarkh was a monk of Solovki—he had been tonsured on the islands and had lived his life among the monks. They were a close-knit group of men, almost all coming from among the peasants, artisans, and merchants of the White Sea region. In the north, the yoke of serfdom was not so heavy as in other parts of Muscovy during the seventeenth century. Most men and women of the White Sea region were quite free to work and live as they saw fit—as long as they paid quit-rent to landowners. In an area rich in resources but poor in agriculture, almost everyone did some other kind of work. In fact, lower-class people could sometimes become quite wealthy from trade, trapping, fishing, or salt-boiling, and it was their sons who mostly filled Solovki’s monastic ranks. The monastery’s attraction extended quite far, though, and men came from other towns and cities along the Dvina River and as far south as Moscow. After the White Sea coast, in fact, Moscow contributed the most novices to the community.1 In the seventeenth century, there were usually around 300 or 350 monks living within Solovki’s walls. In order to keep order among them and to improve their search for the ‘‘angelic life,’’ the monastery had a strict system of hierarchy. First, each monk was assigned to an elder (starets), a monk of many years’ service who acted as his spiritual father and taught and mentored him. Obedience to the elder was


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an integral part of monastic training. St. Filipp had done the humblest jobs in the monastery when he had arrived there, learning humility and submission to the father superior, who was his first spiritual elder. The elite of the monks were those who voted on the most important matters of monastic affairs, a group often called the ‘‘Black Council.’’ 2 In addition, there were inoki (men who had become monks in preparation for death) and novices who served the elder monks.3 Though all these men lived and worked together, the council elders had special privileges, including servants to keep them comfortable. Monks did not have to leave behind their family wealth when they entered Solovki and many gave substantial sums to the monastery. Some received income from these outside sources and bought extra goods directly from the cellarer. Just below the father superior in rank and privilege, the cellarer (kellar) and treasurer (kaznachei) controlled most of the monastery’s wealth. When Filipp built the first stone church at Solovki, he added both a refectory and a cellarer’s chamber to it. This had sent a strong statement about Solovki—its life was to be equal parts liturgy, community, and economics. Indeed, the cloister was proud of its economic accomplishments, seeing them as proof of Zosima’s continued blessing. By the mid-seventeenth century, the treasury of Solovki took up two floors. The upper chamber held gold, coins, precious stones (especially pearls), important papers, and clothing. When a monk died, a basket of his personal effects sometimes ended up in the treasury.4 On the lower floor were kept more mundane but still valuable items including oil, honey, and incense.5 Though lower than the father superior, cellarer, and treasurer, many other monks held offices of some kind. For each task in the monastery there was a person in charge. St. Filipp had been ecclesiarch— master of liturgical rituals. Priests and deacons had a special place in the cloister, since only they could administer the sacraments. Icon painters and singers helped to beautify liturgical life. One of the most important of the monastic officials was the budilnik (‘‘watchman,’’ although in modern Russian this word also means ‘‘alarm clock’’), the monk who made sure that each member of the community arrived at church, refectory, or other place at the appointed


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time. He noted who was not present at prayer and why; likewise he helped assign jobs for monks. The budilnik must have had the strongest influence on the everyday life of most monks, since the life of the monastery moved in strict rhythms, intricately linked to the day, month, and season of the year. In his tasks, the budilnik received aid from the many bells across the monastery. Only a few of these hung in traditional bell towers, while most dangled from beams close to the ground. Instead of pulling bell ropes as was done in the West, bell ringers held the ropes in their hands, looped them around their arms, and tied them to seesaw foot pedals attached to the bell clappers. Standing in front of the bells, draped in cords, the bell ringers resembled marionettes, their arms and legs moving independently of each other. Different bells alerted the monks to various tasks. From Filipp’s time onward, a large clock tolled the hour. It was often drowned out, though, by bells from the many other towers, calling the monks to prayer or meals. The huge bells given as gifts by Ivan the Terrible hung in the ‘‘Filipp Tower,’’ which was different from the ‘‘everyday towers’’ and others. And sometimes, remembering the ancient ritual of poor monasteries, the budilnik clapped two pieces of wood together in a rhythm that sounded like a precursor of Morse code—‘‘short, long; short, long; short, short, short, long.’’ The monastery Rule gave intricate instructions on when and which bells to ring: For Matins . . . use the big bell during the whole year, without fail. . . . During regular days and for supper ring the everyday Filipp tower, then sound two everyday towers. And at Matins ring the big towers. Then, during midnight services strike the wooden clappers and after midnight services, ring the final two towers. During Great Lent [during the Hours service] ring the Lenten Tower. And strike the wooden clappers. . . . For supper (with shchi) ring the Lenten Tower then ring the everyday two towers. When there is no incense, ring the Lenten Tower, then strike the clappers. At Sunday Vespers: on Saturday at the chosen time the budilnik comes to the father superior, receives blessing, and


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summons to supper. And also ring all the bells for brothers and laity and workers to assemble and go to Vespers.6 As the men of Solovki came from fields or workshops, the bells told them the time of day, the church service about to start, and the importance of the holiday to be observed. Throughout Lent, only the most somber bells pealed; during Bright Week (the week after Easter), all the bells of the monastery sounded in a joyous cacophony. Life at Solovki was linked to hierarchy, liturgy, and ritual. Meals, which took place in the huge refectory built by St. Filipp, were among the most ritualized of all activities. The linkage between meals and prayer went further than obvious parallels to the Eucharist—liturgical services were regularly held in the refectory, making it both a place to dine and a church.7 Solovki monks continued to eat a lot of fish, especially after Filipp built and stocked the lake and ponds. In addition, the Rule of Solovki called for soups—especially cabbage shchi, tree-mushrooms, ‘‘regular’’ mushrooms, and salted cabbage. Beets appeared regularly and turnips could be cooked in at least three different ways. There was porridge made from oat flour or porridge made from barley. There was ‘‘dry porridge’’ and ‘‘wet porridge.’’ Best of all, there was porridge stirred with fresh cloudberries or foxberries as sweetener. From St. Zosima’s time onward, there was no dearth of food put out for the monks. This was a harsh environment and the men needed strength to work in the cold.8 Like church services, meals at Solovki had their own rhythms, rituals, and protocols. These covered the entire meal, including the order of being served, the food to be eaten, and the prayers to be said. The Rule speaks eloquently on the subject: And then they sit down on the left under the icon of Christ across from the left choir. And they wait until all the brothers have received shchi and the brothers [eat together] at the table. The budilnik . . . and the newly-appointed servers take their places around the tables and bring food and drink in rows for the tables, and they learn this from the father superior before


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and after the daily meal. And all brothers eat the soup they were given. Then the budilnik gives the father superior a cup with kvass and takes it to the table. And after, the table-waiters bring the rest of the food. And the brothers have their cups. The cellarer takes a cup from budilnik and puts it before the father superior. And he takes a few steps backwards and says: ‘‘Lord bless and have mercy!’’ And he also sounds the klandia [a small bell] three times. And the brothers all get up. Only a priest and deacon say ‘‘Give food to the poor and let them be sated and let the needy praise Him. And let their hearts live forever. Praise Him’’ two times; then ‘‘Lord bless.’’ And the father superior blesses with his hands both the brothers and the laity. And then the father superior says ‘‘Bless this food and drink for Your slaves both now and ever.’’ The people gathered say ‘‘Amen.’’ 9

Tseng 2004.1.29 13:34

Before cleaning up the refectory, however, one more ritual remained: passing out of the dora, or prosphora—the bread set aside during commemorations for the dead during each Liturgy. By Orthodox custom, communion bread was leavened and made into small loaves. During the Liturgy, the priest cut sections from seven loaves to be placed in the chalice; the rest was reserved as the dora to be given out later, especially to brothers who had not taken communion. At Solovki, after dinner the dora were broken into pieces—smaller ones for priests and larger ones for brothers, who ate it ‘‘one piece at a time and put it on a spoon in front of themselves while awaiting a blessing.’’ 10 Having eaten their fill—the word ‘‘sated’’ comes up repeatedly in the Rule—the brothers waited while salt cellars (three per table) and leftover bread were taken up. No one was allowed to take food with them from the refectory, especially into their own cells. The monastery choir chanted a short prayer, the brothers asked forgiveness of the father superior (or cellarer, if the abbot was not present) for their sins, and left for their private cells. Other men besides monks also learned the rhythms of Solovki. In fact, under Irinarkh, the number of laymen on the islands rose signifi-


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cantly. There were the servant laborers (slugi), worker-pilgrims (trudniki), and soldiers. During the summer months especially, the monks’ ranks were augmented further by poor cotters, Cossacks, merchants, and other free men who wandered the region. To differentiate themselves from paid laborers—of which the monastery had hundreds—worker-pilgrims had three names on Solovki. The most common of these was trudniki, a word that meant ‘‘workers’’ but also connoted difficulty or labor. Sometimes, the trudniki were called godoviki, ‘‘year-workers,’’ which described how long they lived at the monastery. Finally, these men were also called obetniki —‘‘promise makers’’—because they were making good on a vow made to Saints Zosima or Savvatii. Sailors awash on the White Sea promised their time to the saints in return for safe harbor; fathers offered their children’s labor if the saints helped them to recover from a dire illness. When worker-pilgrims arrived at Solovki, the cloister expected them to live a monastic life, wearing cassocks and caps in a monastic style and giving up all personal possessions. Food, clothing, and shelter were all provided by the monastery but also owned by the cloister. (In this the trudniki were different from other workers, who were paid and who had some possessions of their own.) This encouraged humility and obedience to sacred authority—traits that the monastery hoped the pilgrims would retain when they returned home. On at least one occasion, even women came to the monastery for work. A certain Ivan Tsykoev sent his daughters Fed’ka and Zakharka to the monastery to work ‘‘as a contribution from their father.’’ 11 Chapter 30 of the Rule was devoted to ‘‘trudniki, when they can work and when they cannot work.’’ Six days a week, the monastery expected the pilgrims to toil, except ‘‘On the [highest] holidays . . . and on the two holidays of Nicholas the Wonder Worker, on the three holidays of Our Fathers the Saints Zosima and Savvatii of Solovetskii, on all these holidays the servants and the workers do not work, but they go to the church for prayer.’’ 12 Father Superior Irinarkh apparently saw the value of this tradition, which linked monastic life to that of the laymen around the White Sea. In fact, Irinarkh built stone living quarters for the trudniki, as well as an infirmary with one floor dedicated to the brothers


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and the other to the laity—mostly trudniki and soldiers—who lived at the cloister.13 And, though subordinate to the monks, the trudniki did receive some monastic benefits not accorded the servants or paid workers, receiving strong kvass and hand-candles during Bright Week. ‘‘On Zosima’s memorial day; during Transfiguration; and on the translation of the relics of Zosima and Savvatii the Wonder Workers; and on the Assumption of the Mother of God; and on the memorial day of Savvatii the Wonder Worker; and on the two holidays of Nicholas; and on the Nativity and on the Baptism of the Lord, they are given candles but brothers’ [that is, weak] kvass. . . . During Bright Week, they receive white bread on Monday, and on Tuesday of Bright Week, bread and kvass. Likewise, in remembrance of Metropolitan Filipp and in remembrance of the superior German, [they receive strong] kvass.’’ 14 Even in death, Father Irinarkh apparently continued to help the trudniki of Solovki. According to legend, in 1642 a trudnik named Ioann Emelianov hurt his hand in the monastery’s smithy, where he worked. Wrapping his hand in a kerchief, Ioann went to his cell (which had, by the way, been built by Father Irinarkh) and prayed long and hard for three nights. On the third night, Ioann looked up to see Father Superior Irinarkh standing outside his cell, with another, unknown, man. In the vision, Father Irinarkh sprinkled holy water with a brush onto Ioann’s hand and then disappeared. Looking down, Ioann saw that his hand was healed and the kerchief, in which it had been wrapped, was wet.15 Military life on Solovki also expanded under Father Superior Irinarkh. The newly crowned tsar, Mikhail Fedorovich, was worried about threats by the Swedes, Danes, and others. Father Irinarkh addressed those concerns in 1621 by building ‘‘stone cells for the use of lay people during the period of a siege and . . . finishing . . . a moat around the walls of the monastery.’’ 16 Even so, the tsar wrote to Irinarkh two years later, responding to a report that the monks of Solovki were living ‘‘in great peril’’ from the Danes, who had pillaged nearby. The monastery took on even more soldiers—who by then numbered 1,040— and reinforced the fortifications in Kem and Sumskii Ostrog, where the monastery held much of its land. In fact, the protection of Solovki from invaders was one of Irinarkh’s great accomplishments, noted even


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by his hagiographer: ‘‘Humble and meek, always immersed in godly thoughts and podvig pursuits, at the same time, at the will of the tsar, he undertook defensive measures against external enemies—Swedes and Danes.’’ 17 Life for soldiers at Solovki—including musketeers and infantry— was not easy. The tsar, reasoning that the soldiers kept the monastery safe, obliged it to pay for their upkeep, including some 700 chetverty (147,000 cubic liters) of bread. For their part, the soldiers had a difficult life in harsh circumstances, far from home and other sources of income, so that desertion and drunkenness were common. One directive declared that the soldiers should engage in no ‘‘stealing, no beating, the murder of no one, no killing, no keeping whores, no playing zerno [a card game played for money] and no thievery.’’ 18 The monastery paid for its extensive defenses, its strong garrison, and its numerous labor force through massive economic enterprises that grew during Irinarkh’s tenure as father superior. Solovki developed both religious and secular interests on the island and on the mainland: ‘‘The veines from whence theise springes of Treasor shoulde flowe doe ryse sundrie fountains’’ wrote the English spy. Together, they provided enough money to offer Solovki’s monks a comfortable life, full of artistic, liturgical, and personal comforts. Inside the cloister’s walls, all kinds of work took place. The foremost occupations—other than priest or deacon—were in the shops producing icons for use by the monastery and sale to pilgrims. Though icons had certainly been painted before Irinarkh, he opened an icon studio in 1615, perhaps in response to the renovation of the Transfiguration Cathedral’s iconostasis, which had begun in 1613.19 A cottage industry of images portraying Zosima and Savvatii grew up as stories of their miracles spread across the White Sea region. Taking the place of Nicholas (the traditional patron of seafarers and giver of presents), Zosima and Savvatii became ubiquitous images in icon corners of homes owned by peasants, fishermen, and merchants. The most extravagant icon available was one that depicted Zosima and Savvatii standing over a miniature Solovki, devoid of buildings or walls. Fifty-six smaller icons surrounded the main image, each one depicting


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Tseng 2004.1.29 13:34

Icon commemorating Solovki’s saints, probably of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, though in an earlier style. The center of the triptych shows Christ flanked by Mary and St. John the Divine. The left side portrays St. Filipp, St. Nicholas, and St. John the Baptist. The right side has the Guardian Angel, St. Zosima, and St. Savvatii. The entire icon could be folded into a single square and worn on a cord around a pilgrim’s neck. (Photograph by Bill Owen, courtesy of Richard Cook and Terry Lahti, Allegheny College)

a scene in their lives or a miracle associated with the cloister. Painstakingly painted, the miniatures appealed to people who already knew the saints’ stories.20 Other icons of Solovki showed the two saints holding the islands, walls, and churches tiny in their hands. The founding fathers, this icon seemed to say, were the columns holding up the cloister, the pillars of Solovki. Still other images portrayed the monastery in various stages of building, realistically enough to help date churches and buildings illustrated. These icons almost invariably showed the White Sea around the island, full of waves, merchant ships, and huge fishes or sea monsters. There was no denying the importance of all these elements—the saints, the sea, the cloister, and its visitors—which found their way into holy pictures.21 More down-to-earth shops in the monastery made jackets, hats, cassocks, and boots that became famous across the north. Sheepskin and cloth flowed into Solovki from the monastery’s buyers in Vologda, Suma, Turchasov, and Kargopol, while copper was fashioned into eating and serving vessels. The bakeries turned out bread and communion loaves from rye and wheat milled just outside the walls. There were


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stone stables with attached living quarters for stable workers, who took care of the seventy horses and hundred oxen used as beasts of burden, plus the dairy herd.22 Overshadowing most agriculture was the income derived from fishing rights along the lakes, rivers, and seacoast in the northlands. Much of the populace of the region were involved in fishing at some level, either for subsistence or trade. By tradition and law, one-tenth of all fish caught in local waters were to be brought to Solovki—a huge haul that could be eaten, salted, or sent south for sale.23 Even fishing, however, paled in comparison to salt as a source of Solovki’s wealth. Without the good fortune of salt production, Solovki would have probably stayed a minor monastery with little influence on Russian history. With salt, however, its fortunes were far more impressive. The name ‘‘Solovki’’ was itself derived from the Russian word for salt. From the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, salt was the centerpiece of Solovki’s development, and by the early seventeenth century the monastery was the greatest producer of salt in the north: ‘‘From of old the Solovki monastery has had not eternal heritable estates; they feed themselves from their own labors; from the beginning of the life of the venerable Zosima and Savvatii, the wonder-workers, they have boiled salt by the sea. . . . And at Vologda they sell it; and with those salt monies at Vologda and Ustiug they buy every sort of provision for the supply of the monastery.’’ 24 To make salt on a large scale, Solovki needed to mobilize every resource available to it—land, labor, engineering, timber, and time. Salt could be extracted from seawater, but there were higher yields and greater profits to be gained by taking highly salinated brine from deep in the earth, a natural occurrence along the White Sea. As with oil wells centuries later, knowing where to drill was a crucial first step to success. Long hours were spent looking for plants that thrived in high-salt environments so as to locate the right spot to find salt water. Once the spot was found, the real work began. Above a well dug to water level, the drillers erected a drilling rig—two high posts with a cross beam in between. The cross beam held the drill, a long and heavy wooden pole tipped with iron.Workers hauled the drill high into the air and dropped it into the hole, over and over again. Each


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thud of the drill only pushed the bit a tiny way further into the earth. A whole day of this work at times resulted in sinking the hole by only about five or ten centimeters. For months they pulled up the drill bit and let it hurtle to the ground. If the ground was not rocky, a thirtyto sixty-meter hole might take four, five, even six months to drill. If the soil was full of rocks (all too typical for the White Sea geology), drilling for brine could go on for seven or eight years in one spot.25 As brine finally gushed upward, it had to be held in a large well and moved through earthenware pipes to the boiling house. Built of wood with high windows but no chimney, the boiling house enclosed the huge fires that evaporated water from brine, leaving only the white gold of salt behind. The water flowed into a large shallow pan called a chren—Solovki’s often had an evaporation area of some sixty-six square meters—made of iron strips fastened together. A new chren cost about sixty rubles, enough to buy grain for twenty families for an entire year.26 To add to the expense, the salt continually ate away at the iron, meaning that the chren needed constant repair. The monastery had to pay a blacksmith to maintain each chren, adding yet more expense. These huge flat pans were the stuff of legend—a man stuck in a chren that washed out to sea could be saved only through the intercession of Sts. Zosima and Savvatii. To heat the chren, each saltwork needed wood, and a lot of it. In 1623, the government in Moscow issued a decree limiting the amount of wood each saltwork could keep on hand to one year’s supply and calling for more organization in the felling of trees and the hauling of wood to the boiling houses. One salt pan typically used six hundred sazhen of wood in a year. A sazhen was a stack of wood about eighty centimeters wide, two meters high, and two meters long—a little more than three cubic meters—so that a single salt pan consumed almost two thousand cubic meters of wood every year. Solovki had to employ an army of workers to boil so much salt. By Father Irinarkh’s time, the monastery produced almost two million kilograms of salt a year in more than fifty saltworks dotting the region. For each pood (36 kilograms) of salt produced, the monastery could buy three poods of rye. In 1639, a year for which exact data are available, Solovki sold 120,736 poods (1,977,655 kilograms) of salt, for a total


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of 12,889 rubles—enough money to buy grain for forty-three hundred families for one year.27 Thus, the sale of salt—especially when added to that of fish and other products—produced vast revenues for Solovki. Salt enabled the building of cathedrals and walls. Salt bought fur for coats and silk for vestments. Salt fed ‘‘brothers, and servants, and gunners, and riflemen and musketeers, and workmen, and all the working people.’’ 28 Salt imported gold leaf for icons.29 Salt made the ‘‘desert’’ of Solovki bloom.


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he great wealth that Solovki had acquired could not help but affect life there. The islands had been known for their monks’ podvigi, their ascetic acts, but by the time of Father Irinarkh’s leadership, it seemed that the pleasures of life had begun to creep up to Solovki’s shores. In his Life, Irinarkh’s hagiographer portrayed a man who quietly and successfully developed the financial and strategic aspects of Solovki without losing sight of his own spiritual growth. While Irinarkh was himself a humble, pious man, however, other monks began to indulge themselves in worldly pleasures. In 1619, the brothers received a letter from the new tsar, Mikhail Fedorovich, upbraiding them for laxity. Nor was this the first time they had received such an epistle, which asked why they were ‘‘filling themselves with honey-kvass and sour kvass, and have altered the previous monastic rule.’’ Tsar Mikhail also admonished the monks against taking food into their cells from the common refectory.1 Finally, he exhorted the monks of Solovki to live within their vows, not doing ‘‘anything with self-will’’ but rather submitting themselves to Father Irinarkh and the council of elders.2 Just two years later, the tsar again felt the need to chastise the 81


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monks. On 9 February 1621, during the pre-Lenten period, when Orthodox began to contemplate their sins, Tsar Mikhail wrote to the brothers: ‘‘It has been heard by us that in the Solovetskii monastery, some of the brothers maintain a life not according to the Divine Rule and not according to the Holy Apostles and Holy Fathers, and not according to the teaching of our fathers Zosima and Savvatii, the Solovetski Wonder Workers, but want to go along according to their own wills.’’ He went on to outline the ‘‘relaxed and worldly activities’’ that had been reported in Moscow, including ‘‘going carelessly to the holy church’’ and other misdemeanors. The tsar felt it necessary to repeat the warnings yet again in 1637, reiterating that the brothers were living according to their ‘‘own will, and because of this unruliness you are not able to restrain the revelers without our decree.’’ 3 Among the worst sins reported to the tsar—who was also apparently unable to stop them— were heavy drinking, coarseness, fighting, and robbery from the offices in the monastery on the part of laymen and soldiers.4 In fact, it was just these close quarters with nonmonks that helped to create problems at Solovki. Soldiers had become an everyday part of the scene on the island. Together, the monks and soldiers defended the northern border of Muscovy, sometimes even losing contact with the capital. In such situations, it was natural that the monastery would develop and cherish its independence.What other monastery could claim it did more for the motherland? Proud and independent, it bristled against outside influence on its affairs. Solovki began to chafe against rules set down a century before, when the monastery was not so successful or wealthy. If God had smiled on the cloister through the intercession of its saints Zosima, Savvatii, German, and Filipp, who was to rebuke it? Why should the tsar, who had billeted soldiers to the monastery, be surprised if the monks adapted to soldierly ways? Who could blame the ‘‘church Babylon’’ if it strayed from the narrow path of the podvig life? 5 Even as Solovki was stretching its wings, the Muscovite church had begun trying to exert control over its far-flung monasteries. In 1586, Russian ecclesiastical power had been considerably strengthened: the metropolitan of Moscow (the post held by St. Filipp) had become a patriarch. This was significant because it placed the bishop of Mos-


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cow on equal footing with the great historic centers of the church— Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome. Bishops of other major cities, including Novgorod, then received the title of metropolitan, which had previously been reserved for Moscow’s prelate. With this new situation, the Russian church had stronger authority as defender of the faith against Roman Catholic and Turkish-Muslim interests. Likewise, the patriarchs sought to centralize their own authority over a vast land filled with dioceses and monasteries—each one of which had its own traditions. Slowly, the lines between Solovki and Moscow were drawn. During periods of national emergency—especially during Tsar Mikhail’s early reign, when Polish invaders took Moscow and held Patriarch Filaret (the tsar’s father) hostage—Solovki was left to look after its own affairs and to be a stronghold against foreign aggression. Once peace settled over the land, Moscow would begin a campaign to rein in Solovki. The patriarch or the tsar would decry laxity at the monastery and temporary changes might result. Mostly, though, the cloister continued to follow its own customs and desires rather than toe the line prescribed from the Kremlin. Trying to control affairs at Solovki from Moscow was difficult—the long list of letters repeating the same instructions confirms that. The tsar decided, therefore, to begin appointing Solovki’s abbots, sometimes confirming the brothers’ choices and other times imposing an outsider onto the monastery. This led to a virtual revolving door of fathers superior—in the last half of the seventeenth century, they rarely served more than six years, often only two or three. When the tsar sent Father Rafael, a former archimandrite in Astrakhan, to Solovki, the monarch even wrote a letter saying that Rafael was ‘‘a good man, and you should love him with Christian love without any guile.’’ 6 Another abbot was reportedly beaten up by the monks when they disagreed with him.7 The monks undoubtedly blamed the intrusion of outsiders for their problems, though the tsar continued to receive reports that pointed the finger at the brothers themselves: ‘‘They drink excessively and their drunkenness frequently results in great hostility and rebellions. . . . This internal turmoil causes frequent changes in the leadership of the monastery: abbots come and go and much of the


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time they have been without any abbots at all. As things stand now, the monks have gotten used to living according to their own free will.’’ 8 Even while censuring Solovki’s internal affairs, the tsar retained a high regard for some of the monks. In 1604, for example, Father Superior Isidor left Solovki to become the metropolitan of Novgorod. While in that office, he called on another Solovki monk—Iosaf, who had come to Solovki from a high-ranking noble family—to assist him. After service in Novgorod, in 1621 Iosaf received the post of archimandrite at the important Pskov-Pecherskii monastery, not far from Moscow. He was promoted to archbishop of Pskov just six years later and endured the wrath of the tsar when siding with Pskov’s citizens in a petition to keep out foreign traders from the city. Nevertheless, his name was put forward as a candidate for patriarch and he ascended the throne on 6 February 1634. During his time as patriarch, Iosaf championed the printing of liturgical texts and the establishment of discipline in churches, including standing resolutely through services, maintaining order near the altar, and celebrating services at the appointed hours. He never forgot Solovki and continued until his death to send newly printed books and financial contributions to his home cloister. Solovki’s prestige also grew in the 1620s, when the cellarer of the Troitsa Lavra, Avraamii Palitsyn, chose to retire to the islands to live out his days. Palitsyn was, in some respects, the savior of Muscovy. In 1612, he had succeeded Patriarch Germogen as de facto leader of a ‘‘militia of the land,’’ which had to be raised in order to oust foreigners from Muscovite soil. More important, perhaps, Palitsyn dramatically supported Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov’s election as tsar by the Council of the Land in 1613. Palitsyn claimed to represent the lower classes of Russia in supporting Mikhail’s candidacy and an end to the Time of Troubles.9 After a dramatic speech by Palitsyn, Mikhail was elected. An elder statesman and powerful figure in Moscow, by his retirement to Solovki Palitsyn provided a counterweight to the disciplinary actions that the tsar tried to impose on the monastery. If it were so wretched, why would a hero choose ‘‘to retreat to the Solovetskii monastery for tranquility?’’ 10 Irinarkh, as father superior, constantly juggled the monks, soldiers, and workers on the island. He counseled humility and discipline,


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trying to restrain the most profligate behavior. It was a constant battle, for the monastery had simply become so rich and powerful that it sought out wealth and comfort rather than the podvig life. In 1601, a youth had arrived at the monastery from Novgorod. His father was a priest in the city, but young Nikifor longed for a contemplative life and ran away from home to Solovki. Both young and beautiful (as he was always called), Nikifor settled in to work. His Life follows the conventions of hagiography in describing the saint’s long nights spent in prayer, his refusing to lie down to sleep, his accepting the hardest work with a glad heart. Again, typically, the Life says that Nikofor’s parents desperately missed the lad and sent him a letter (carried by pilgrims on their way to Solovki) begging him to return home. Nikifor refused, telling the messengers to report that his parents ‘‘will no more see me in this life; we will see each other in the grave.’’ 11 And yet Nikifor was turned down for tonsure. Simply put, the youth was so beautiful that he tempted the monks. In a monastery that kept even female animals on a separate island, young boys who came to work and to learn at the monastery created a real stir; their presence sometimes inflamed the latent desires of monks who had forsworn sex. The most acute temptation came in the winter, when monks did not work in the fields and spent more time in their own cells. It was easy to invite a young boy back to the cell to enjoy sweets taken from the monastery cellarer or stolen from the common table. Indeed, the monastery Rule recommended sending the boys back to the mainland in the winter, so not to tempt the brothers during the endless darkness of January and February. By the early 1600s, though, this rule was not always enforced and youths sometimes stayed on the islands during the winter. Imagine, then, how difficult it would have been for a beardless, beautiful young boy to be among the brothers, tempting them every day. The father superior simply could not take that risk and he refused to let Nikifor become a monk. Crestfallen, legend says, Nikifor often stayed up all night, sitting on a stool reading the life of Mark of Thrace, a fourth-century hermit. Finally, Nikifor followed Mark’s example. He got up from his stool, took off his belt, sandals, and cloak, and fled into the forest of Solovki,


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disappearing to find his own spiritual path, concealed from the carnal passions he inflamed at the monastery.12 Nikifor’s Life, like that of Zosima, describes demons coming to hurt or tempt the hermit. Unlike the monsters that appeared to Solovki’s founder, however, Nikifor’s demons ‘‘looked like robbers, frightening me, they were merciless, they dragged me from my cell, they demanded that I either leave the island or return to the monastery.’’ 13 In contrast to the demonic presence, Nikifor also received holy visitors to his hermitage. Two men arrived at his hut, bringing Nikifor prosphora. ‘‘Arise, brother,’’ they said, ‘‘and make the sign of the cross, saying the Jesus prayer; do not be afraid of enemies, take courage and strength— and God will help you.’’ Eating the prosphora, his hagiographer explains, Nikifor felt stronger. The men came often, bringing prosphora and bread, and the evil ones did not afflict him anymore. In fact, Nikifor became a kind of magnet for some monastery elders, who regularly visited him, staying a while to discuss spiritual matters.14 Nikifor continued his eremitical life for many years. At one point he described his life to a monk who came upon him unexpectedly in the woods. The monk had just climbed a steep hill and, while catching his breath, said the Jesus prayer: ‘‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.’’ From the wilderness came a man’s voice—Nikifor’s— answering ‘‘Amen.’’ The monk repeated the prayer two more times, each time hearing ‘‘Amen.’’ Sure that he was among ghosts, the monk found himself face to face with Nikifor instead. Knowing that he had scared the monk, Nikifor submitted to telling his story of living a life alone with almost no food, letting God nourish his ‘‘filthy body.’’ 15 In some versions of Nikifor’s legend, another monk (named Kiprian ‘‘The Simple’’) then saw Nikifor walking across the water of a Solovki lake. Kiprian called to his brothers, but Nikifor disappeared, his miracle obscured from monks who did not share Kiprian’s innocence of heart.16 Nikifor’s experience in the wilderness pointed to a struggle among the monks—over beautiful youths, over self-will versus obedience to the monastery, and over the ambivalence that some monks (Nikifor’s ‘‘visiting elders’’) apparently felt about the eremitical life as against the ‘‘worldliness’’ developing at the cloister. Not long after Nikifor fled to the forest, another answer to the


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problem of carnal pleasures appeared in the form of a quiet monk named Eleazar Serviukov. The Serviukov family were merchants from the town of Kozelsk and had long ties to Solovki, regularly giving money and appearing on commemoration lists. As they neared death, Serviukov men often took monastic vows and lived out their lives in the cloister. Thus it was no surprise when (sometime between 1606 and 1614) Tatiana and Afanasii Serviukov sent all three of their sons, Roman, Mikhail, and Eleazar, to work at Solovki. Roman quickly died there (of unknown causes) and Mikhail fled the monastery to live in Suma, where he apparently married and had at least one son.17 Eleazar, however, thrived at Solovki, taking vows under the tutelage of Father Superior Irinarkh. Unlike Irinarkh, who seemed to prefer moderation in all things, Eleazar gloried in the life of a podvizhnik—a monk who achieved great spiritual feats. Long church services, unending prayers in the cell, prostrations to the floor—each of these was a stepping-stone toward salvation. Rather quickly, the young monk began to dream of the hermit’s life—just as Sts. Savvatii and German had lived; just as St. Filipp had desired; just as Nikifor had found in the forest. But unlike Nikifor, who fled the cloister without its blessing, Eleazar acted only after consultation with his spiritual mentor and father superior, Irinarkh. He finally decided to move from Great Solovki Island to Anzer Island, some six kilometers distant from the monastery walls. A few fishermen who worked for the monastery lived on the island and there was a disused saltworks there, but it was otherwise empty of people and inhabited only by ‘‘sea birds and furry animals.’’ At the end of 1614—in the middle of winter—Eleazar received the blessing of Father Irinarkh and made the short trip to his new home. Legend tells us that he first erected a large wooden cross and a wooden hut. He later wrote that he hoped Anzer would be a place far removed from Solovki, while only next door: a place of ‘‘fasting, prayer, humility, and physical exhaustion.’’ 18 Anzer, from the start, was meant to take Solovki back to its roots, to recreate the life of its earliest saints. Like Nikifor, according to his Life, Eleazar was visited by demons in the ‘‘image of men he knew’’ and ‘‘in the image of soldiers.’’ They tried to force him from the island, demanding: ‘‘Why did you come


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to this place? This is our place and no one up to this time has come here.’’ ‘‘Not yours,’’ answered Eleazar, ‘‘but an island owned by Christ.’’ The tormentors, hearing Eleazar beginning to pray a Paschal hymn— ‘‘Let God arise and His enemies be scattered’’—then left him alone.19 A priest named Firs joined Eleazar in 1616 and immediately appointed the hermit to the highest level of monasticism. Eleazar had been living a life far removed from all worldly cares for two years, subsisting only on the smallest amounts of food and ‘‘mortifying his body.’’ 20 Together, they began to perform spiritual feats on Anzer, much to the dismay of monks whom they embarrassed by their zeal. Others however, sought out Anzer, either as a touchstone for extreme piety—Irinarkh came often for spiritual discussions—or to live at the little outpost. Eleazar and his group (limited in number to twelve) submitted themselves to absolute authority of their spiritual fathers, refusing to create a council of elders. They lived in separate cells, situated at least one kilometer away from each other, working alone. They took a common meal once a week and came together in the chapel or in Father Eleazar’s cell for divine services, but then quickly disbanded for private contemplation. Eleazar envisioned the monks as a true ‘‘skete’’—just a few brothers living in absolute silence and individual prayer, but bound together by their need to praise God communally and by their common membership in the main monastery. Father Superior Irinarkh took news of the new monastic settlement to Moscow in 1620. The exact reason for Irinarkh’s trip is unknown, but he apparently discussed the lack of discipline at the main monastery. According to later stories, Tsar Mikhail brought up Eleazar and the other hermits. ‘‘Is it true,’’ Mikhail asked, ‘‘that hermits are residing on Anzer Island?’’ Irinarkh must have then described the island as a place where Solovki’s spirit still thrived. In response, the tsar praised the skete in an official proclamation dated 20 January 1621 and sent one hundred rubles to pay for the building of a stone church on Anzer.21 Patriarch Filaret sent a letter of his own to Father Varlaam at the skete. ‘‘We have recently learned,’’ wrote Filaret, ‘‘that you live separately from the large Solovetskii monastery on Anzer Island, abiding in fasting and in prayer and in monastic perseverance, in the custom of a hermitage, but that you have at your hermitage no church.’’ Slyly noting that monas-


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tic discipline existed ‘‘separately from the main Solovetskii monastery,’’ Filaret directed that the new church was to be named for the Holy and Life-Giving Trinity, and to be built in honor of St. Mikhail Maleina, the tsar’s patron.22 Father Irinarkh continued to try to bridge the gap between extreme monastic piety at Anzer and the more complicated life at the main monastery. On 12 July 1626, Irinarkh went to Anzer to celebrate the Eucharist on St. Mikhail Maleina’s day. At the end of the service, making the customary three bows, Irinarkh gazed at the icon of the Trinity, for whom the church was named. After considering the two Anzer patrons—St. Mikhail and the Holy Trinity—Irinarkh apparently turned and said that he would never again celebrate the Liturgy. In effect, he announced his retirement from the position of father superior. Sitting with Eleazar at the festive meal in the refectory adjoining the church, Father Irinarkh then prophesied that a certain monk Makarii (who had been tapped as father superior of another monastery) would return to lead Solovki but that his administration would be fraught—like Irinarkh’s own—with discord.23 Against the wishes of his brothers, Father Irinarkh trekked again to Moscow, this time to ask the tsar and the patriarch for relief from his duties. (By this time, Solovki was such an important monastery that it reported directly to the patriarch and the tsar, no longer needing the metropolitan of Novgorod’s blessing for its affairs.) Irinarkh returned to live as a simple monk. He spent the last two years of his life as a semi-hermit in his private cell. During this time, still hoping to bring Solovki’s fractious brotherhood into line, the tsar appointed a new cellarer to Solovki in 1626 and championed the appointment of Makarii to the post of father superior. The tsar was so intrigued with Eleazar that he commanded the monk to appear in Moscow. Leaving his brothers on Anzer, Eleazar traveled to Moscow where he impressed the royal family. While there, the monk foretold the birth of an heir to the tsar; in 1629, Grand Prince Aleksei Mikhailovich was born, bringing even more fame to the quiet monk who had foreseen his birth. Eleazar had been asked to stay in Chudov monastery (near Moscow) and the tsar now sought him out, elated by the birth of a son. In thanks, Tsar Mikhail offered the leader-


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ship of a large monastery or even a bishopric to Eleazar. The monk turned him down, saying that he would rather return to the simple life on Anzer. With Irinarkh dead and Eleazar in Moscow, relations between the Anzer skete and the main monastery took a dramatic turn for the worse. The more adamantly the tsar supported Anzer, the more Solovki believed its rights were being infringed. Even after Eleazar’s return, Solovki consistently refused to aid in the building of Anzer’s church. The monastery withheld money and bread. Eleazar complained to the tsar that sick brothers could not get treatment at the monastery’s hospital; the tsar responded with a strongly worded letter that had little effect.24 Solovki’s leadership seems to have been engaging in a battle of wills, implying that Anzer would have to live separately if it chose to exist in defiance of the monastery’s wishes. If so, Solovki received its comeuppance when the tsar pronounced Anzer’s complete independence on 31 July 1633, shortly after a number of miraculous occurrences had been reported there, including bright light emanating from the monastery late at night. Instead of breaking up the spat between Solovki and Anzer, however, the charter of independence exacerbated the conflict. By 1638, the tsar had to send troops from the Suma outpost to protect Anzer from robbers and miscreants.25 The squabble continued—the main monastery, for example, complained that Anzer was illegally receiving fish from Solovki’s waters— but Anzer persisted in attracting monks. One of these was Nikifor, who left his forest hideaway to live at the Anzer skete and receive the spiritual tutorship of Eleazar. As his Life notes, Nikifor died after just two years as a monk at Anzer. Another monk, Nikodim, became Eleazar’s spiritual protégé, living at Anzer for forty-three years and leading the skete after Eleazar’s death.26 One more of Eleazar’s pupils, Nikon, was destined for greatness. Born near Nizhnii Novgorod in 1605, Nikita Minov, as he was originally called, grew up in a peasant family. He was educated at home and at the local monastery; in 1625 he was consecrated as a white (that is, married) priest. Within a few years, though, Minov had talked his wife


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into entering a female monastery in Moscow. He left behind his previous life for the monastic wilderness of the far north, arriving at Anzer in 1636. Nikon was attracted to the most rigorous aspects of life on Anzer. By nature an energetic man with a tendency toward extremes of judgment and emotion, Nikon helped Anzer to struggle against the worldly attitudes at Solovki. Stories about Nikon say that ‘‘every day he read through the entire Psalter, prayed canons (long hymn cycles) to the Lord Jesus and the Mother of God, and made one thousand prostrations.’’ 27 He also unflaggingly supported Anzer’s independence, believing that the pious monastery should not be led by the scoundrels at Solovki. Though an ‘‘edifying example’’ to the other monks at the skete, Nikon found it difficult to effect a complete withdrawal from the world.28 He was a monk, yes, but perhaps not a skitnik—one well suited to hermitage life. After just three years, Nikon left Anzer for the Kiiostrovskii monastery on Lake Onega. Nikon’s trajectory seemed to take him ever upward: first a hermit, he was soon elected father superior of the Kiiostrovskii monastery and served until 1646, when he was promoted to archimandrite of the Novospasskii monastery. Just two years later, Nikon rose to the rank of metropolitan of Novgorod when he was only forty-three years old. As a monk from Anzer, Nikon reserved a particular distaste for the monks of Solovki, whom he regarded as dissolute and overly independent. While serving as metropolitan of Novgorod, Nikon sent numerous letters to the monastery. Perhaps knowing of Nikifor, the beautiful boy, Nikon upbraided the monks, forbidding them ‘‘to feed feminine-looking children or keep them in their cells.’’ 29 More specifically, he chastised a priest-monk who kept a young boy in his cell ‘‘a long time, until four o’clock in the morning,’’ afterward hiding ‘‘him in a crate for unknown reasons.’’ 30 Metropolitan Nikon then turned to Solovki’s more general practices. In 1650, he wrote again, telling the monks that they should not bake prosphora with rye flour (which was plentiful). According to church rules, only wheat flour was to be used for liturgical bread, especially the Host. The brothers retorted that in ‘‘the Solovetskii ovens, prosphora for distribution [is made], as in former times, from rye,


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but not that intended for divine service.’’ 31 The next year, Nikon condemned Solovki’s diet. According to Nikon, eating fish had become too widespread: ‘‘We have learned that you brothers in the monastery eat fish during Great Lent on Saturday and in the week eat fish, and that you are doing so in disobedience to the orders of the ancient holy fathers; from now on in Great Lent on Saturdays and in the week you will not eat fish, eating only the fruits of the earth.’’ He went on to chide the brothers—as usual—for heavy drinking and prideful actions. Having made little headway in his campaign to reform the monastery, Nikon finally persuaded the tsar to give him power over all judicial proceedings regarding monks, priests, and other monastic servants or peasants. The nerve! Solovki’s monks saw this as an intrusion on their authority over parishes that been placed under their control centuries earlier. In Nikon’s expanded power, Solovki perceived a desire to undermine monastic sovereignty.32 His attacks came even as Solovki’s fathers superior were given the higher rank of archimandrite in 1651. Late that same year, Nikon figured out a way to celebrate Solovki’s history (of which he was, of course, an heir) while simultaneously putting the present brothers in their place. He arranged for the bodies of three hierarchs, each of whom had suffered during the previous generation of troubles, including St. Filipp, to be transferred to Moscow. Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich agreed and sent Nikon to retrieve Filipp’s relics from Solovki. As Nikon made his way to Solovki, however, the elderly Patriarch Iosif died, and the tsar named Nikon in his place. In just sixteen years, Nikon had moved from the forest wilderness of Anzer Island to the patriarchal throne, which was equal in importance to the tsar’s throne. He had impressed the tsar with his zeal for the faith, his hard-headed discipline, and his unbending posture on church order. When Nikon finally set foot on Solovki, after late ice and storms had wrecked one ship in his entourage, he was the triumphant victor, planning to bend Solovki’s monks to his will by depriving them of beloved Filipp’s body. The monks, confronted with Nikon, soldiers, and clear orders from Moscow, gave up the body. On 6 July 1652, Nikon read a prayerful apology to Filipp in the name of the tsar, asking the saint’s forgiveness. ‘‘Even though I [Aleksei] am innocent of your vexation,


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my great-grandfather’s coffin convicts me and leads me to grief. . . . For this reason, I bow in my imperial dignity for him who has sinned against you, that you [might] forgive him by your coming’’ to Moscow. Hearing this letter of penance and losing their saint, the monks of Solovki wept as Filipp’s relics were carried to Nikon’s boat. ‘‘On the way,’’ according to one description, ‘‘many people fainted from weeping and tears. . . . they lay about on both sides of the road like Holy Fools, some overcome by happiness, some by sorrow.’’ 33


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sar Aleksei Mikhailovich met Nikon’s entourage carrying Filipp’s relics outside Moscow on 9 July 1651. He and Metropolitan Varlaam of Rostov joined the festive parade as it wound through the dirty streets toward the Kremlin. Varlaam, wearing heavy robes encrusted with jewels, collapsed in the heat of midsummer, sitting down and dying right next to the relics of St. Filipp. Not willing to stop the procession, the tsar ordered the deceased metropolitan to be carried just behind; the monarch himself shouldered the saint’s bones as they neared the city. Some people swooned as Aleksei, resplendent in golden, pearl-encrusted robes, passed by with the saint’s coffin, followed by the body of the prelate. Others were even more moved: tales of miraculous healings flowed out of the city. One prince wrote that ‘‘Filipp’s relics remained in the middle of the church for ten days and during those ten days the bells rang without cease. Those days were joyous ones, just like those of [Bright] Week. At least two or three people a day were healed. On some days as many as five, six, or seven were healed. And when Patriarch Nikon was consecrated, the radiant miracle-worker Filipp healed two on that day.’’ 1 Both Filipp and Nikon had come back in triumph—one Solovki 94


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monk returned to the Kremlin as a saint, the other as a patriarch. The prince described people ‘‘crying and moaning’’ at the procession, overtaken by the solemnity of the occasion. Yet perhaps the death of Varlaam, a beloved hierarch, was a better symbol than the healing of the sick. Had they known the troubles soon to rend the church, the people’s crying and moaning would have increased. Emboldened by the apparent posthumous support of the saint and the adulation of the tsar, Nikon set out to enhance his power and to enforce his vision of piety on the Russian Orthodox populace. The patriarch had been part of a rough circle called the ‘‘Zealots of Piety,’’ agitating for correction of liturgical texts, spiritual renewal, and revived discipline during church services. The group, especially as it existed in the provinces, was stridently pro-Moscow, claiming that Constantinople had fallen under the sway of Catholicism and then Islam. As part of the Third Rome tradition, the Zealots preached that Russian piety had to be reformed in order to remain the pure vessel of Christianity, since all other churches had fallen into apostasy. In Moscow, however, another group of zealots—including the tsar himself, who was uncommonly pious—leaned toward better relations with Constantinople. Also followers of the Third Rome philosophy, these men believed that the Russian church could be the leader of Orthodoxy only if it retained close ties to the other eastern patriarchs, especially that of Constantinople. To that end, a long line of Greek clerics began arriving in Moscow, invited by the tsar. These priests and bishops consistently lobbied for more uniformity in language, ritual, and liturgy between the Russian and Greek churches, pressing the Russian church to take on Greek traditions. In Moscow, Nikon became more closely aligned with the pro-Greek group, maybe because it helped him to retain favor with the tsar. Within months, Nikon had turned from a staunch pro-Moscow nationalist to a Grecophile, reportedly saying that ‘‘I am a Russian, the son of a Russian, but my conviction and faith are Greek.’’ 2 With this change of heart, Nikon began a campaign to bring the Russian church in line with contemporary Greek custom. From the beginning, Nikon’s critics pointed out that seventeenth-century Greeks did not practice the faith as they had earlier done, and that Russian


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customs might actually be older than the Greek ones of the day. The Greeks, after all, had been influenced by other churches while the Russians had been more cut off from non-Orthodox churches. This meant little to Nikon. He saw regularization of symbols and rituals as a way to raise his profile and power; if he looked and acted like a Greek patriarch, he could then claim the prestige of the ancient sees—Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. This fed Nikon’s final aim, the elevation of the Muscovy’s sacred leadership above its secular rulers, just as heaven was above earth. The reforms took two general forms—textual and ritual. In the first, a group of editors changed all Russian liturgical books to conform with their contemporary Greek counterparts. Many of these changes raised little ire, but a few—like the change in number of chanting ‘‘alleluia,’’ revised words in the Nicene Creed, and the spelling of Jesus’ name (from Isus to Iisus)—provided ammunition for those who claimed Nikon was making outright changes in Russian spiritual life. The old books were certainly fraught with copyists’ errors, they maintained, but Nikon’s changes cut to the core of popular religiosity. Moreover —what was the point? Why should Russian Orthodox have to pray exactly like the Greeks? Why shouldn’t they have their own liturgical practices, passed down to them by the saints of their motherland? If textual reform angered many believers, Nikon’s ritual reforms provoked outright revolt. The symbolic centerpiece of resistance was the Sign of the Cross. For centuries—in fact, it was one of the oldest forms of making the sign—Russians had put together their thumb, fourth, and fifth fingers in a symbol of the Trinity. The second finger was held upright, to confirm Jesus’ form as perfect man; the middle finger was bent to the level of the second, symbolizing Jesus’ Godly form that bent down to become human. These two fingers touched the body during the Sign of the Cross, showing that both natures of Jesus (human and divine) existed on the Cross. In Greek practice, the fingers were reversed—thumb, second, and third fingers were held together and touched the body, while the fourth and fifth fingers were held down toward the palm. When Nikon obliged his flock to change the position of their fin-


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gers, it seemed that he wanted them to discount the icons in their churches and the instructions in their psalm books, which explicitly showed the old Russian style of the sign. In fact, the Stoglav Council, convened exactly a century earlier, had condemned everything but the ‘‘two-fingered sign.’’ There were other changes in ritual too. Nikon proscribed some of the prostrations to be done at Lenten prayers, doing so just before fasting began in 1652. He changed how the Host was consecrated during the Liturgy and the manner of walking in an icon procession. And, to the dismay of many monks, Nikon prescribed a change to a Greekstyle klobuk (monastic hat) and veil. This, according to a witness, appealed to Nikon’s growing love for all things Greek and his sense of style: ‘‘Nikon’s face began to glow. This Greek dress looked very good on him, but the old one, as we have said, disfigured him. . . . The patriarch was very happy, but the assisting bishops, heads of monasteries, priests and lay people, seeing this, began to grumble.’’ 3 For monks, wearing the new klobuk became a symbol of agreement with the patriarch. Maintaining the old style, of course, showed a monk’s displeasure with the reforms. Changes in text, orthography, or ritual gesture might have seemed unimportant. For Russian Orthodox of the time, though, Nikon’s reforms brought their entire religious heritage into question. Orthodoxy in Russia relied on the concept of podvig far more strongly than other forms of Christianity. For the Russians, action was indistinguishable from belief. This was consistent with the Orthodox theology. In other words, the Russians perceived their rituals as active theology—perhaps because they had not developed the philosophical traditions of Greek antiquity that flowed through Orthodox theology. Instead, the Russians raised ritual action to a high form and importance, to be treasured as a physical icon no different from the holy images lining their churches, hanging in the corners of their homes, or on cords around their necks. Rituals were, to the Russian Orthodox, theology in action. Ritual changes simply didn’t seem to make sense to most people. If St. Filipp had performed miracles after a life of making the twofingered Sign of the Cross and wearing Russian-style garb, why change?


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If Jesus had understood his name when called upon by Russians using the old spelling, would he also respond to a new form of his name? Did changing texts and rituals expose some defect in Russian Christianity? If so, how could Russia have been the Third Rome? Though the reforms were troubling enough, the patriarch’s implementation was draconian. When editors at the church press questioned Nikon, he banished them to distant monasteries. Bishop Paul of Kolomna, the only prelate openly to disagree with the patriarch, lost his position, his freedom, and probably even his life—no one knows his fate for sure. Even so, some others—primarily archpriests Ivan Neronov and Avvakum Petrov, who had been part of Nikon’s circle of Zealots—continued to challenge the patriarch. They wrote letters to the tsar, defied Nikon’s pronouncements, and agitated for the old ritual. Sometimes left alone, at other times persecuted, Nikon’s opponents included some of the most respected churchmen in Muscovy. Neronov was finally allowed (in an unusual move) to continue using the old books for his services, but Avvakum was exiled to Siberia and finally burned at the stake for his extreme antireform posture.4 Even women were not spared: the Boyarina Feodosia Morozova was carried out of Moscow to the Borovsk monastery, where she perished in jail.5 Antireform opinions reflected another deep vein in Russian piety, a profound distrust of innovation. Since the work of a theologian was ‘‘rightly dividing the Word of Truth’’ (2 Timothy 2:15), not adding to it, any changes to text or ritual came under immediate question. Thus, copyists and printers had a sacred duty to reproduce, not change, texts given to them. Originality was sinful. For each of the famous antireformists, there were thousands more pious Russians who simply paid no heed to the calls for reform and continued to pray according to the old style—the ‘‘ancient piety.’’ Their existence underlined the limit of Nikon’s other goal—the expansion of central control of religious affairs by the patriarch alone, taking away local prerogatives. The vast majority of ‘‘Old Believers,’’ as antireform Russian Orthodox became known, were the everyday Christians who simply refused to accept either the reforms or the centralization that Nikon imposed on his flock. The traditionalists, of course,


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perceived themselves as true Orthodox and called followers of the reformed ritual ‘‘New Believers’’ or ‘‘Nikonians.’’ Solovki was primed for a showdown with the patriarch over the liturgical and ritual reforms. The monks had not forgotten Nikon’s attitude toward the monastery while he lived on Anzer Island. Nor could the monastery dismiss Nikon’s many letters upbraiding them over and over again. Furthermore, in addition to the local monks, most of whom were of peasant origin, more than a hundred exiles had been sent to Solovki in the previous decades. Although they were supposed to be held in cells, the exiles often became members of the Solovki monastic community and could even be members of the Black Council of elders that aided the father superior in running the monastery.6 Many of the exiles were prominent men. Prince Mikhail Ivanovich Lvov, for example, had been sent into exile from Moscow shortly after Nikon assumed the patriarchal throne. The former head of the Kremlin printing office, Lvov received good treatment at the hands of his jailers, who even brought ‘‘wine and foreign drinks’’ to the prince in his cell.7 Lvov’s treatment was typical of the situation in Solovki, where opponents of the patriarch were especially welcome into the community. Nikon once wrote an infuriated letter to the cloister:

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By order of the tsar, monks and people of diverse ranks are sent into your monastery for punishment, and you do not keep them under control as you should according to the will of the tsar; you do not handle them strictly but give them freedom in all respects. You ignore the order of the tsar by not submitting them to strict supervision and these exiled outlaws are the source of great trouble. And now the Lord Tsar and Great Prince of All Russia Aleksei Mikhailovich has sent us the order to write to you swiftly and categorically that all those sent to your monastery for punishment are to be held under strict surveillance and they are to do labor service.8 Undoubtedly, receiving a dispatch this strongly worded from Nikon had the opposite effect on the Solovki brotherhood to that in-


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tended—exiles did not lose their privileges but were actually accorded even more respect. When word—and texts—of the new reforms arrived in Solovki, the exiled churchmen and political prisoners were therefore in a position to exert tremendous influence over the monastery. Among those welcomed to Solovki, none was more important than Ivan Neronov, the patriarch’s nemesis at the Kazanskii Cathedral in the Kremlin. On the run from a sentence placed on him by the patriarch, Neronov sought refuge for a short time among the monks of Solovki. For a number of years, there was little strife at the monastery regarding the innovations, because newly revised service books had not yet arrived there. Though easily attainable from book merchants who sold them at Kholmogory, and though widely disseminated across the region except in the far northern reaches of Solovki’s territory, reformed texts had to be ordered by the metropolitan of Novgorod and shipped to Solovki some five years after the initial reforms were introduced.9 Knowing their inflammatory nature, Archimandrite Ilia had them immediately locked in a sealed chamber (either the armory or the treasurer’s room). After a relatively quiet winter at the monastery, on 8 June 1658 the archimandrite convened a ‘‘great Black Council’’ of monks to decide on their views of the new service books. The brotherhood decided overwhelmingly to reject the newly printed texts and to outlaw the use of revised texts on monastery property. A few monks, including the priests German, Vitalii, and Spiridon, demurred, wishing to follow Moscow’s lead on the reforms. They were forced by the council to go along with the majority and to sign a condemnation of the new books. They were able, however, to register a complaint with the patriarch, claiming that they had not been afforded the chance even to see the revised books, which had been locked away. Archimandrite Ilia, they wrote, ‘‘wants to create the impression that this is not his doing. The archimandrite pretends that he tried to give us the [service books] and that we did not accept them from him. . . . We, however, lord, asked him several times to look at the [service books] and he refused to let us see them.’’ 10 In 1659, Archimandrite Ilia died. The new archimandrite, Varfolo-


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mei, was elected from among the brothers and then set off for confirmation in Moscow. He left from Novgorod (where he had been installed) in December 1660, not coming home until August 1661. Upon his return, Varfolomei tried to introduce the reforms to the cloister piecemeal, but with little success. By that point, however, Patriarch Nikon had been relieved of his position by Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, who had correctly concluded that Nikon’s desires went past church centralization to the development of a full-blown theocracy. Even Aleksei, one of the most devout of tsars, could not accept a virtual coup d’état by Nikon. Sending off Nikon to a monastery the patriarch had founded, Tsar Aleksei happily maintained the reforms that Nikon had instituted. Although the personal hatred of Nikon subsided with his removal from office, Solovki’s monks still did not generally accept his reforms. The situation got worse. On 7 February 1663, while the archimandrite was again in Moscow, the priests Gerontii and Varlaam, along with a deacon named Iov, served Liturgy in the small church above the Holy Gate. Gerontii had been involved in a controversy concerning from which side of the altar priests should offer communion. This was not related to Nikon’s reforms, but any issue of ritual created tension at the cloister. Not many brothers were present for the Liturgy but the rumor quickly spread through the monastery that Gerontii had used the reformed ritual. Mayhem broke out, with brothers and peasants calling for Gerontii to be stoned publicly, but somewhat cooler heads restrained the men and Gerontii was able to find safety in a cell.11 The situation became increasingly tense as Solovki split between supporters and detractors of Archimandrite Varfolomei, who was seen as a proponent of the new service books and a supporter of the patriarch. Opposing Varfolomei was the formidable duo of the cellarer Savvatii Obriutin and the budilnik Tikhon, probably the two most powerful men at the monastery after the archimandrite himself. They did not put themselves forward as replacements for Varfolomei, but rather championed the priest Nikanor, whose stock was high among the antireformists as he had been archimandrite of the Savvino-Storozhevskii monastery before Nikon had exiled him to Solovki. The hero of the Old Belief, Archpriest Avvakum Petrovich, also backed Nikanor to be


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archimandrite.12 Likewise, he supported the glorification of German (helper to Zosima and Savvatii) as a saint, in part as a defense of the old ways. Matters came to a head in 1666, when Archimandrite Varfolomei was called to Moscow to take part in a large church council. This meeting, arranged by the tsar and attended by several Greek prelates, was convened to condemn Nikon’s theocratic tendencies while also upholding his ritual reforms. For many who opposed the reforms—the Old Believers—the year would have apocalyptic significance, since its number included the sinister figures 666. While their archimandrite was in Moscow, the most adamant antireformists wrote a petition to the tsar, begging him to authorize the use of pre-Nikon books at Solovki. The petition was written in the unmistakable hand of Gerasim Firsov. Though Firsov lived only briefly at Solovki—he died in Moscow while arguing against the reforms in 1667—he made an overwhelming impression on all those who met him. As a monk, Firsov had been named to the Black Council of Solovki as early as 1658. He nevertheless had the reputation of a hooligan and brigand: Firsov gambled, drank, and was eventually lynched for his crimes. Sent back (no longer a monk) to Solovki after conviction for embezzling gems and sables in Moscow, Firsov found his final calling as a demagogue for the old ritual. A charismatic man, yet taken to great outbursts of anger, Firsov wrote in a tiny, controlled script that became his hallmark—as if all his anger had been compressed into his bead-like handwriting.13 The ‘‘First Solovetskii Petition,’’ as it became known, was written in a number of drafts. The one brought to Moscow by Firsov was— more than anything else—an attack on Varfolomei as archimandrite. Using rhetoric usually directed against the monastery itself, the petition claimed that Solovki’s brothers had been made destitute by the ‘‘violence and scandalous heavy drinking of Archimandrite Varfolomei and by the offenses of all his followers.’’ 14 Both Varfolomei and Firsov were called to address the council of 1666 and, as a result, Archimandrite Sergei from Iaroslavl was sent to the islands to investigate the problems. Arriving with a contingent of musketeers on 26 September 1666, Sergei alone was allowed inside the walls. There, he convened


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a Black Council that affirmed the brothers’ loyalty to the tsar (which was in question, given their protests against authority) but also asserted allegiance to the prereform church rituals. Though the outcome seemed clear, monks later claimed that Varfolomei’s supporters had been thrown into jail cells beneath the bakery, making them unable to come to his defense.15 So, instead of clearing up the issue, Sergei’s mission ratcheted up the level of tension even higher between the champions of the old ways and those who supported the Moscow patriarch’s reforms. The tsar began to lose patience with the monks. Who were they— refusing to listen to their superiors, locking away their enemies, threatening to stone priests who wanted to use newly edited service books? Exasperated, he appointed a new archimandrite, the monk Iosif, who had been representing Solovki in Moscow. The tsar then commissioned three men—Iosif (the new archimandrite), Varfolomei (the old archimandrite), and Nikanor (the potential archimandrite, who was in Moscow)—to return north for ‘‘exhortation, once and for all, to all the schismatic monks.’’ 16 Imagine the scene as not one, but two archimandrites were to arrive at the Holy Gate, accompanied by a former exile! The troika did not arrive at the same time, since Nikanor had fallen behind en route. The two archimandrites also did not come immediately to the monastery, docking instead at Zaetskii Island on 13 September 1667. Regaining their strength and surrounding themselves with allies, on 14 September the two men went in solemn procession to the great wooden doors of the monastery. They all wore the Greekstyle klobuki—high, stiff, round hats with long flowing veils—as they approached the closed wooden gates. Some twenty monks and fifty others came with them, making an impressive parade of black robes. Iosif proudly read the tsar’s proclamation regarding the monastery and was allowed inside. The next day, 15 September 1667, Iosif summoned a council of both monks and laymen at the Transfiguration Cathedral. Sitting in the huge cathedral, autumn light low through the deep windows, the men of Solovki had a choice: follow the tsar’s directive to take up the revised ritual or fall into rebellion. It could not have gone worse for Iosif and Varfolomei. They were supposed to arrive as triumphant emissaries of


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the tsar. Rather, the council rejected the new rituals, refused Iosif’s appointment as archimandrite, and tossed both men out of the cloister. Some monks left with them, including Father German, who had been involved in earlier disputes.17 Enter Nikanor on 20 September 1667. He must have expected Iosif and Varfolomei to have won the day, because he arrived at the gate wearing a new-style klobuk. A quick study, though, Nikanor immediately realized what had happened and asked to take confession. He threw away the klobuk in exchange for the old style headgear—a rounded cap and a shoulderpiece edged in red rather than a long veil. This dramatic turn raised Nikanor in the monks’ estimation and they proclaimed him—a political exile—the new archimandrite. A rebellion had begun. The tsar decided to make an example of Solovki. By Christmas, he had ordered the seizure of Solovki’s assets and began mustering a force to take back the islands and quell any regional uprising. Though he had to wait until spring, the tsar was sure of a quick victory against a small number of fanatic monks. He appointed Voevoda (Commander) Ignatii Andreevich Volkhov to the post, giving him control over musketeers as well as the garrison at Sumskii Ostrog—the stockade town built up by Solovki to defend the north against the Swedes. Suma, as it was also known, ironically became the staging area for the troops sent to take over the monastery. Before beginning a military campaign, though, Commander Volkhov tried to persuade the monks to open their gates, accept Moscow’s authority, and pray using the reformed ritual. Letters back and forth between the parties culminated in a face-to-face disputation on 23 June 1668, in which Volkhov (without his soldiers) was allowed to enter the monastery. He had no success convincing the Black Council to change its ways, instead hearing their lengthy defense of the old service books. In the end, Volkhov had to be satisfied with taking away some men who had disagreed with the Black Council.18 Volkhov laid siege to the monastery beginning that summer, moving his troops from Sumskii Ostrog to Zaetskii Island, within view of the monastery’s walls. Zaetskii was not well-equipped for even a small fighting force, though it did have a stone jetty built in St. Filipp’s time.


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Nevertheless, it was Volkhov’s only choice to headquarter his blockade—far enough to be outside of gunshot distance from the monastery, yet close enough to interdict anyone trying to bring goods to the monks. Faced with this situation, the monks faced a difficult decision— would they actively shoot at Volkhov, an emissary of the tsar? Though many wanted to maintain their allegiance to the monarch, most monks categorically refused to accept the new books, ending each letter or petition with ‘‘but we do not want to serve according to the new books.’’ Some laymen actively plotted against the monastic leadership but they were imprisoned and then banished from the monastery.With each passing month, the remaining men became ever more radicalized in their views. In their most dramatic gesture against reform, some even defaced religious books with which they disagreed: ‘‘Wherever there were pages with images of Christ, the Mother of God, and the Saints,’’ claimed an informant, the monks ‘‘tore them out of the books. [Then] they took the books to the landing pier behind the monastery where they ripped them apart, cursed, stamped on them with their feet, and pierced them with their knives. The book covers they threw into a fire, but the books themselves they sank in the sea after cutting an ice hole. About the Great Lord [the tsar] they made abusive remarks.’’ 19 By late 1669, the monks had developed a list of acceptable and unacceptable icons (including use only of the traditional ‘‘eight-edged’’ or three-barred crucifix). They had even changed the wording of their prayers, substituting ‘‘well-believing princes’’ for the tsar’s name.20 If someone did not agree with these radical reforms, he was punished and then exiled, as were nine elders and three laymen on 18 June 1669. These men, tossed out of the cloister, carried yet another letter from the Black Council to the tsar:21 To the almighty Tsar and Grand Duke Aleksei Mikhailovich of Greater and Lesser and White Russia, autocrat. We, thy devout Cellarer Azarei, Treasurer Siman and the Temple’s Elders, and all Brothers and servants and laborers, petition thee. In past years, Great Ruler, upon thy order and according to thy epistles, Greeks and Kievans and Russian people were sent to


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our Solovetskii Monastery. And from among those disgraced people, Great Ruler, in the past year [1668] on the first night of October, upon destruction of the jail three people ran away: Archimandrite of Athos Feofan and former priest Sisoi, and treasurer Andreianko Veriovkin. And we, thy devout, sent ten Monastery laborers searching for them. And the dead bodies of the two disgraced, Archimandrite Feofan and treasurer Andreianko, were found at sea on the boats. The deceased were buried at the Monastery. The body of former priest Sisoi was not found and ten laborers disappeared at sea without being found. And we, thy devout, are trapped and we cannot send out anyone. And this year [1669], Great Ruler, on the sixteenth day of June we, thy devout, sent away from our monastery thirteen disgraced people to Sumskii Ostrog, together with Musketeer Silka Averkev and his friends. And [we] ordered [them] to stay with the commander of Sumskii Ostrog, Ignatii Volkhov. And we wrote a letter to him about that and put their names in that letter. And we sent them away to prevent them from escaping because now we, thy devout, are stranded in the Monastery. Kind Ruler Tsar and Great Duke Aleksei Mikhailovich, autocrat of all Greater and Lesser and White Russia, have mercy on us, thy devout, answer our prayer. Let us remain in Solovetskii Monastery and sing church hymns as we have done in the past, as was prescribed by the Wonder Workers Zosima and Savvatii, and Filipp and German. The new hymns, Lord Emperor, we cannot accept. And the aforementioned letter to Ignatii Volkhov, please order to be sent to Moscow to thee, Great Emperor. Great Tsar, please bestow thy pity on us.22 In truth, Volkhov did not pressure the monastery very hard. The tsar upbraided his commander in a letter, reminding Volkhov that musketeers placed at his disposal should actively threaten the rebel monks rather than staying in the safety of Zaetskii Island. Unconvinced that


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Volkhov would comply, the tsar wrote that he expected a complete report from his commander.23 Volkhov, however, knew that his musketeers and light artillery would be largely useless in the siege unless they could actively engage their monkish enemies. As long as the brothers were holed up behind the impregnable walls of Solovki, the soldiers had precious few targets. Mostly, the troops and the monks played out a waiting game—the soldiers gaining control of land outside the monastery walls, the monks getting more and more radical within the walls. Skirmishes broke out periodically but neither side incurred significant losses. The commander did have some success against monks who sneaked out of the monastery or were expelled for not supporting the rebels. Some brothers caught outside the walls were imprisoned, others were tortured: ‘‘So they mangled him and burned him, and tore out a rib from his half-burned body, shaved his head and poured cold water on it from a height, and after forty-eight hours of tortures beheaded him on the Saturday after Pentecost, and would not even let him be buried.’’ 24 Though his methods with captives were brutal, Volkhov’s troops were too few to seal off the monastery, and he was often unable to stop the monks from receiving food, going on fishing expeditions, or doing monastic business. They also had plenty of water, thanks to the forethought of the earlier builders, who had designed the monastery to include underground waterways and wells. As autumn storms began to roll in off the White Sea, Volkhov had to move his troops back to Sumskii Ostrog, where they sat out the winter. There, Volkhov had a whole other set of problems arising from the fact that Father Iosif, the contender for Solovki’s archimandrite position, had also encamped at the fortress town, though he had earlier been sent to Vologda to wait out the siege.25 Iosif’s presence created difficulties, since he represented another source of authority at Sumskii Ostrog. Iosif apparently had to supply the troops with food, reporting back to the tsar about shortfalls of bread that had been requisitioned for them. Once, for example, a hundred musketeers were sent from Kholmogory to relieve their counterparts in Sumskii Ostrog. When they ar-


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rived, the soldiers demanded rations from Iosif. He believed, however, that the troops had already been provisioned in Kholmogory and refused to give them food. The troops, hungry and angry, took out their rage on local peasants, stealing so much food that the peasantry began to starve; not content just to take grain, the soldiers beat and maimed the peasants. An investigation concluded that the soldiers should be provisioned at both the beginning and ending of their journeys but that they should not use excessive force on the surrounding peasants.26 Matters came to a head between Volkhov and Iosif early in 1672. While serving the Liturgy, Iosif was set upon by the commander’s men who held him under guard. Volkhov had received a report from a local peasant named Vaska and a tradesman named Iokaf who had accused the priest of some terrible, but unnamed, crimes. Believing them, Volkhov let them stay at Sumskii Ostrog while putting Iosif under arrest, confiscating furniture and other goods and publicly beating the archimandrite. At the same time, a certain German arrived on the scene, claiming to be a priest. The commander appointed German as head priest of the stockade. Taking advantage of this new position, German began drinking heavily and abusing the locals, arresting peasants on false pretenses and without consulting with the commander. Iosif, meanwhile, was finally cleared of the charges and exposed German as an impostor. He, along with Vaska and Iokaf, were remanded to Moscow under heavy guard; Volkhov received orders to reinstate the archimandrite and to return all the confiscated furniture. Volkhov hesitated, though, and Tsar Aleksei sent the commander of the Moscow musketeers to Sumskii Ostrog to enforce his directive. Unable to quash the rebellion and embarrassed by the Iosif affair, Volkhov was called back to Moscow under a cloud. Archimandrite Iosif, however, was left at Sumskii Ostrog to bury people who had died while he was incarcerated—if they were not drunkards or aligned with the rebellion.27 Angered by Volkhov’s inability to conclude the siege of Solovki, Tsar Aleksei gave the new commander, Kliment Alekseevich Ievlev, some six hundred soldiers. Almost immediately, however, the tsar began receiving reports of problems among these musketeers too—they


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had drawn double their allotted salary and provisions and then demanded another salary payment from Archimandrite Iosif, even before any of them had set foot on Solovki. Iosif complained that the soldiers were idle at Sumskii Ostrog during the winter, eating up the small surplus. In response, the tsar told Ievlev to keep his troops at Kholmogory until the spring thaw on the river, at which time five hundred troops would go to Sumskii Ostrog to prepare for their capture of Solovki, with one hundred kept in reserve at Kholmogory. The commander— probably fuming that his power was being undercut by Iosif—complained to the tsar that there were not enough messengers to keep up an ongoing correspondence among Kholmogory, Sumskii Ostrog, and Moscow. Once spring arrived and the soldiers came to Sumskii Ostrog, the situation got even worse. Commander Ievlev attempted to take control of the stockade’s finances from a treasurer expressly appointed by the tsar. Even worse, the commander began defrauding his troops of pay, claiming that they received enough income from fishing during the fall and winter months. The tsar had to reprimand his commander repeatedly, reminding him that it was the treasurer who controlled finances at Sumskii Ostrog, including the bread sent from Vologda to pay officers during the summer. Finally, though, the treasurer had to be replaced, since he had become senile.28 The rebellious monks exploited the army’s confusion for their own ends, laying in provisions, sending out fishing expeditions, and shoring up their support among the local peasantry and merchants. While the inhabitants of Sumskii Ostrog complained continually about the lack of food, peasants helped the monks stock up before the siege troops arrived. Iakov and Stepan Sobakin, two merchants from Kholmogory, sent fifteen barrels of wine to the monastery via Archangel. Peasants provided fresh fish, oil, and dried pike.29 The army tried to arrest anyone who sent food to the monastery, forbidding the transport of ‘‘fish, salt, bread, food supplies, or anything else to the Solovki Monastery from anywhere in secret.’’ 30 The authorities were, however, largely unable to control peasants loyal to Solovki. Even women and children reportedly traveled freely to the monastery during the siege.31


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The worst the troops could do was to set fire to all the monastery’s outbuildings on Solovki, making life harder for the monks during the winter months. Nor did the rebels shy from using underhanded methods to get the goods they needed. One, named Stenka Vtoroi, met with a village elder from the Keretskii area. Plying him with drink, Stenka exacted promises of two chetverti (about four hundred liters) of grain from the village plus mica from the local mines. To top it off, Stenka forced the elder to sign an affidavit swearing that the meeting and deal had never taken place! Stories of the episode made their way all the way to Moscow and the tsar sent an officer out to Keretskii to reprimand the village, reminding its elders to follow orders only from Archimandrite Iosif, not the rebels from the islands.32 In another case, the tsar had to command that inventories be made at Solovki’s saltworks, which had been taken over by the government. It seemed that grain from Kholmogory, destined for the salt works, had been sent directly to the islands for use by the rebels. A partial result of food scarcity was a slowdown of salt production by more than 20 percent in some places.33 Solovki, after all, had been the focal point of economic, religious, and cultural life for generations along the White Sea coast. Whether under Novgorod or Moscow rule, the monks of Solovki had skillfully developed saltworks, farms, and fisheries. Monks provided leadership for the local priests, built parish churches, and offered hostelry to pilgrims staying on the islands. In response, the people revered Solovki’s saints, looking to Zosima and Savvatii for salvation from stormy seas. In addition, northern peasants had little love for Muscovites. The capital was remembered from a century before as an invading force, raping Novgorod and killing its aristocrats. In fact, riots had broken out across the region already before the church reforms; in 1647, some Solovki peasants had even refused to swear allegiance to the tsar.34 So it was easy for whole parishes to concur with Solovki’s refusal of new service books. Clergy from Kem had a special solidarity with the rebellious monks, sometimes even joining forces with them. A report in 1671 claimed that priests ‘‘who left Kem without a trace for various months and years have all appeared in the Solovki Monastery’’ to aid the rebellion.35 When the rare priest from the area tried to use the reformed


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books, peasants either stopped attending services or, on occasion, even threatened bodily harm. Finally, the tsar had heard enough about Ievlev and sacked him in his turn, offering the command to Ivan Alekseevich Meshcherinov on 11 December 1673. Commander Ievlev’s dramatic last act was to force three hundred monastery peasants to go out fishing, leaving others behind to starve. Learning of the widespread hunger—unknown on Solovki lands since the Swedes had retreated—the tsar called for a full inventory of goods at Sumskii Ostrog and ordered Meshcherinov to send his troops to Dvina for wintering, with instructions to return to Solovki at first thaw and immediately crush the rebels.36 At Dvina, Meshcherinov complained to the tsar that his troops were not receiving enough food—but he then refused to increase rations until told twice by the tsar’s couriers, claiming that he did not believe the tsar had really given an order to double rations. Meanwhile, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich received separate reports of Meshcherinov hiding soldiers, claiming they had run away but then forcing them to work for his personal profit. Even worse, the new commander took up where Ievlev had left off, trying to take the purse-strings from the archimandrite at Sumskii Ostrog and ruling abusively over monastery peasants. Meshcherinov even beat peasants, flouting laws that only monastery elders were supposed to have authority over them. Meshcherinov was not alone—tax collectors and others from Moscow trickled up to Solovki’s lands, trying to extract money or goods from those who formerly worked for the monastery.37 Spring arrived, and with it came the tsar’s ultimatum—Meshcherinov was to take 850 men from Dvina to Sumskii Ostrog and then on to Solovki. This time, the tsar added, Meshcherinov faced the death penalty if he did not succeed. The tsar ordered five extra ships of food to be taken to Solovki for the troops and told the commander to stay on the islands through the bitter winter if necessary, in order to finish off the rebellion. And still Meshcherinov dallied, beginning to trade in mica that he had forced peasants to find in the hills. The tsar had to remind the commander that he was supposed to be conducting a military campaign, not enriching himself. Finally, the troops arrived at


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the islands on 31 May 1674, better provisioned and outfitted than ever before.38 The situation had not much changed—troops could not easily fight monks who were well-positioned behind impregnable walls and had received help from outside. By this point, Nikanor was clearly in control of the rebel forces. He was the acknowledged archimandrite, although Iosif still served officially in that capacity from Sumskii Ostrog. According to one report of a monk who left during the siege, Nikanor took a censer and holy water to consecrate Solovki’s cannons, speaking directly to the big guns: ‘‘My dear ones,’’ he said ‘‘my little sly fellows, our entire hope is placed on you, you have to defend us.’’ Turning to the men standing guard along the walls, Fr. Nikanor reportedly said ‘‘to shoot continuously at Voevoda Ivan Alekseevich Meshcherinov and his warriors. [Nikanor had] placed guards on the towers and along the walls with the order to look for the voevoda through spyglasses: ‘As soon as you see him, shoot at him; because when we cut down their shepherd, the warriors will scatter like sheep.’’’ 39 Increasing pressure on the rebels, Meshcherinov drained the lake, which fed the monastery’s underground water sources, cutting off water for the first time. He also pressed on militarily, killing two monks and thirteen laymen in the autumn of 1674.40 During the winter—against the tsar’s express orders—Meshcherinov went again to Sumskii Ostrog, letting the monks recover from their first real setback during the long siege. Officially, the blockade of Solovki had now lasted seven full years, though the monks had enjoyed easy access to goods, often leaving to tend the cloister’s business or to cast fishing nets. Even so, the years of struggle against the tsar were taking a toll as monastic leadership aged and winter set in yet again. At least the monks were able to live in relative quiet during the cold months, returning in large part to the routines of winter life that Solovki had treasured for centuries. The refectory, with its church and warm dining hall, became the war room for the monks, a place where Nikanor, the Black Council, lay leaders, and monks could gather. Even after the loss of much of their water supply, most monks held firm against the tsar, his commander, and the Nikon rituals. Come spring 1675, fighting broke out shortly after Meshcherinov


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returned to the islands. The monks had been forewarned that he would arrive in force, for they had sent a fishing party through the small Fish Gate early in spring, and these men heard news passed on from Sumskii Ostrog. The commander came with around one thousand men, the largest contingent yet. His first, limited attack against the monastery got pushed back by cannon fire on 30 May 1675, giving rebel monks the first victory of the new fighting season. It also showed the commander that Solovki had not lost its resolve. He could not expect an easy victory. Faced with no other option, Meshcherinov began to dig in around the walls, throwing up earthworks to prepare for a long, intensive battle at close quarters. He may also have started tunneling under the monastery, hoping to defeat the unassailable walls that way. As his men alternately skirmished with the rebels and dug into their positions, an uneasy quiet fell again over Solovki, each side waiting for a false move from the other. As the short summer passed, the commander decided—finally— to press the siege during the winter months. Since his predecessor had burned most of the monastery’s outbuildings, there were few substantial structures outside the walls for Meshcherinov to use. Even so, he realized (helped by goading from Moscow) that the rebels could hold on indefinitely if they had the fall, winter, and spring to regain their energy. Instead, Meshcherinov hoped to mount a battle with the monks at their weakest time, during the winter. On 23 December 1675, taking advantage of the deep darkness of Solovki’s winter, Meshcherinov began a general assault on the fortress. Throwing artillery shells and men up to the walls, the commander watched as the monks (by now losing energy as a result of the winter siege) still repulsed his carefully planned assault. He had to pull back troops and wait out another opportunity to breach the walls. He didn’t have to wait long. Though he claimed to have made headway in tunneling beneath the walls, Meshcherinov’s real break came from a monk named Feoktist. The turncoat stole out of the monastery with news: near the White Tower was a small gate that had not been completely bricked up. With a little effort, he told Meshcherinov, the troops could break through there and crush the monks inside.41


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Meshcherinov bided his time, waiting almost a whole month while he pondered the information. Late in the night of 22 January 1676, he struck, sending a small contingent through the bricked-up gate and catching the night guards as they were being relieved by the morning contingent. The troops threw open the Holy Gates, letting Meshcherinov into the monastery. He immediately went to the refectory while his soldiers began their pillage—the treasury and the sacristy were stripped of their riches. Legend—retold across the White Sea region for generations—tells of a face-to-face meeting between Nikanor and Meshcherinov. ‘‘I do not fear you,’’ said the old man, lying on a sledge. ‘‘I hold the soul of the autocrat himself in my hands.’’ These words made Commander Meshcherinov seethe—what traitor would claim to hold the soul of the tsar? For the old monk’s impertinence, the commander leaped from his seat and knocked out the man’s teeth. Not to be assuaged, Meshcherinov called for his soldiers, who dragged Nikanor from the room by the heels, blood puddling between the stones on the floor as Nikanor’s head hit them over and over. Unsure if he was dead, the soldiers stripped the aged monk down to his shirt and left him in a ditch. During the night, the abbot’s body froze. Frightened and battered after seven years of siege, monks surrendered by the dozens, expecting to be treated like holy men. Instead, the soldiers’ bloodlust only increased—rage born from siege, hardship, and cold burst out of them as they strung up monks by their heels or fastened them two-by-two behind horses sent galloping across the snow.


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ot all the monks died on that bitter January night. There were some five hundred men inside the monastery when Meshcherinov broke through the walls. His troops killed around three dozen but more were on their deathbeds, suffering from the last stages of scurvy, for the commander had finally been able to stop the flow of foodstuffs provisioning the uprising. Still, many monks fled into the night, taking advantage of their knowledge of the island and the winter’s near-constant darkness to steal away from Meshcherinov and his troops. These men hid on Solovki—perhaps even with hermits living outside the cloister walls—and waited for the opportunity to leave the island. Once on the mainland, the monks trudged from village to village, from hermitage to hermitage, receiving food from supportive peasants or finding places to stay with fellow monks of the north woods. Having stood up for the old books and local traditions for eight years, the Solovki monks rose in the estimation of many locals. They were living holy men—survivors of an event that was quickly taking on mythic proportions. The defeat of Solovki’s rebellious monks also played into other apocalyptic prophesies. Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich died just two 115


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weeks after Solovki fell, leaving his sickly son Fedor to rule. It seemed that the entire order of things had turned upside down: religion had changed, Solovki was sacked, and the tsar was dead. Weren’t these portents of suffering to come? Predictably, villages in Solovki’s domain were among the most stubborn adherents of the old rituals. Sometimes there were pitched battles between them and the tsar’s troops. If they had to, the Old Believers fought with any weapon available—bear-spears, knives, and axes; muskets and harquebuses when they could find them. In a few cases, proponents of the old ways even murdered their opponents.1 Other Old Believers, however, burned themselves alive in their chapels, immolating themselves rather than dying at the hands of the soldiers. Former monks of Solovki sometimes appeared in the midst of this struggle, leading believers into armed insurrection or passive resistance through self-immolation. Trying to respond to the schism in its midst, the church exerted as much control as it could. The huge diocese of Novgorod—which was much too large to govern from one place—was broken into multiple bishoprics). Afanasii, the new archbishop of Kholmogory (which had earlier been part of Novgorod), had a special mission to root out supporters of the old service books. On 10 June 1683, in one of his first acts, the bishop sailed to Solovki, hoping to purge the monastery of any lingering proponents of the old books.2 While he was at the monastery, he wrote a proclamation to the new brothers, thanking God that they were not numbered among the raskolniki (‘‘schismatics’’). Many monks at Solovki, however, continued to maintain a quiet allegiance to the old ways, even under new leadership at the cloister. Solovki’s new archimandrite, Makarii, had arrived from his home at the Tikhvinskii monastery in the Novgorod region just months after Meshcherinov took the fortress. Makarii brought a new cellarer from the Antonievo-Siiskii monastery near Kholmogory, Father Ilarion, who was given the task of rebuilding the monastery. Some 350 musketeers landed with them to keep the peace and to forestall a renewed uprising. The musketeer guard stayed at Solovki for an entire year, outnumbering the monks who began arriving from other monasteries.3 The church kept the new archimandrites of Solovki on a short rein,


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importing them from other monasteries and then rotating them out of office after a short time. Ilarion followed Makarii after just four years, and himself served five years. In early January 1686, he was sent to another monastery until being named bishop of Pskov. Archimandrite Innokentii took over in 1687 but resigned after just two years because of illness. Finally, in 1689, Archimandrite Firs was chosen to lead Solovki, and his tenure lasted from 1689 to 1719. Under Archimandrite Firs, the monastery began to revive its spiritual, economic, and cultural life. A new hospital had been built in 1688, just before Firs arrived, and he continued to renovate buildings and encourage pilgrimage, which had fallen because of the uprising, as well as of tolls on the roads to Archangel and Kholmogory, which sometimes forced pilgrims to turn back before arriving at Solovki.4 Firs received his first significant gesture of support from Moscow in 1693, when the government returned 41,414 rubles, 89 1/2 kopeks to the monastery, the amount of revenues from the sale of salt during the uprising. The monks responded by sending Tsar Peter Alekseevich an icon of Zosima and Savvatii, prosphora, holy water, and books of the lives and deeds of Solovki’s saints. Unlike his sickly brother, Peter took an active interest in the White Sea region once he took over as tsar, looking for routes of trade and conquest. Shortly after returning the small fortune of salt revenue to Solovki, the tsar began his frequent sea travels by trying out a new yacht named the St. Peter. At the beginning of June 1694, Peter went to the White Sea to take possession of his personal vessel and to christen a larger one, the St. Paul. While in Archangel, Peter decided to take the yacht on a trial run to Solovki. Coming out of the harbor, Peter and Archbishop Afanasii, along with a seasoned crew, were first becalmed. Then a storm hit, tossing the yacht and its royal passenger across the deck, forcing men toward the center of the boat as the bitter wind swept waves across its deck. The tsar and his pilot put their shoulders to the tiller, trying to keep the bow into the waves so it wouldn’t capsize. The archbishop made his way through the huddled mass of men, giving last rites to those preparing to die.5 But they did not die: the tsar and the pilot found a way into a small bay on 12 June, seeking shelter at the Pertominsk monastery. After re-


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gaining their spirits, drying their clothes, and waiting for the storm to pass, the little group of sailors set out again for Solovki. Peter arrived at the monastery on 16 June in a quiet mood. He spent three days praying at Zosima’s and Savvatii’s tombs, bestowing almost a thousand rubles in gifts on the monastery and its leaders, and raising a wooden cross near the seashore in remembrance of his good fortune. He sailed back to Archangel on quiet seas, the white nights of summer marking his return home.6 Storms continued to buffet Solovki just as they had the tsar on his trip. On 6 September 1701, lightning struck the Transfiguration cathedral during the afternoon Divine Liturgy, streaking through the nave and cracking the stone floor from the front choir to the central columns. The lightning bolt ripped a lamp from its chain, scorched a chandelier, and cracked bricks. Father Makian, a future archimandrite of Solovki, was hit by the bolt as he served at the altar. The lightning shot up his legs and tore the top of his felt boots but left him miraculously unharmed. That same year, the brothers of Solovki prayed for another miracle, a savior to rescue them from the Swedish army that had thrashed the Russians at the Battle of Narva. The Swedes were again roaming the Karelian forests and settling along the inland lakes of northern Russia. Tsar Peter, the brothers hoped, would be able to sweep the Swedes for the last time from the White Sea. In 1702, the tsar came again to Solovki—not in his yacht but with warships and a contingent of four thousand. The tsar’s second trip solidified his place in the mythology of the islands and assured him that the monks were now good subjects, not rebellious Old Believers. Solovki’s chronicle told the story of the tsar’s visit in exquisite detail. In the month of August of the year 1702, the Great Tsar Petr Alekseevich, the Autocrat of all the Russias, together with his son Aleksei Petrovich, the Grand Duke, with their Suite, went out to sea from the Archangel seaport and arrived at the Solovki Islands. They were accompanied by a military squadron composed of thirteen ships, which, due to contrary winds, was anchored between Anzer and Muksalma Islands. The Great Tsar



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Model of Peter the Great’s yacht hanging from an arch in the Solovki monastery. The sign on the ship reads: ‘‘Ship mobile. His Highness the Emperor Peter the Great came to the Solovetskii monastery for the first time in the year 1694 from the Birth of Christ, on the seventh day of the month of June, from the beginning of the world the year 7202, the second year of the indiction.’’ (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Prokudin-Gorskii Collection, LC-DIG-prok-00347)


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ordered a monument built in the honor of his arrival at that place. On these three islands of Solovki, Anzer, and Muksalma, which are divided by small straits, there were built three military camps. During that time, the Great Tsar often traveled to Anzer Island for relaxation. On 10 August the fleet docked at Zaetskii Island with the firing of guns (to announce their arrival). With His Highness’s permission, Duke Iurii Fedorovich Shakhovskii and the Archimandrite, who arrived from Anzer Island together with brothers, waited to greet the Tsar at the monastery. An hour and a half before the evening, the Tsar with a few people arrived at the island’s shore on a small boat and prayed upon disembarkation, received the Archimandrite’s blessing, let the Archimandrite kiss his hand and, in turn, kissed the Archimandrite’s hand. After that, the Cellarer with the foremost brothers brought a tray on which lay bread and fish and the Great Tsar condescendingly thanked them; and the rest of the brothers stood at a distance by the Holy Gate. First, His Highness walked around the monastery’s walls from the right and entered the monastery through the Holy Gate without announcement and bell-ringing. He walked directly to the Cathedral and from there, upon saying a prayer, he walked into the Church of the Solovetskii Wonder Workers Zosima and Savvatii, where he kissed the shrines of the Holy Ones. Then he wished to be in the vestry, in the armory, and in the refectory, promising to the Archimandrite to dine with him on the following day upon completion of the Liturgy, together with all the Tsar’s servants. Then the Tsar visited the Archimandrite in his cell and dined with him, accompanied by nine of the Tsar’s barons and a resident of Poland. Then, at six in the evening, the Tsar sailed back to his ship, and those who accompanied him stayed in the guest cells. On 11 August, His Highness with the Tsarevich, accompanied by military and state officials, entered the monastery without formal greeting and listened to the Liturgy performed by a Hieromonk and Hierodeacon, the court traveling singers


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sang on the choir and after the Liturgy a moleben [supplicatory service] was celebrated, at which His Highness condescended to make a monetary contribution. After that, the Lord Tsarevitch wanted to go to the vestry and the armory again, and other monastic buildings. And the Abbot and all the brothers went to the refectory and met the Tsar, where His Highness with the Tsarevich and close advisers deigned to eat monastery food and drink, and were entertained by the Archimandrite, Cellarer, Treasurer and the Head Hieromonk. After dinner, His Highness was favorably disposed to go around the monastery and to the jail and to call on the Archimandrite again; and from there, upon nightfall, he and the Tsarevich returned to the ship. On 12 August, His Highness again came from the ship to the Island’s shore on a small boat, without his son. He ate a simple monastery meal in the guest house and went horseback riding with his close servants eastward one-and-a-half versts [1.5 kilometers] to Varak, where the monastery’s brick factory is located. From there, the Tsar returned to the guest house and from there he went back to the ship, ordering the Archimandrite to feed all the ships’ crews with beef in honor of His Highness’s arrival and on the holiday of the Dormition of the Mother of God. OnThursday,13August,HisHighnessdidnotleavethe ship, nor ordered food or drink from the monastery, but the monastery sent ten loaves and a barrel of marinated fish to each ship for the crews and the Tsar accepted this with gratitude. On Friday evening, 14 August, His Highness sailed on a small boat to the Island’s shore and entered the guest house, where he ordered the Archimandrite to commence evening liturgical services in accordance with the monastery’s Rule. Then the Tsar asked the Archimandrite to dine with him, and upon the Tsarevich’s arrival, His Highness and his son went to the Cathedral for the all-night vigil, during which the blessed Tsar himself sang with his singers on the right-hand choir and on the left there sang the court singers. The singing was com-


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pletely according to the Greek chant, the canon was without refrain, only the ninth ode had one. The singers sang the litiia stikhira and the slavnik on the choir, but the other stikhiry were sung according to the order, in the glas golovschiki. After the all-night service, His Highness wished to read the documents sent to the monastery by his forefathers and father (blessed be his memory), the Great Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, about the privileges granted to the Archimandrite of Solovki. After that, the Tsar granted the Archimandrite Firs to have the same privileges in the future as were given to Archimandrite Ilia in 7159 (1651), with an addition that the Archimandrite Firs wear the inscribed mantle and a staff with apples, in the manner of the Chudov monastery. . . . On 15 August, the Day of the Dormition of the Theotokos, Archimandrite Firs, in the presence of His Highness, officiated in the Liturgy as priest with the privileges newly given to him. The Monarch himself stood in the choir and the Tsarevich stood at the Archimandrite’s place. At the end of the service, His Highness and the Tsarevich had lunch which was prepared from the Tsar’s food that was brought from the ship, but they had the monastery’s drinks, at the monastery guest house. After the meal, the Tsar went to visit Elder Lavrentii Aleksandrovich who never left his cell except for confessions in the church, living his life in seclusion and silence. During these next days, the Great Tsar seldom left his ship, even to go to Zaetskii Island, where he ordered a wooden church built in the name of St. Apostle Andrei Pervozvannyi [Andrew the First-Called], which was built immediately under the supervision of Head of the Rule Ioann Stefanov. And near that church, His Highness ordered to build a labyrinth or Babylon of natural stone in one continuous line. And of the rest of the people, subordinates and lower-rank soldiers, there were over four thousand people. During his stay at Solovki, His Highness was in calm spirits and cheered up his companions, who were all happy, from highest to lowest in rank, and they praised His Highness.


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St. Andrew’s Church, built by Peter the Great’s troops on Zaetskii Island (Photograph by William Brumfield)

At eight in the evening of that same day, 15 August, the Tsar was informed of the possibility of an opportune trip over the sea; His Highness immediately let the Archimandrite kiss his hand and received the Archimandrite’s blessing, and with the Tsarevich sailed back to the ship on small boats. However, they did not sail out that evening, but the next day, 16 August, they weighed anchor and sailed until they docked at the shore of the Solovetskii Nekhotskii salt-making region the evening of the same day. Meanwhile, the Archimandrite, without wasting time, together with the Cellarer and a few Hieromonks, took the Icon of the Solovki Wonder Workers Zosima and Savvatii and some food, and rode up with this present to the Tsar’s fleet to thank the Tsar and Tsarevich for their mercy. They arrived at that saltworks on the morning of the next day; and His Highness condescendingly invited the Archimandrite and Cellarer aboard his ship, let them kiss his hand, and thanked them very much for the gift. Then they were given a meal and some money for the upkeep of the monastery’s bulls (which they drove). Also, His Highness ordered that they be given two


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hundred poods (3,276 kilograms) of gunpowder, and with those gifts of the Monarch they went back to the monastery. Upon arrival, the Archimandrite did not even go to his quarters but went directly to the Cathedral where he and the brothers thanked God with prayers and bell-ringing for the Great Tsar and Tsarevich and those who traveled with them, and for their pleasant visit. Then, the head of the monastery offered a meal. Soon after, His Highness’s fleet sailed to Archangel from Nekhotskii port, and the Tsar himself traveled through the woods to Povenetskii seaport about 160 versts [160 kilometers], where bridges were built by the peasants of the Solovetskii monastery at the Sumskii and Kemskii stockades and the town of Kem, continuing their work with horses until winter. On this newly made road, two yachts were towed to the Povenetskii port, from which His Highness, via Lake Onega and by the River Svir’, directed his journey to the Novgorod region and, joining the soldiers at the Swedish fort of Nöteburg (which is now named Schlüsselburg), captured it on 11 October.7 This document, with its day-to-day description of Peter’s time at Solovki, shows how the tsar and the monastery perceived one another. When he arrived for the first time at Solovki, Peter came under a cloud—exhausted by the storm, beaten down by the waves, the tsar had hobbled into the safe harbor happy to be alive. Spending his days in prayer and coming back from the edge of death, Peter did not show himself in splendor to the monks of Solovki. When the tsar returned in 1702—the beginning of a new century—he came with all his maritime glory. Arriving with his son, their suite, and his four thousand men (including high-ranking boyars and princes), the tsar arrived as a conquering general instead of as the ‘‘Captain of the Yacht St. Peter,’’ as he had called himself in 1694. Tellingly, Peter eschewed the pomp he could have received from Solovki’s monks—no riotous bell-ringing for his entrance through the Holy Gates. Instead, he deigned both to have the archimandrite kiss his hand and (in the style of two monks meeting) kissed the archimandrite’s hand in return.


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Peter showed no interest in proclaiming spiritual power over Solovki; as modestly as possible for a tsar, Peter took part in the life of the monastery. He drank monastic beverages, visited a pious hermit elder, and dined with the head monks. As he had done on the earlier visit, Peter visited Zosima’s and Savvatii’s shrines, thanking them for safe voyage on their sacred water. He took part in liturgical services— shortened versions without refrain—his voice booming out from the right antiphonal choir. Peter stood just where lightning had struck almost exactly a year before. The cracks from the lightning bolt must have been visible in the church and Peter stood there and sang—himself a force of nature at seven feet tall. For all his lack of pretension, Peter did demonstrate his military power when he came back to Solovki in 1702. Though visiting there almost daily, the tsar did not condescend to stay at Solovki; instead he lived aboard his warship, coming into the monastery only when he chose to do so. Most important, Peter bestowed higher symbolic rank on Solovki’s abbot—Archimandrite Firs—who understood that his authority rested not on the monastery’s history but on the good graces of the tsar. Astutely aware of his situation, Firs proffered Solovki’s documents, betting that the tsar would grant the same privileges the monastery had gained before the uprising. Symbolically, Peter placed his mark on all parts of the monastery—refectory, brickworks, saltworks, and especially the armory (which he visited twice). Instead of a rough-hewn cross, Peter had a church built at the edge of Zaetskii Island, a forbidding place where the wind whipped over the stony, lichen-covered ground. Next to the church, he made order from chaotic nature, commanding a large labyrinth to be built there of ‘‘natural stones.’’ Peter the Great had learned the lessons of his father, who had suffered from Solovki’s headstrong monks. Visiting the northern edge of his empire, Peter showed that he—not the monastery—was sovereign.8 Leaving Solovki, as the chronicle noted, Peter began an adventure. Sailing directly south from the islands to the monastery’s saltworks at Nekhotskii, the tsar sent most of his ships back to Archangel for the autumn. From the little village, Peter directed Solovki’s peasants and soldiers from Sumskii Ostrog and Kem in building a log road, 160 kilo-


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meters of rough-hewn tree trunks laid down through the wilderness toward Povenets, on the northern tip of Lake Onega. As some peasants cut and laid logs side by side, others pushed and pulled two of the yachts through the forest, some of the wildest territory in Peter’s realm. It took about six weeks to heave the boats through the woods—an unimaginable sight for the rare peasant, hermit, or trader in the region. Peter used the element of surprise—the Swedes could not imagine he would appear at their fortress of Nöteburg in the Novgorod region. It took only a few days of siege for the Russians to retake their old fort. After the disaster of Narva, Peter I had reasserted his dominance in the area, and this was his first important victory over the Swedes— a harbinger of his complete supremacy over the Russian north after his victories in the Northern War. Like his visit to Solovki, Peter’s journey across the forests and lakes of the north indicated his ownership— his sovereignty—over the region.9 In 1703, not long after his travel to Solovki and defeat of the Swedes at Nöteburg, Peter announced he was creating a new capital of his empire—St. Petersburg—along the Baltic Sea, a region newly liberated from Sweden by his forces. As he trekked with his boats through the woods, Peter came near to the Vygovskaia Pustyn monastery (also known simply as ‘‘Vyg’’), which was fast becoming the stronghold of Old Believers in northern Russia. This little settlement, with an adjoining women’s cloister called Leksa, perceived itself as a resurrected Solovki. Nestled away in the largely uninhabited forests southwest of Archangel, the men and women of Vyg followed the monastic rule of Solovki according to the ‘‘ancient piety.’’ At least one monk, Pafnutii, had found his way there from Solovki following its defeat. He was welcomed in 1697 by members of the community. None of the Old Believers of Vyg was a priest and only one had actually been tonsured a monk, so Pafnutii was a rare specimen who lent Solovki’s authority to Vyg’s endeavors.10 In 1702, the inhabitants of Vyg had just survived a winter almost without food, when devils had tempted the faithful, elaborate visions had come to them in their suffering, and they had been reduced to eating pine cones and roots. By October, the Old Believers had finally regained their strength and had begun laying in supplies for the next win-


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ter when news of the tsar’s imminent arrival trickled to them through the informal grapevine of peasants, wanderers, and merchants: ‘‘Then they were afraid of the slanderers who would inform his Imperial Majesty against the Vygovskaia Pustyn. Sickness and fear lay over the whole hermitage so that they had all already prepared themselves for death and had, in the monastery, tar and straw in the chapel [to immolate themselves before being captured].’’ 11 Fortunately, the Old Believers were not forced to kill themselves or suffer under the tsar. Instead, according to legend, Peter heard that he was near the settlement and said simply, ‘‘Well, let them live.’’ Peter went on to beat a more important enemy at Nöteburg and the Old Believers received respite from imperial persecution. In fact, this close call helped both Vyg and Peter. The little cloister followed closely in Solovki’s footsteps—after initial suffering and near-starvation, the Old Believers (like Solovki) made their peace with the authorities and began enriching themselves by trade. In Vyg’s case, the Old Believers came to an agreement with Peter’s government to supply iron ore in return for being left alone. The community thrived, erecting a stockade fence (as at early Solovki), building a central chapel, and even installing a clock in its bell tower—a device that was almost unknown across the north except for the one installed by St. Filipp in Solovki’s tower. Cementing Vyg’s reputation as a successor to Solovki’s rebellious monks, Vyg’s founder—the remarkable Semen Denisov— wrote a panegyrical History of the Solovetskii Fathers and Sufferers, which was to become the most famous description of the monastery’s uprising. Though leaving the Vyg community to live in peace, Peter was not to be so generally charitable to the Old Believers. As part of a drive to transform Russian culture on the western model, Peter forced city-dwelling Old Believers to pay double taxes if they chose to keep their beards (which they perceived as physical manifestations of God’s image and a mark of humility). He compelled anyone who lived in his new capital of St. Petersburg to wear European-style clothing, much to the dismay of Old Believers, who viewed the western clothes, especially the short coats for men and revealing dresses of women, as signs of Russia’s degradation. Worst of all, Peter obliged every man in Russia to be counted in the empire’s first census, so that he could better


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ascertain how many men could be drafted into the army. Old Believers identified the census with being counted by the Antichrist as foretold in the Revelation of St. John. Refusing to be enumerated, untold numbers of Old Believers fled further into the forests and steppes at the edge of the Russian empire. In truth, the Russian Orthodox Church did not fare so well under Peter’s rule, either. As he had on Solovki, Peter believed it necessary to demonstrate his dominance over the church. When the patriarch died in 1721, Peter created a Spiritual College (later called the Holy Synod) to administer the church. Linked to the throne via a lay Supreme Procurator (Oberprokurator), the Spiritual College was numbered among the other ‘‘colleges’’ (ministries) of the state. Hoping to regulate monasteries, parishes, seminaries, and itinerant preachers, Peter also promulgated his Spiritual Regulation. Though the bishops of the Holy Synod developed prodigious power of their own, the church was never again to rival the emperor.12 Meanwhile, Solovki continued to be plagued with problems. The Holy Synod persisted in holding the monastery under close control, interfering with internal matters on a regular basis. In 1723, for example, Archimandrite Varsonofii sent a report detailing a spat between two monks. Although the matter was about ‘‘nothing very important’’ and did not relate to politics or the Holy Synod, the archimandrite had to ask the bishop of Kholmogory’s guidance rather than resolving it himself. The bishop did nothing but send the matter on to the Holy Synod, which in turn began an investigation that puttered out.13 The affair, banal as it might have been, showed how much power Solovki had lost. Instead of the northern star, Solovki had fallen under the administration of the Kholmogory diocese, not even the more powerful archbishopric of Archangel. Peter I’s Spiritual Regulation, which turned many of Russia’s religious traditions on their heads, took a hard line against monasteries. The Regulation limited their power and independence and also made it much more difficult to become a monk. No longer could Solovki accept monks of its own volition. The Holy Synod’s bureaucracy had to vet any man who wanted to join Solovki—especially if he was leaving


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state service for life in the cloister. Soldiers and sailors were particularly suspect, since the life of a monk seemed far less onerous than the twenty-five-year term of service demanded of Peter’s warriors. Artemii Agafonov, for example, started serving in the army in 1712. Finally, in 1749 at sixty-seven years of age, he received permission to become a monk at Solovki because of his ‘‘advanced age and senility and that his eyes are poor and he suffers from scurvy.’’ 14 Financial problems also dogged the monastery—another unpleasant change in Solovki’s situation. Varsonofii reported that in 1708, there had been 192 monks, 125 musketeers (paid at three rubles each per year), and 186 worker-pilgrims. In 1727, Solovki was only half its former size: 101 monks, 40 soldiers, no servants, and 49 paid workers lived at the monastery. In the later report, Varsonofii did not mention workerpilgrims, who were later to become so important to the cloister.15 In 1723, Archimandrite Varsonofii had been forced to inform the Holy Synod about shortfalls in income—according to him, all food for the monastery came from its patrimony of 343 farms and none from the island itself. To augment income, the archimandrite asked for a 10 percent tariff to be imposed on all fishing and fish-curing in the region. The next year, a peasant named Ieliazarov complained about the monastery’s parsimony. Supposed to deliver dried herring to the monastery by March 1723, Ieliazarov could not make the appointed delivery in time because of particularly slushy roads. For his tardiness the monastery fined him four hundred rubles. Ieliazarov twice asked to be cleared of the fine, citing the obvious problems with northern Russian roads in springtime. Receiving no satisfaction from Solovki, the peasant turned to the Holy Synod—which also turned him down. Ironically, Archimandrite Varsonofii made the same argument to the Holy Synod when he arrived in St. Petersburg on 2 June 1725 without a proper passport. Not mentioning that it was demeaning for a Solovki abbot to ask his bishop for a passport, Varsonofii instead explained that he had not been able to get the paperwork done in Kholmogory—560 kilometers by water from Solovki—during the bad weather of April and May of that year. Later in June, the Holy Synod officially allowed Varsonofii to stay in St. Petersburg to conduct his business, but that he had to say exactly when he was leaving.


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The archimandrite had come, klobuk in hand, to ask for financial aid to the monastery. He brought a list of problems that the monks wanted to be addressed, in the form of a petition to Empress Catherine I signed by all the senior monks (with signatures affixed by the cellarer if monks were too old or too senile to write themselves). Their list of requests—repayment of back duties, recovery of lost monastic funds, permission to sell extra bread, the problem of duty-free salt boiling, and permission to build old-style boats (instead of the Western European designs preferred by Peter I)—illustrated the bad times upon which Solovki had fallen during the early eighteenth century.16 The situation finally began to look up in the last ten years of Varsonofii’s administration. In 1730, he was invited to St. Petersburg to attend Empress Anna’s coronation. In 1735, the empress gave one thousand rubles to the monastery and shortly thereafter Solovki began construction on a new residence in St. Petersburg for the archimandrite, who was given a secondary membership in the Holy Synod. Varsonofii’s rise to power culminated in 1740 when he was named archbishop of Archangel, with a full seat on the Holy Synod. All of these events helped to make the monastery more financially stable, since Varsonofii was now in a position to funnel funds toward his former monastery and to influence government decisions in its favor. New buildings began sprouting around the island, including a better system for offloading ships, a rope works, a tar works, and improvements to the kvass brewery and the wharf. The monastery’s archives were put into order and the refectory and the cellarer’s office received larger windows.17 Gennadii, the cellarer, who took over as archimandrite, continued building, relying on a new war threat from Sweden to underwrite a stone bridge to the Holy Gates and other measures to strengthen the fortress. He petitioned for the right to build a new bell tower and to install a new huge bell in it, the old ‘‘Borisovich’’ having cracked. He even revised the Rule and tried to crack down on immoral monks. However, Archimandrite Gennadii became embroiled in a controversy regarding his work to ameliorate the suffering of peasants on Solovki’s estates. According to a complaint against him, Gennadii had usurped the power of a certain Elizarov who had been entrusted with


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streamlining peasant tax payments to the monastery. Elizarov claimed that Gennadii—who earlier was supposed to act as an assistant to Elizarov—had meddled in Elizarov’s affairs and, when confronted, had beaten the older man and had him chained. Then, going further than Elizarov intended, Gennadii had instituted more reforms, exempting peasants from dues if they were living at the monastery and correspondingly raising the dues of peasants in remote farms. This bought him respect and love, according to the affidavit, from all who lived at the cloister. In the end, according to Elizarov, Gennadii had ‘‘weaseled’’ his promotion to archimandrite and enriched himself through underhanded means and had even burned an icon of Jesus—a throwaway claim to illustrate the depths of Gennadii’s degradation. Though backed by Varsonofii (who by then had become a bishop and was near death after almost forty years of service), Gennadii was told to step down in 1761 ‘‘for rest’’ at another monastery.18


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hile strolling around Solovki on 11 August 1701, Peter also stopped at the prison. Taking the fresh air after church services ended,Peter passed by the northern towers of the monastery, the great rounded bastions that could hold off Swedish invaders and Russian musketeers. Lichens, which grew on the boulders of the squat tower, changed colors in the summer light as clouds passed across the sun: blue, gray, red, and gold. The monks had shown particular ingenuity with the walls and Peter had to have marveled at the engineering: five stout towers stood at each of five corners. Outside the towers, the red and blue coats of Peter’s soldiers mixed with the black monastic habits. To Peter, it must have seemed absolutely appropriate that the towers, once bastions of antitsarist rebels, now contained jail cells. In 1691, Peter had begun sending political and religious enemies to Solovki, where they could rot away knowing that escape was nearly impossible. The Korozhskaia Tower, on the northwest corner of the battlements, housed both the regular cells and the ‘‘earthen prison’’—a pit dug into the basement of the tower, forming a wet, cold, dark cell often referred to as the ‘‘grave.’’ The pit was three arshini (two meters) 132


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Monks standing in front of the Nicholas (Nikolskaia) Tower (in foreground) and the Watch (Korozhnaia) Tower, sites of the monastic jail (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Prokudin-Gorskii Collection, LC-DIG-prok-00350)

deep, edged in brick. Its cover was made of boards, spread over with earth. There was a small opening in the boards with a trapdoor in it that was kept locked, except when a prisoner descended or received his food. Inmates had to sleep on a heap of straw, through which rats continually burrowed. Once the rodents had finished the crumbs left over from the prisoner’s bread, they nibbled at the inmates—an uncovered ear or nose made a meal for the rodents infesting the cell.1 Above the earthen prison were other cells, nominally less ghastly than the ones below. These had thick walls, sometimes with tiny embrasures set deep into the brick. The larger cells were about three by two meters square and the smaller ones about two by two meters, leaving little headroom for prisoners lying down on wooden pallets.


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Some sun filtered into the outer cells but prisoners held in the interior sections saw no natural light at all. Peter would not have been able to fit into the tiny rooms—he would have crouched at the door, not able to get his massive frame inside. He certainly would not have been able to stand up completely; cells had about two meters of headroom at their doors but the rooms narrowed like sideways funnels toward their ends, where the headroom was just over a meter. Probably the most desirable cell, so to speak, was under the bakery and near the Dormition church. There, the smell of baking bread could instill a craving for food but at least the ovens kept the cell warm and dry. Away from the bakery, the cells were dank, and some were purposely kept at near-freezing temperatures during the winter. In the best-case scenario, condemned monks lived ‘‘among the brothers’’ (as opposed to ‘‘under guard’’), retaining many of their monastic prerogatives. Some, however, had to do back-breaking chores, among the most menial in the monastery, such as hauling water. Even that was better than life in the cells. Seeing the prison at first hand did not deter the tsar from sending his foes to the northern jail. Quite the opposite: though Solovki had long been a place of exile, Peter was the first to send large numbers of political prisoners there, often even directing them to be put in particular cells. In 1701, for example, the tsar sent Bishop Ignatii of Tambov to the Golovenkov dungeon, one of the larger cells near the Archangel Gate, measuring six and one-half by two meters, ‘‘to be in this prison to his death.’’ 2 Later, a certain Mishka Amirev was sentenced to Solovki for blasphemy—to be held in the earthen pit. Amirev, however, got hauled up to the cathedral to hear liturgical services each day, after which he was tossed back down. Peter sent so many political and religious prisoners to Solovki that the monastery had to build new cells in 1718.3 Before incarcerating prisoners in Solovki’s walls, however, the tsar’s government had to ensure that they actually arrived on the island. Travel on the White Sea was limited to the summer months—roughly mid-May to mid-September—though inmates sometimes made the crossing during warm winters. Generally, prisoners arrived accompanied by one or two soldiers who had been paid especially for this hard-


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ship duty. There were risks for the soldiers—long months of travel, unforeseen delays, and storms on the White Sea. This made it difficult for the church to find appropriate escorts—two Greek monks remanded to Solovki ended up in the middle of a dispute between the Senate (Russia’s foremost secular ministry) and the Holy Synod over who should pay for their transfer to Solovki.4 The payment promised to the soldier Naum Shabanov of the famous Semenovskii Regiment in 1721 as far as Vologda was itemized as follows: ‘‘From St. Petersburg to Ladoga—130 versts [130 kilometers] by water, at sixty-five kopeks per verst then from Ladoga to Vologda—540 versts at three kopeks per ten versts, for a total of four rubles, fifty-four kopeks. For the return trip— alone—a flat fee of one ruble, twenty-seven kopeks for water travel.’’ Because of squabbling over who was supposed to pay him, the soldier never did receive recompense.5 A financial issue also arose with the exile of one Iakim Volkov, a court dwarf. Peter the Great had kept a large retinue of dwarves, forcing the ‘‘little people’’ to dress in regalia, take part in mock coronations and weddings, and poke fun at Russian traditions, all the while accompanied by bawdy songs and barrels of alcohol. Apparently, Iakim Volkov pushed his luck a little too far. Shortly after Peter died in 1725, Volkov was imprisoned for ‘‘words against the person of the blessed and ever-worthy memory of His Imperial Highness.’’ As a result, authorities ordered him ‘‘to be beaten brutally with a birch rod and to be banished to the Solovetskii Monastery and to be at the monastery to the end of his life.’’ The church, however, refused to pay for Volkov’s military guard or travel expense to Solovki, presumably because he had been a member of the imperial court, not the clergy. The Synod ruled that Solovki should send its own men to accompany the dwarf to his incarceration—a precedent that Solovki would not accept. In the end, the dwarf did not serve his sentence at the monastery because no one would pay for him to get there.6 On occasion, prisoners even overpowered their guards. The priest Fedor Efimov and the monk Makarii, who had been hauled before the church authorities and undergone a long trial, including accusations of robbery, improper priestly behavior, unworthy speech, and other misdemeanors, received a sentence of exile to Solovki at hard labor. On


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the way, however, the two clerics beat up their military guard and tried to run away. Local peasants found the pair and sent them on their way to Solovki via Archangel.7 Even more rarely, prisoners even attempted escape from Solovki, like the exiled monks Arkadii and Epifanii, who disappeared into the wilderness after arriving safely on the island. In spite of an all-points-bulletin sent out by the archbishop of Kholmogory, the monks were not found.8 In the most important cases, the government sent large convoys with prominent prisoners. V. L. Dolgorukii, for example, was from among the most prominent families at court, and had his own guards who then brought their families. Archimandrite Varsonofii found it difficult to make arrangements for the families of the guards, since women were not supposed to live on Solovki.9 In 1727, both Count P. A. Tolstoy and his son Ivan were imprisoned in the monastery. Count Tolstoy had played politics at the very highest levels in Russia, trying to ensure his preferred heir to the throne as Empress Catherine I lay near death. Backing the wrong side, the Tolstoys were banished to Solovki. The elder man, already eighty-one years old when he received his sentence, was allowed significant personal effects. He asked a nephew to bring him ‘‘a bed, pillows and blankets; also two hundred rubles and a hundred gold pieces; also a prayerbook and a small psalter, and anything else’’ the nephew thought would be helpful.10 Father and son left the capital for Archangel in June 1727, traveling with a retinue of ninety soldiers and five officers, as befitted an extremely powerful count. Many political enemies arrived on Solovki’s shores to pay the penalty for maligning the emperor or using improper speech—a crime punishable by the most brutal means. On 16 October 1721, a certain Ilia Sinitsyn accused the peasant Fedor Kostromin, of the village of Nikolskii, Kungurskii region, of insulting speech against the emperor. Kostromin was summarily lashed and sent to Solovki to while away his life in an underground cell. In addition, two priests, Ivan Ivanov and Petr Alekseev, received three lashings for not reporting Kostromin’s indecorous language. Even drunkenness—the priest-monk Mefodii’s defense for saying obscene things—didn’t save him from exile. And in 1722, another priest-monk received his sentence for ‘‘the indecency of


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his word.’’ ‘‘Instead of death,’’ the priest was ‘‘to be held in the jail under heavy guard, until the end of his life, without leaving, being given a moderate amount of bread and water to eat, and no one is permitted to converse with him.’’ 11 Even ‘‘suspicious’’ actions could land a man in jail, as happened to the priest-monk Isaia of Chelinskii monastery. When hauled in front of his accusers in St. Petersburg, the monk demanded proof of his alleged ‘‘suspiciousness’’ and refused to answer questions put to him. Previously, Isaia had been charged with lying and bootlegging, both brought forth at his trial. Finally, the Secret Council of the Holy Synod decided to exile the monk to Solovki but said that he could live among the brothers there for the rest of his life.12 Sometimes, wandering monks were exiled to Solovki to wander no more. In others cases, Catholics, Jews, or Muslims who had converted to Orthodox Christianity, then backslid to their former ways, found themselves confined to Solovki’s walls, usually forced to labor as monks.13 In a few cases, even banishment to the earthen prison was not enough punishment. A Ukrainian named Zakhar Patoka committed some unspecified ‘‘great misconduct,’’ perhaps defaming the tsar. Instead of death, Patoka had his tongue cut out and was sent to Solovki. In another case, Kiril Fedotov was sentenced to a whipping and having his tongue cut out for using foul language. His acquaintance, Lukian Serebriakov, received the lash for not reporting his friend. Fedotov was sent to the Solovki jail for his crime, but Serebriakov was allowed to work at hard labor there for the rest of his life. In other cases, falsely accusing someone of foul speech could send a monk to Solovki for a life of hard labor in chains.14 One day, the priest Venedikt looked up and cried—out of the blue —‘‘Rejoice, Russians, and grab a nipple!’’ He was sent to hard labor at Solovki for three years. The monk Ioasaf Podlinskii hid an indecent letter to his lover—‘‘My light, my little mother, my little dove, my white one, my heart!’’—under his pillow. He was lashed when he arrived at the monastery.15 Practicing the occult arts could also land a man, whether low-born or famous, in Solovki’s stone cells. Some, like a certain Simon, were indicted for minor offenses like telling fortunes. The sailor Nikifor Kup-


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tsin, on the other hand, was exiled to Solovki as a money-mad atheist who had turned his faith to the ‘‘Dark Lord’’ after being hit in the head by an officer. The Holy Synod sent Kuptsin to Solovki for a brief term, worried that he would become even crazier if he stayed too long. Upon his arrival at Solovki, Kuptsin behaved as a devout Christian but then became uninterested. He wrote a letter to the archimandrite proposing corrections in religious practice and pointing out inconsistencies in the Scriptures.16 In 1758, Solovki received one of its most important prisoners, Prince Petr Vasilevich Saltykov, who had been found guilty of sorcery. It seems that Saltykov preferred the company of young men to living with his wife. Married since 1751, the prince ‘‘grew weary’’ of his bride, according to secret documents from the trial. He turned to witchcraft instead of divorce, since the latter rarely occurred in Russia. Looking to well-connected sorcerers, Saltykov had spells placed on his wife in hopes of killing her so as to leave him more free to take up with his preferred companions. Saltykov’s plan backfired—rather than dying, after the trial his wife received all of the family estates and wealth. He was sent to the jail beneath the bakery in Solovki under heavy guard— fifteen soldiers plus the wife and children of their captain. When, in 1762, Saltykov was pardoned and freed from Solovki, he received only enough land to survive under house arrest for the rest of his life. His wife, receiving good fortune rather than bad, retained the rest.17 Generally, clerics’ sins were more mundane than Kuptsin’s letters to the ‘‘Dark Lord’’ or Saltykov’s sorcery. Take, for example, the case of a Lithuanian named Kossakovskii, who had been baptized Orthodox and then tonsured as a monk. Kossakovskii rose to the rank of deacon and even taught Latin, which he knew well. As an educated man, the monk was then engaged to work for the bishop of Nizhnii Novgorod. When the bishop fell ill, though, Kossakovskii began to take over the prelate’s duties, selecting forty-eight men to become priests and deacons, many of whom were barely literate and were unable to read prayers during Liturgy. Usurping the bishop’s money as well as his power, Kossakovskii also received 601 rubles, 10 kopeks for selling church offices, and stole 299 rubles, 75 kopeks from the bishop’s household, and even


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3 rubles, 35 kopeks from the kitty reserved to buy seminarians’ bread. Finally, the deacon illegally administered communion without taking confession for two years. On 19 October 1743, Kossakovskii was remanded to Solovki for the rest of his life, with heavy labor.18 Solovki had an especially paradoxical quality for the many Old Believers sent there. As Solovki grew in the mythology of the northlands, the church tried to crack down on dissenters. When the Holy Synod felt particularly threatened by Old Believers—especially when politics mixed with religion—Old Believers found themselves being sent to Solovki. Father Superior Iosaf of the Moshnogorskii monastery was hauled before the Holy Synod on 6 March 1722, on charges that he had uttered slanderous words against the tsar, and ordained and tonsured heretics. He was beaten and sent to Solovki for the rest of his life, to be kept in the underground prison.19 A decade later, the priest Avram Ivanov received a similar punishment. Father Avram lived at the Aleksandr Nevskii monastery but rarely attended services there, heading off to serve according to the old books in the villages and wayside chapels of Novgorod. Discovered by his archimandrite, Avram was sent to St. Petersburg where he pledged his loyalty to the state church and petitioned to be placed at the Iverskii monastery. There, however, Avram confided to another Old Believer that he wanted to flee into the forest. His plan came out and Avram fell again on the mercy of the church, asking to be tonsured immediately. The Holy Synod, angered by Avram’s duplicity, forced him to Solovki under the most strict conditions.20 There were situations, though, where the suffering of Solovki might be ameliorated. On occasion, an inmate was transferred away from Solovki for the remainder of his prison term, as in a 1727 case when a priest-monk was moved, on the advice of Empress Catherine I’s secret counselor Vasilii Stepanov, from Solovki to another monastery. He had been charged in 1702 with misappropriating two thousand rubles at the Moscow Uspenskii monastery and had petitioned the Empress for leniency after twenty-five years. More dramatically, the priest Evfimii was freed by Emperor Peter II in 1728, after having been incarcerated for alleged involvement in the murder of Prince Petr Tolstoy.


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Leaving the ‘‘dark dungeon’’ of Solovki, where he had been tonsured as a monk, Evfimii was appointed archimandrite of the Novospasskii monastery.21 Once in a while, even plebeian inmates had their positions improved. Father Fedor Matveev had been serving in Moscow, at the Smolensk Gates. The Holy Synod learned in 1719 that he was leading his flock away from the state church and toward Old Belief. He had revived Old Believer liturgical traditions and received counsel from the Old Believer center of Starodub. During confession, he even asked men if they ‘‘shaved the beard according to heresy.’’ When it learned of these atrocities, the Synod ordered the priest to Solovki for ‘‘eternal monastic work.’’ His wife petitioned the Synod three times, pleading for his release. They had, she wrote, fourteen young children and suddenly no income. After the appeals the Holy Synod relented and sent Matveev home to care for his family but forbade him ever again serving as an Old Believer priest.22

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The monastery tried to combat Old Belief, but its authority over the northern peasantry had declined precipitously. Archimandrite Varsonofii sent reports to the Holy Synod regarding the village of Sorotskii, part of the monastery’s patrimony and an apparent hotbed of Old Belief. The peasant Egor Kruchkov, for example, secretly practiced the old rite and had allegedly raped a woman from the same village. The Holy Synod, receiving the report, ordered Kruchkov’s capture and interrogation at Kholmogory by the archbishop. Under pressure, Kruchkov maintained his innocence in the matter of the Old Belief. His godfather, on the other hand, testified that Kruchkov attended confession (as was the law) but refused to cross himself in church or to partake of the Eucharist. Both of these were signs of a ‘‘half-schismatic’’ who secretly preferred the Old Belief but did not publicly proclaim it. In the matter of the rape, Kruchkov was forced either to pay his victim cash or to marry her.23 Closer to home, the monastery battled against Old Believers in its midst. In 1726, reports filtered in about unofficial clergy administering rebaptism—back to the Old Belief. There were even stories of selfimmolation in the hinterlands of Solovki’s patrimony. In response, the


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archimandrite accused a Solovki monk named Arsenii of being an Old Believer, since he had been spending inordinate time at the locations in question. During the night after his arrest, Arsenii began acting as if insane—screaming, flailing his arms, and pleading to have his head cut off. More investigation turned up documents that demonstrated not only Arsenii’s Old Belief, but that he was also among the spiritual leaders of Old Believers at the Gavshezerskii skete.24 It was nearly impossible to unravel the twisted strands of Old Belief, economic activity, and monastic power in the north. Take, for example, the long story of Matvei Sobinskii, a runaway peasant, merchant, miner, and possible Old Believer from Sumskii Ostrog, in the center of the Old Believer region near the Vyg community. In 1720, according to his affidavit filed with the Holy Synod, peasants at Sumskii Ostrog had appointed Matvei Sobinskii as their elder. After about two years in office, Sobinskii began noticing runaway seamen and other vagrants arriving at the fortress. According to Sobinskii, Archimandrite Varsonofii knew about the illegal drifters yet took no steps to clear them out of Sumskii Ostrog. When Sobinskii complained, Varsonofii had him publicly beaten and threatened with exile. Under interrogation, the archimandrite admitted to letting some eighty-two seamen stay in the area. He sent sixty-five to St. Petersburg for trial when ordered to do so; seventeen, however, escaped before the archimandrite could find them. Additionally, the archimandrite was forced to admit that he had not investigated the theft of Sobinskii’s fishing tackle and catch, worth a total of seventy-three rubles. Shortly thereafter, Sobinskii again asked for protection, this time from public beatings during mealtimes. Taking the offensive,Varsonofii then claimed that Sobinskii was actually a runaway peasant from the Pecherskii monastery, not legally the elder of Sumskii Ostrog. The Synod realized that it needed an independent opinion and sent Archbishop Varnava to look into the situation. During the investigation, the Synod forced Sobinskii to stay at Solovki but took care that his wife and children receive adequate care in his absence.25 By 1726, Sobinskii was again free and had received the right to search for mineral deposits on Solovki land near the Vyg Old Believer community. This time, the Solovki monastery brought charges against


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him, accusing Sobinskii of being an Old Believer: he kept a beard but did not pay a tax on it, as required of merchants; he did not have a spiritual father; he kept Old Believer books in his possession; and he had helped a known Old Believer to escape punishment. Sobinskii rejected the charges against him, saying that he had only one Old Believer book (but many Nikonian ones); was allowed to keep his beard because he was of peasant origin; and had been falsely accused of helping the Old Believer escape. According to Sobinskii, he had happened across Vasilii Barmin, the Old Believer, when the latter’s fishing boat was foundering. Sobinskii pulled the soaked man into his own boat, saving his life. Making matters worse for Sobinskii, though, he did admit to sending his daughter to the Leksa community, Vyg’s female counterpart, for her education. Although claiming that he lived in the area and simply needed to educate his child, the peasant’s link to those famous Old Believers did not help his cause. The Synod might have simply sent Sobinskii to jail, except that his work was important to the mining activities that the government hoped to develop in the region. Sobinskii was therefore set free to continue trade and mineral exploration, keeping his beard without tax. Whenever he was in St. Petersburg, though, he had to register daily with the Holy Synod to make sure he was not spending time with Old Believers in the city. Sobinskii also received a hefty fifty-ruble fine.26 Varsonifii, however, was still not done with the matter. Two years later, he again brought Sobinskii up on charges to the Holy Synod. Admitting that the peasant-merchant-miner had received rights to search for minerals, the archimandrite claimed that no one knew if Sobinskii had found any minerals in the area and that he had misappropriated and misused fisheries and land owned by the monastery. Varsonofii also asked the Mining Commission to look into the matter, hoping that it might find malfeasance and order Sobinskii back to the Pecherskii monastery. In the end, the matter was left unresolved. The authorities stated that Sobinskii had filed appropriate documents noting mineral deposits but that his information had not yet been independently confirmed.


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If Sobinskii were found to have falsified his reports, he was to lose his job and be sent back to Pecherskii monastery.27 Solovki’s most celebrated prisoner was Petr Ivanovich Kalnishevskii, the last ataman (chieftain) of the legendary Zaporozhskii Cossacks. Their exploits were legendary—killing Jews, Russians, and Turks without remorse, heaving booty from their raids onto their horses and thundering off to Sech, their remote capital. The Zaporozhians celebrated victories with immense orgies of eating and drinking slava (‘‘glory’’)—a punch of vodka, red wine, and honey. A Zaporozhskii Cossack might affix silver heels to his black leather riding boots to announce his arrival and to show the world he didn’t care for money. These same boots—pounding like crazed, military tap-shoes—were the centerpiece of the Zaporozhian gopak—the Cossack dance of high kicks and incredible stunts.28 Born in 1694, Kalnishevskii rose to the top of the Cossack horde during a pivotal epoch, when the Cossacks felt pressure from both Russia and Turkey to give up their land and traditions. Each side hoped the warriors would settle down to farming and serving in the regular army. The Zaporozhskii rose up with other Cossacks in revolt against Peter the Great, hoping to retain their independence. After their defeat, though, the Cossacks—mostly Ukrainian in ethnicity—tended to side with Russia whenever there was war with Turkey. Kalnishevskii gave lavishly to Orthodox churches in Kiev and in the small villages of Ukraine, sometimes bestowing gilt-covered gospels or entire church buildings. In 1762 he was named chieftain, losing the title a year later but then regaining it. Kalnishevskii tried to develop stronger ties between Catherine II (whose coronation he attended, resplendent in Cossack uniform) and his own Zaporozhskii horde. To this end, he befriended the empress’s closest consort, G. A. Potemkin. The ataman’s links with the court in St. Petersburg did him little good back home, where the Cossacks still distrusted the Russian government. He could not head off the final confrontation between Catherine’s forces and the Zaporozhskii host, culminating in the bloody loss of Sech to the Russian army. Ten years later, returning to St. Petersburg,


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Kalnishevskii was surprised to be imprisoned, having lost most of his supporters at court. Only a last-minute letter written by Potemkin to Catherine the Great saved the ataman from a death sentence, which was to be carried out on 4 May 1776. Instead, Kalnishevskii received a slightly less ominous fate—he was secretly dispatched to Solovki under heavy guard.29 Leaving from St. Petersburg for Archangel on 11 July 1776, the ataman arrived at Solovki on 29 July. He had traveled far: from the southern reaches of the Russian empire to its northern edge; from the outrageous, militant independence of the Zaporozhskii to a dank cell of Solovki. He was eighty-two years old. Potemkin regularly asked if Kalnishevskii had shown remorse, which would have opened the possibility of pardon. Kalnishevskii steadfastly refused.30 The only favor he was willing to ask from the authorities was on 12 October 1779, when he petitioned Solovki’s guard captain to pay for repair of the jail roof from his own money, since water was dripping in steadily and ruining his clothes. The roof was repaired, offering him some little comfort in the cell.31 Hidden away at Solovki, Kalnishevskii quickly became a legend among the Cossacks. What had happened to him? Had he been executed? Had he escaped to Turkey? Had he quietly settled beside the Don River, leaving his old identity behind? In fact, only the few directly involved with Kalnishevskii knew his fate—to be held until the end of his life without outside contacts, given no writing utensils or paper, not allowed to stretch his legs outside the cell except on Christmas, Easter, and the Transfiguration of Christ, when he might consider his own transfiguration from ataman to prisoner. To everyone’s surprise, Kalnishevskii did not die in his prison. In 1802, the new Emperor Alexander called for a census of all prisoners, after which he gave a large-scale amnesty. Kalnishevskii was one of two inmates at Solovki at the time and he received immediate forgiveness of his past sins. Coming out of the tiny cell, 110 years old, Kalnishevskii was finally free: ‘‘there was a pile of refuse two arshin high left after him, and after being in isolation for such a long time he became uncommunicative and morose and lost his eyesight; he grew long, animal-like nails and a long beard; all his clothes were torn and hung


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from his shoulders.’’ On 7 June 1801, the newly freed Cossack wrote to the governor of Archangel, asking that he be tonsured as a monk. The monastery accepted him among the brotherhood shortly thereafter and Kalnishevskii lived another year there, dying on 31 October 1803.32 Born shortly after the Solovki uprising had been crushed, Kalnishevskii died just as a new century dawned on the islands. He was buried with honor, and his gravestone read that ‘‘he humbled himself and died in peace.’’


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n 1762, the government forever changed the face of Russian monastic life when Emperor Peter III took the long contemplated but never implemented step of secularizing, in other words confiscating, all monastic land. Suddenly, the great monasteries of Russia, including Solovki, had no source of income. They could no longer rely on the local peasantry, which now had to pay its rents directly to the state or to new landlords. This gave the emperor a lot more land to distribute to faithful nobles and simultaneously undercut the possibility of monasteries becoming too independent or rich. With the stroke of a pen, the cloisters had been made almost completely dependent on the state for financial aid. Solovki’s new archimandrite, Dosifei, was aghast at the implications for Solovki: he hazarded a crossing to the mainland, a very rare occurrence, in December 1763 to plead the monastery’s case before the Holy Synod for three entire months. In 1764, the College of Economy, which had taken over monastic lands, confirmed Solovki’s status as a ‘‘first-class’’ monastery, meaning that it would receive the largest financial support and the highest prestige. The next year, Solovki received another honor, the title of stavropigialnyi, which meant its archimandrite was placed on an equal rank with a bishop. Finally, the monastery 146


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would again be able to deal directly with the Holy Synod, bypassing the demeaning paperwork filed through the bishop of Kholmogory. At the same time, Solovki was unburdened of the day-to-day administration of its jail. In 1766, control of the prisons moved from the archimandrite’s office to that of the army command at Solovki. This was a relief for Archimandrite Dosifei—abbot and warden were not easily compatible positions—but it also created problems. In his own monastery, an archimandrite’s power was rarely questioned; by tradition and rule, he had almost complete daily control over spiritual, financial, and administrative matters. His staff (cellarer, treasurer, and others) and the Black Council advised the archimandrite, but their power was limited. After 1766, however, the prison became nearly independent of the monastery though located inside its walls. The only official contact between the captain of the guards and the archimandrite was a ritualized message saying, almost invariably, something like ‘‘forty prisoners are in a prosperous condition.’’ There was much friction between the archimandrite and the captain, with each wary of the other taking too much power.1 Left without its greatest sources of income, Solovki was forced to fall back on the cloister’s traditional strengths to revive economic life. Since the monastery had lost all of its land and saltworks, it would have to enlarge its own substantial enterprises (brickworks, tar works, icon studio, bookbinding, rope-making, and others), which were on the islands and therefore not subject to secularization. To do so, it needed to expand the number of monks at the monastery and—more important—the legion of trudniki who came there to atone for sins or thank the saints for protection. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, in fact, Solovki seemed to have recovered from the worst. It was financially solvent, had a growing number of pilgrims bringing income and fame to the islands, and was able to take on significant new building projects. The monastery chronicle reports a two-story stone hostel built in Archangel, a new set of cells on the eastern side of the walls, renovation of monastic living quarters on old foundations on the south side of the monastery, and a new sawmill just outside the walls near the water’s edge. Monetary donations flowed in to the monastery and, in return, the archimandrite gave one thousand rubles to an educa-


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tional fund for poor children. In addition, a new altar was built for the Zosima-Savvatii church with a new iconostasis and columns. Other altars received silver-clad arks (for holding the Host) and silver icon coverings.2 Some of the construction came under Synod jurisdiction, but other projects were initiated by Archimandrite Paisi, whom the Holy Synod appointed in 1814 by transferring him from the Modenskii Nikolaevskii monastery in the Ustiug district. The new buildings troubled some in the Black Council. The former treasurer of the monastery, priest-monk Iosif, wrote to Prince Petr Mikhailovich Volkonskii on 5 August 1818, alleging that Paisi had been overstepping the bounds of his office and paying for construction without the brothers’ consent.3 Shortly thereafter, the monastery’s preceptor (nastavnik), Father Savvatii, formally asked the Holy Synod to look into the problem. Both letters had been written only after the council had met with the archimandrite in September 1814, demanding that he follow the Synod’s decree of 13 December 1813 forbidding abbots from using monastic funds without the brothers’ knowledge and agreement.4 In the beginning of its inquiry, the Holy Synod focused mostly on financial matters relating to the original complaint. These included four basic charges: (1) The archimandrite had kept 234 rubles from the sale of monastic objects, contrary to the Spiritual Regulation, which forbade selling of ‘‘monastery articles, even though they have been issued to them, either in the city streets, in the monastery, or indeed, anywhere at all, for this is an utterly shameful and extremely dishonest practice.’’ 5 (2) He had misappropriated 275 rubles that had been earmarked for other use. (3) He had diverted to his personal use 310 rubles from a fund dedicated for the good of the entire monastery. (4) He had given away monastic valuables without the knowledge and consent of the elders, also forbidden in the Spiritual Regulation.6 The investigation of Paisi’s activity, however, soon turned into a broader dragnet for improper behavior on his part. As the Holy Synod began to study the situation, a whole list of problems came to light. A number of these strayed far from the original charges and fell under the competence of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In the end, Paisi was found guilty on ten charges. In its verdict, the Holy Synod chose


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to emphasize his financial wrongdoing, itemizing his sale of monastery goods, misappropriation of funds, and embezzlement down to the half-kopek. Next, the Holy Synod concluded that Paisi had failed to treat his monks, servants, and prisoners humanely. He was guilty of ‘‘the burdening . . . of service workers and the oppression of them and of the brothers in various ways.’’ 7 Likewise, the Synod ruled that Paisi had given prisoners poor food and denied them money that had been kept ‘‘in a particular box.’’ Even worse, the archimandrite had refused to give prison guards firewood and forced them to buy articles from the monastic reserves.8 Finally, the Synod noted that Archimandrite Paisi had opened the monastery’s doors to questionable people, ‘‘inviting them to live’’ at the monastery though they held invalid passports.9

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In March 1818, the Holy Synod, acting on a statement by the supreme procurator, resolved to dismiss Paisi from his position as archimandrite of the monastery, strip him of his rank, and direct him to stay at Solovki or some other monastery.10 In its final report, the Synod demanded that Paisi make restitution to the monastery and other aggrieved parties. Significantly, though, there was no mention of Paisi’s uncivilized management of the prison. Instead, that wound was left to fester for the next decade. The official chronicle of the monastery said that Paisi had been discharged from his position at the monastery ‘‘for rest in his own cloister and the administration of the monastery was entrusted at that time to Archimandrite Pavel of the Siiskii monastery in the Archangel diocese.’’ 11 The chronicle did not, however, note Paisi’s period of office, as it did for every other father superior or archimandrite who served in Solovki. When Paisi’s successor, Archimandrite Makarii II, died in 1822, the chronicle recorded his tenure in years, months, and days. In the same paragraph, it noted that ‘‘on December fourth, the former archimandrite Paisi, who had been staying at the monastery for rest since 1819, passed away.’’ 12 Many of the problems that plagued Paisi’s tenure turned up again in the 1830s, during the reign of Archimandrite Dosifei II.13 In this case, the scandal stayed focused on the mistreatment of military staff and prisoners. In essence, there were three problems: inadequate numbers


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of jailers; bad working and living conditions for those same men; and terrible treatment of prisoners. It is not clear what started the inquiry that led to scandal; it may have been a request to Minister of Finance Count Igor Frantsovich Kankrin from the Holy Synod, asking for more men to serve at Solovki. The letter claims that though there were not enough of them, the men did receive adequate clothing, bedding, and provisions.14 In February 1836 (about sixteen months after Archimandrite Dosifei’s request), the prison staff petitioned the Holy Synod. Because of their small number, they said, it was impossible for them to see their families at all while serving on Solovki. Women were not supposed to visit the islands and prison guards could not leave the monastery for up to three years, placing their families in a ‘‘helpless situation.’’ 15 Though they agreed with the archimandrite’s desire for a larger contingent of guards, they begged to differ with Dosifei’s description of their situation, claiming that they had ‘‘extremely scant’’ provisions and poor living quarters. Kankrin rejected all requests, saying that there were too few people in the Archangel region to support an extra contingent of troops and that Solovki had apparently survived with only twenty-five soldiers for the previous sixty years.16 In refusing to augment the number of guards at Solovki, Kankrin skirted the real problem—the gulf between living standards for monks and laymen at Solovki. Monks, by and large, lived comfortably: they had warm cells connected by covered galleries to the main buildings in the compound. Though guaranteed a certain level of physical comfort, monks could also use their own money to buy extra supplies from the cellarer; leaders of the cloister had as many as nine servants at their disposal.17 Servants, trudniki, prisoners, and their guards, on the other hand, endured far worse living conditions than the monks. The monastery Rule provided for food, clothing, and shelter for the servants living at the monastery, especially the long-term pilgrims. The Rule intimated that lay workers were not to receive better treatment than the monks. To the contrary, by the nineteenth century monks enjoyed a rather high level of comfort while the servants still lived poorly. Even worse was the condition of the prisoners, whom the monastery saw as a bur-


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den and a source of income but rarely as an opportunity for Christian charity. The Holy Synod decided that it could not make any more decisions about the situation on Solovki without an independent report. In late summer 1836, the Synod sent one Archimandrite Serafim from Archangel to find out exactly how bad conditions were and to offer suggestions to rectify the situation. The report—eight closely written pages based on Serafim’s travels around the archipelago—revealed a system with deep problems.18 Serafim reported that although the general condition of the monastery and its sketes was good and liturgical services were celebrated according to church regulations, the brothers did not live according to either the Rule of the community or the basic instruction of the Synod in 1793. He noted that any changes necessary could be done after the winter, which was coming on quickly. The archimandrite then turned his attention to the condition of pilgrims, prisoners, and guards at the monastery—some five hundred men. Specifically, Serafim concluded that Solovki needed radically to improve living conditions for pilgrims ‘‘(a) who remain all year, according to the zeal for God of the Solovetskii Wonder Workers; (b) for the civilian workers; . . . (c) for the soldiers of the command; and (d) for the prisoners sent on account of various activities for admonition and correction.’’ 19 More seriously, Serafim found that the accommodations for both prisoners and guards were desperately inadequate. They lived at the northwest corner of the monastery compound in a two-story building that had been built in 1618. In 1798, the first floor was made into a prison; in 1828, monks added a second tier to hold the growing prisoner population. In all, there were twenty-eight storerooms (as the cells were still called). Each storeroom held two men and was about two by one and a half meters in size.20 Guards were moved out of their own rooms into the hallways when prisoners overflowed the original space. The soldiers had to create makeshift quarters between the cell doors. This did little to raise the guards’ spirits and fights often broke out between them and their prisoners, living just next door.21 Serafim reported that ‘‘to make their stay peaceful and free of oppression, I intend to move the soldier squad out of the prison building, for their


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residence there is inappropriate and causes much disturbance, and only those on guard duty should stay in the prison. Because under present conditions it is difficult to ventilate and clean the building.’’ The guards moved freely around the monastery but prisoners were not let out of their cells during the entire winter, which sometimes lasted eight months.22 During that time, the prisoners could get fresh air only through open windows; they constructed makeshift partitions to keep themselves warm. One prisoner said that life under Archimandrite Dosifei was ‘‘an intolerable yoke’’ of cramped spaces, poor ventilation, and terrible food—fresh bread was considered a delicacy.23 ‘‘On those arrested and imprisoned,’’ wrote Archimandrite Serafim, ‘‘I have the privilege to report to Your Majesty that since my arrival their conditions have improved. I regularly see them in person, and I preach to them and I console them and persuade them so that they would not be in doubt. In a calm and slow manner I ask them about their living conditions and food and if they are satisfied with these, and to some I give additional portions.’’ 24 Archimandrite Serafim counseled that military guards urgently needed a separate place to take their meals, away from their quarters. He believed that a common mealtime for the prisoners, based on monastic tradition, complete with the reading of saints’ lives or works of the holy fathers, would help to convert heretic-prisoners.25 Changing dining practices alone, however, could not ameliorate the great suffering experienced by all the nonmonks at Solovki—pilgrims, guards, and prisoners. Serafim therefore recommended major construction to house these groups. He pointedly noted the need to bring in architects with professional training, since no one on Solovki had enough specialized knowledge to design the buildings correctly or the money to pay for them. The Holy Synod, working with the Archangel governor, acted quickly. They sacked Archimandrite Dosifei, who had presided over the poor conditions at Solovki. The archimandrite ‘‘was transferred to the Zadonsk Theotokos third-class monastery in the Voronezh diocese. In leaving, he also lost the rank of superior of a first-class monastery.’’ 26 In Dosifei’s place, the Holy Synod appointed Archimandrite Ilarii and prescribed an extensive building program. The new archi-


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mandrite kept the Holy Synod abreast of his actions through upbeat reports (‘‘Glory to God!’’ began one, rather than with a more traditional formal greeting).27 The archimandrite crowed about new rooms with adequate ventilation, heat, and good furnishings. Specifically, the monastery built ‘‘two extensive two-story wooden structures . . . for keeping pilgrims; A three-story, stone, twenty-five-arshin [eighteenmeter] long building for the various established workers and masters. A two-story building with stone foundations for the lodging of monastic servants. An extensive wooden building with a stone foundation on Muksalma Island and . . . a new bakery’’ producing seventy chetverty (six cubic meters) of bread in twenty hours.28 From 1837 to 1840, even more new structures were built: a twostory building for the soldiers’ living quarters, eight new stone cells at the forge, and a cookhouse ‘‘in the English style.’’ 29 In 1839, an architect offered drawings of a new prison. The plan called for a two-story building with twenty cells, each with at least one window. Interestingly, the original diagram showed smaller cells that were later enlarged in pencil. The prison was to have held nine small cells and eleven large ones, offering more room and fresh air than previous store rooms. The building, however, was never completed—instead, the monastery added a third story to its jury-rigged structure, using that as an expanded prison. Even without a new building, however, Solovki’s guards and prisoners had much better lodging than ever before.30 Intense criticism of Solovki’s prison, though worrisome, did not stop the government from sending convicts to the monastery. In fact, under Nicholas I’s reactionary rule the cloister received even more political prisoners and Old Believers. Among the best-known political convicts were members of the Decembrist uprising, which had propelled Nicholas’s conservative turn. Most famous of all was Pavel Isaakovitch Gannibal, a relative of Alexander Pushkin, who was accused in 1826 of being in league with the Decembrists. Gannibal, an ex-officer of the Napoleonic Wars, found favor with Archimandrite Dosifei and helped to compile the published version of the monastery’s chronicle.31 To cover expenses for the new inmates, payments for upkeep had


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theoretically gone up. In the early nineteenth century, the rate for monasteries holding prisoners had been 20 rubles per year; in 1811 payment rose to 50 rubles per year, which again increased to 120–160 rubles per year in 1835. Solovki had a difficult time collecting the money owed it, however, and the archimandrite often pestered the government for payment.32 In the same year that it approved the second increase payments to monastic prisons, Nicholas’s government also conducted an audit of prisoners. As a result, many of Solovki’s fifteen prisoners received amnesty—two were sent to the military, two more were moved to monastic cells, one became a novice, one was sent to a hospital in St. Petersburg, and two were set free. By 1841, there were again eighteen prisoners, but only one of them was held for political crimes, and most of the rest were Old Believers or members of other religious minorities.33 The newfound interest in prisoners’ comfort did not go unnoticed by the prisoners themselves. One, who had suffered under Dosifei, claimed that Ilarii was ‘‘mild, humane, interested in the good of all the prisoners,’’ providing better food and clothing, and more comfortable surroundings than his predecessor.34 This improvement, according to the prisoner, offered them hope for a better future.


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n 18 July 1854, Her Majesty’s Ships Miranda and Brisk steamed into Solovki’s harbor with the mission of harassing and capturing Russian boats and ports. Far from home and distant from the Crimean War zone, where England and Russia were fighting, the two ships had encountered no Russian resistance to their sweep through Arctic waters. They had already taken a small prize and yearned for a bigger one. The commander, Erasmus Ommaney of the Brisk, had excellent charts of Solovki’s waters. He wrote that ‘‘the celebrated monastery of Solovetskoi came in view, which presented an imposing and beautiful appearance, its numerous domes and minarets glittering in the sun. A very massive wall surrounds the pile of buildings, which gives it the character of a fortification.’’ He knew his prize well, remembering that the monastery was ‘‘regarded as one of great sanctity in Russia; many pilgrims resort here annually from all parts of the empire. Its wealth is considerable.’’ 1 The monastery had expected British warships to invade but did not know when. In April, the new archimandrite—Aleksandr, who had been a priest at the Archangel military cathedral—arranged for Solovki’s most important treasures to be shipped to Archangel in forty155


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two cases and four casks. The abbot had also put together a shabby contingent of ex-soldiers and volunteers to defend the monastery—in all, fifty pensioners taken from among pilgrims, prisoners, and laborers on the island. The need for such a ragtag group came from the lack of soldiers on the island; after centuries of military presence, the government had moved Solovki’s military men back to the mainland during the Napoleonic Wars and had not revived the garrison during the Crimean conflict. Worse still were the arms available to defend the monastery: in addition to a few cast-iron guns and mortars, the armory contained 645 small arms, 20 crossbows, 40 sabers, 381 pikes, and 648 battle axes. The big guns themselves were worthless—when workers cleaned off the rust, they found their dates of manufacture to be 1550, 1554, and 1702.2 Exasperated, Archimandrite Aleksandr asked for better armament, receiving only 8 guns with 60 rounds for each one. A local engineer, one Lieutenant Bugaevskii, placed the guns in batteries outside the monastery walls along the shore. Training to shoot—since most of the pensioners did not know how to use the new weapons— took up a few hours a day but did not include practice with live ammunition, since there was so little of it. The volunteers paraded in the evenings from five to seven o’clock. Looking over his command, the archimandrite realized that military preparation would have to be secondary to spiritual readiness. The monks redoubled their daily prayers, asking intercession of Sts. Zosima and Savvatii and, especially, the Virgin Mary. The White Sea had thrown up an unusually strong gale that summer, forcing hundreds of ships to harbor. When the waters calmed in July, Solovki took up its watch for foreign attackers. On 18 July, an old man stationed on a bell tower saw the black smoke of British warships and ran to tell the archimandrite, who immediately called the monks to prayers. After a short service, the assembled brothers formed an icon procession and marched around the monastery walls, glancing through each embrasure at the screw steamers coming toward their islands. As the warships loomed on the horizon, the soldiers were issued their arms, including refurbished ancient muskets, and took up positions. The archimandrite himself went to the battery outside the walls,


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overseeing the installation of two three-pounder guns pointed out to sea. By afternoon, the ships had anchored close enough to begin a skirmish. At 3:40 p.m., the captain of the Brisk observed the Miranda fire ‘‘shot and shell’’ at a battery ‘‘placed on a ridge of land extending towards Pasi Island from the Main [Island].’’ The log of the Miranda noted that ‘‘when distant from shore about 1,000 yards, [we] observed a number of soldiers with one or more field pieces in the woods, fired on guns to dislodge them which returned the shot striking the ship. Kept up fire from starboard broadside of shot and shell upon them until recalled by signal from Brisk. The enemy had retreated . . . and ceased firing. Steamed out toward Brisk.’’ 3 Onshore, the soldiers were elated that the steamers had moved out toward sea but worried about their return. The archimandrite had no illusions about British sea power and warned against premature celebration. In defiance of hostilities, however, he ordered the Holy Gates to remain open, a reminder of the cloister’s peaceful nature. During the early dawn of 19 July—with few clouds in the sky, it never got completely dark at that time of year—the Brisk and Miranda steamed again into the harbor. At 3:40 a.m., during Matins inside the monastery walls, the warships came in close to shore. From the Miranda’s log: Observed soldiers on shore apparently in [sic] throwing up temporary batteries. 5:20—Both ships hoisted flag of truce and fired a blank gun. Observed HMS Brisk weigh under steam and proceed towards Battery and send boat with flag of truce on shore, which was received by enemy. Broken by accident coffee cups two in number. 7:15—Observed a Russian boat pulling out with flag of truce flying and communicate with that of Brisk, and then returned on shore. Brisk steamed out again. 8:20—Weighed under steam. 8:30—Hauled down flag of truce and immediately afterwards opened fire on battery with long guns. Steamed inshore as close as we could to get abreast battery and commenced


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firing shot and shell at ditto, which was returned by Battery and also from two towers off Monastery and musketry from shore. ‘‘Brisk’’ opened fire soon after we did. 9:20—A round shot from Battery killed King[ston] Marshall and wounded Steven Hart (right arm shot off ). Opened fire from twelve-pound Howitzer and also from tops and gangway to dislodge enemy from cover of trees and bushes. 11:20—Observed enemy deserting Battery but they soon returned to their guns and were again driven out by the precision of our fire. Commenced firing Monastery from pivot gun at the same time keeping up fire from broadside and also with small arms. 12:15—Proceeded easily towards Pasi islands for the purpose of steaming up inner passage to . . . Battery and also close [to] Monastery. Sent Gig ahead to launch. Found passage too narrow and intricate to get up and came to. . . . Commenced firing shell and red hot shot at towers and Monastery. 4:45—Enemy fire silenced. 5:00—Ceased firing.4 The British flag of truce had been to offer an ultimatum to Solovki. Before opening fire with far-superior guns, Commander Ommaney offered safety for the cloister if ‘‘the whole army . . . surrendered as prisoners on the island of Peci in the bay of Solovetsk, not later than within six hours’’ from receipt of the letter. Angered that the British should have offered to parley after they had shelled his fortress, the archimandrite refused to negotiate. Instead, he replied to Captain Ommaney by saying that the holy place had nothing to give up to the British, since there were no army, no war flags, and no appreciable armory on the island.5 After sending off his reply, Archimandrite Aleksandr joined his monks for the Eucharist. Many believed they were partaking of their last communion. Outside, the band of soldiers returned fire on the ships but mostly to no avail—when they had some luck firing from the trees and batteries, the large guns of Brisk and Miranda immediately


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Battle scene between Solovki’s militia and British warships

replied. The day before, most shot had fallen into the bay or bounced harmlessly off the fortress walls. This day, however, heated shot rained down on the monastery, riddling the wooden Archangel guest house and falling through the ceilings of churches. Seven pilgrims almost collapsed from fright when a shell fell among them. The concussion blew open the doors to Zosima’s and Savvatii’s tombs and the pilgrims dropped to their knees, afraid of divine retribution for their sins. Instead, the archimandrite herded them into another church with more pilgrims where they would—he hoped—remain safe. Outside, the usual squawking of seagulls grew frantic as placid water and beach erupted, water spraying and earth shooting up. Bullets and shrapnel flew at every angle, lodging in buildings and burning their timbers. Smoke obscured the view from the monastery. In the midst of this, the abbot led another icon procession around the cloister walls, hoping to gird his fortress with righteousness since it had so little other defense. A monk later remembered that ‘‘the procession went round the wall of the monastery and came to the Holy Gate, where they had to go across the open space in order to reach the [cathedral]. Before them lay a great danger. . . . The seagulls still flew about unharmed: ‘Behold the fowls of the air, not one of them falleth


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to the ground; are not ye better than they?’ . . . Now the balls began to fly high above their heads and went into the Holy Lake behind, so that no one was killed.’’ 6 The shelling punctuated divine services that continued all day long: first Liturgy at which all communicated, then intercessory prayers to the patron saints, and finally supplications to the Virgin. Late in the day, a cannonball smashed through the icon of the Virgin that had hung above the Holy Gate since St. Filipp’s time. The ninety-six-pound ball then tore off part of a roof and lodged in the earth near the Transfiguration cathedral. According to legend, this was the final shot in nine hours of shelling and it heralded the Mother of God’s aid to the monastery, for she had suffered in defense of Solovki. Who could say it was not a miraculous defense? Only the British suffered casualties during the raid—a death and a maiming. No one was hurt at the monastery, neither human nor animal was wounded. The monks could not even find a dead seagull on the shores of Prosperity Bay. The British, unable to take the monastery without a landing force, settled for pillaging the churches on Zaetskii Island, which had been evacuated by the monastery. There was little to take—sailors eschewed the copper coins from the poor box, scattering them in disgust across the church floor. They tramped around the church, desecrating the altar and stealing two bells, a meager prize after a two-day fight. They returned to Zaetskii again three times in 1855. In June, the British enjoyed a day hunting and then sent a rifle bullet with a message attached to Archimandrite Aleksandr, demanding that he provide two oxen or again feel the might of Her Majesty’s Navy. The archimandrite refused but did meet with British officers on a large flat rock on Solovki’s shore, thereafter known as the ‘‘Translation Stone.’’ The British came back in August, taking a rest off the coast of Zaetskii Island and stealing an entire year’s supply of bread and wood that had been stored there.7 One more time, near the end of the conflict, British ships anchored off Zaetskii Island. They stayed three days that September and then left, taking nothing important with them. It took a while for the monastery to get back to normal after the traumatic events of 1854. Almost immediately, the British attack started to move from history into mythology. Epic poems—none very good—


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started to appear from eyewitnesses, including a monk, a pilgrim, and even a prisoner on the island named Ivan Markovich Iakubovskii. His poem finished with a flourish of patriotic rhetoric: For the monks ‘‘Hurrah!’’ For the leaders ‘‘Hurrah!’’ For the loyal subjects ‘‘Hurrah!’’ For all of us ‘‘Hurrah, Hurrah, Hurrah!’’ 8 That fall, Archimandrite Aleksandr was invited to a royal audience in St. Petersburg where he told the story of Solovki’s heroism to Emperor Nicholas and Empress Alexandra. Later, with the government ministers, the archimandrite argued unsuccessfully for expanded military help. Back on the island, monks and trudniki began memorializing the attack by stacking up pyramid style all the cannonballs they could find, clearing out the unexploded shells that continued to turn up (one, miraculously, behind the damaged icon of the Virgin over the Holy Gate), and rebuilding the walls and roofs damaged by the bombardment. As they cleaned and fixed buildings, the workers carefully painted a black circle around each place where a projectile had hit the monastery. These marks, especially on the wooden guest house, became badges of honor for Solovki, reminding pilgrims and brothers of the sacrifices made there. The commemoration of Solovki’s defense of Russia reached its pinnacle when Tsar Alexander II visited the monastery in June 1858. Stopping by for just a day, the emperor toured the monastery, prayed at the shrine of its founding saints, and presented it with a golden lamp in commemoration of Zosima’s and Savvatii’s help in keeping Solovki safe from the British. In further tribute, the tsar ordered a huge new bell to be installed in the new ‘‘tsar’s chapel.’’ That same summer, the Holy Synod commissioned a secret report to provide information that could be used in other official commemorations of the attack. The Holy Synod’s representative, A. E. Arkhangelskii, arrived on the islands. He was moved by the damage to the holy place but also surprised that more had not been harmed: ‘‘In the church porch of the Transfiguration cathedral,’’ he wrote, ‘‘where not a few


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The tsar’s bell tower, built in commemoration of the attack by British warships (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Prokudin-Gorskii Collection, LC-DIG-prok-00349)

bombs and shrapnel hit the wooden ceiling, I can report to His Majesty that not one icon was damaged, with the exception of one—Christ on the cross.’’ 9 He publicly gave two thousand rubles to the new archimandrite, Melkhisidek. According to the report, the stories of courage and faithfulness by Solovki’s monks were not exaggerated. In fact, Arkhangelskii wrote that every person at the monastery deserved a medal. Special commendation was reserved, however, for the deputy Matvei who, Arkhangelskii believed, merited the Ribbon of St. Gregory more than the archimandrite, who had not been at the monastery during the fight and who had a rather sanctimonious and blunt character.10 Arkhangelskii also took good news to some prisoners at Solovki, all of whom were to be granted amnesty in honor of Solovki’s heroic defense. Going to the jail, he explained each prisoner’s situation: Kiselev


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was to be set free unconditionally; prisoners Iakubovskii (the poet) and Mandrykh were allowed to live freely at Solovki but were not to leave the island; three more were to be granted the right to live in a Suzdal monastery if they communicated in church and did not fall back into the Old Belief.11 By late summer, the men were all freed; at least two immediately slid back into their Old Believer ways, which brought them more legal troubles for a number of years but never resulted in their being sent back to Solovki.12 This began a slow decline in numbers and importance of prisoners sent to Solovki. Over the next twenty years, fewer and fewer men ended up in the monastery’s jails. By 1886, the government even recalled its small contingent of guards, leaving the three-story jail to be turned into a hospital for pilgrims. In 1861, Emperor Alexander II freed all the serfs of Russia. Solovki, of course, had lost its estates a century before emancipation, so its economic life was not hurt by this measure. In any case, peasants in the north had never lived under the most burdensome forms of serfdom, which were reserved for those in the black earth agricultural districts in the southwest. Emancipation did, however, mean that more faithful believers could come to the monastery: between five hundred and six hundred trudniki came to the monastery each year in the period 1861– 86.13 The overwhelming number of working pilgrims were peasants from the four northwestern provinces of Russia (Archangel, Vologda, Olonets, and Novgorod), though some did arrive from more distant places.14 According to long-standing tradition, the majority of worker pilgrims arrived during the last few days of May and the first weeks of June—the beginning of the navigable season on the sea. In the nineteenth century, others came to the monastery at the end of the growing season—late July and August. By September, the White Sea usually could not be crossed.15 Trudnik life became somewhat regularized in the second half of the nineteenth century. On arrival, each pilgrim had to show that he could work—the sick, elderly, or boys under the age of ten were not allowed to live on the island as trudniki.16 There was a ten-hour work day: 5:00–8:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m., and 3:00–6:00 p.m. in the summer months, and 5:00–10:00 a.m. and


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11:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. during the rest of the year.17 Each man received an ‘‘obedience’’—a laboring task in which he was guided by a monk. Originally, the pilgrims were placed in the granary, the bakery, or other such operations. By the mid-nineteenth century, though, the monastery began to rely on the trudniki to do most of the work on the island, including pile driving, road construction, and dragging stones from the fields. During the 1860s, the monastery began a new system of canals leading from the Holy Lake to the bay, which were dug largely with trudnik labor. In 1865, one monk bemoaned ‘‘those laborers who work for free: of weak constitution, too young and unseasoned for this truly Egyptian task, which strips them of health forever. . . . Yet the Solovetskii superior cares nothing for the health of the unpaid yearlaborers, who get their limbs broken and crushed by the rocks, their innards ruined and their navels torn.’’ 18 By the late nineteenth century, however, the monks realized that the cloister was receiving free labor and came to understand that it could not ask anything particularly difficult from the trudniki. Having worked hard at first, the pilgrims usually lost their energy, and in the last months before going home, they often performed little work. There was also an exception—a pilgrim could pay a monthly full or half-donation that exempted him from all or half of his work. Not surprisingly, the ‘‘donors’’ often lived in better conditions than other pilgrims, ate the same food as the monks, and worked only when they felt like it. Often the ‘‘half-donors’’ were people who came to the monastery to satisfy the desires of their parents or to repent for the sins of their youth. Once having fulfilled their pledges, men went back to their villages, taking mementos with them. A few worker pilgrims continued to wear the cassocks given to them at the monastery, annoying local priests because they then received the respect accorded clergy members. Prosphora—the blessed bread with which the Eucharist was celebrated—also played an important role back in the village.19 At the refectory, prosphora was handed out to each monk and pilgrim on a daily basis. Some was then hoarded to take home, since a number of seventeenth-century tales attributed miraculous power to it. Sometimes, in fact, Old Believer families were found eating old Solovki prosphora in-


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stead of taking communion, breaking off bits and keeping the rest for later consumption.20 In 1740, for example, a priest in Archangel had reported to the Holy Synod on an outbreak of sickness that caused rampant hiccups. The priest had found a peasant, Andrei Ulianov, who believed that forty-year-old Solovki prosphora would cure the sickness. Ulianov had received the bread from his father, who in turn had gotten it from a brother, who had brought it from Solovki. Under strict instructions from his father, Ulianov had given particles of the bread to his children when they could not attend Liturgy. Larger bites were reserved for times of extreme sickness; Ulianov’s seven-year-old daughter, he claimed, had been cured from ‘‘deathly illness’’ by the prosphora. The Holy Synod ruled that Ulianov was not a heretic for his views, but that the priest should instruct the peasant in the ‘‘true meaning’’ of prosphora, rather than silly ‘‘superstition.’’ 21 Still, the healing tradition of Solovki’s prosphora lived on for more than a century. Having tasted monastic life, a few worker pilgrims—between 1 and 5 percent each year—began the process of becoming monks. With their unpaid labor for the cloister they had already begun the first part of the journey to tonsure at Solovki. Some men worked for many years on the island without ever taking vows—up to twenty years in rare cases—while others moved on to the next stage, that of working for an elder. After this initial period, the pilgrim was then tested for appropriate inner strengths—humility, gentleness, and sobriety.22 This last characteristic was the downfall of many pilgrims, for heavy drinkers were (at least theoretically) forbidden in the monastery. The process had its pitfalls. Elderly monks, the monastic council, and, especially, the archimandrite used patronage to promote their own favorites. Furthermore, when a pilgrim made a significant donation to the monastery, the process became smoother. Large donations did not buy a place among the brothers, but they always helped the cloister’s authorities to take a pilgrim’s candidacy seriously. One group of worker pilgrims—young boys—was singled out at Solovetskii. Some arrived at the monastery in thanks for miraculous deliverance (after having fallen down a well, for example), while others


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Young trudniki, wearing traditional half-caftans and monastic caps (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Prokudin-Gorskii Collection, LC-DIG-prok-02040)

came because their families were too poor to take care of them. Many had been promised to Solovki after being cured of illness. In rare cases, sick children arrived at the monastery hoping to be cured. The presence of young boys at the monastery created a problem that had a long history. Nikon, when he was bishop of Novgorod, had denounced monks who took young boys back to their cells to ply them with mead and wine. Likewise, documents from that period instructed the monks to make sure all boys left the island before winter set in, when the youths stopped working in the gardens and began spending more time in the warmth of elders’ cells.23 A 1710 manuscript copy of the Life of Zosima and Savvatii, reportedly based on the very oldest manuscripts in the monastery, attributed these words to St. Zosima


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himself: ‘‘Stay away from womanly-faced boys and give them no place on the islands.’’ 24 One observer wrote that the exterior of a boy, his physical beauty, has great meaning in the cloister. Beardless trudniki with long hair (which is always grown out in the monastery), with tender eyes, in a long halfcaftan, remind the monks of women. Not infrequently, monks are captivated by the beautiful boys, loving them, sometimes looking at them with eyes as one would look only at a beloved woman. Some monks caress these boys, kissing them, inviting [the boys] to their cells with them and giving them various little gifts, usually tea, sugar, or white bread. . . . I think that, in most cases, the fundamental love of monks toward boys is a clean feeling, but many monks for some reason view this love highly suspiciously and disapprovingly.25

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The temptation of the presence of young boys on the island during the winter, though, was offset by the youths’ need for education. The monastery had opened a school for monks and a separate one for young boys in the late seventeenth century, but the latter was mostly a haphazard thing, squeezing lessons between shifts of work and prayer. In 1859, however, Archimandrite Porfirii arrived at Solovki by way of the Poltava and Petrozavodsk seminaries, where he had been rector. The new abbot took an immediate interest in developing the school for trudnik boys on the island. He formalized the school year (running through the winter, from 1 October to 21 May) and built a new schoolhouse outside the monastery walls, overlooking the north side of the Holy Lake.26 He oversaw final examinations and graduation himself. To celebrate the school’s successes, the monastery published this little ditty, ostensibly written by a student: The summer and autumn are over, And the winter follows them, The time passes merrily, And study time starts.


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Our studies will become easier, Our life will be carefree. You have to study and not slack off— It will come handy in the future. By the path from the Holy Gates There are trudniki walking with glee. They are cheerful and happy That they are carrying their books. With composure, behind them Walk the novices; Having hung their heads low, They discuss some things: Who is going to the first grade, and to second, To the third and even fourth. And the teacher was not late, He appeared right then. He took the book of ‘‘Spiritual Wisdom’’ With him, just in case. . . . . . . . .

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As for me, I ended my studies This time in the fourth grade. Now it is time to praise Our Heavenly Queen And then go home, carefree.27 Most students were Russian, but the monastery had the added burden of teaching Russian literacy to Karelians, Zyrians, and even the occasional Saami youth. V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, in his popular book Solovki, lamented the schedule, which he viewed as long on religion but short on practical education: Monday—Law of God; Tuesday—history of the Old and New Testaments; Wednesday—explanation of the divine services; Thursday—exercises in the reading of prayers; Friday—history of the church and the Russian state, geography, arithmetic; Sunday—clerkmanship. ‘‘And so,’’ he complained,


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‘‘only two hours a week for Russian history, geography, and arithmetic combined.’’ 28 The author, however, missed the point: the archimandrite (and former seminary school rector) had designed a curriculum with one overarching goal—the training of new monks.29 In large part, this tactic was successful. Once the school was established, youths became ever more likely to find a place in the monastery routine and become tonsured themselves. By the late nineteenth century, nearly a hundred youths lived at the monastery as novices after their studies, forming a large pool of recruits to keep Solovki a thriving community of monks.30


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here was another kind of pilgrim coming to Solovki in those days—ones who came not for a year, but for only three days. Throughout the previous couple of centuries, short-term pilgrims had been coming to Solovki in relatively small numbers. Rarely did more than a thousand arrive each year.1 In 1826, Archimandrite Dosifei had ordered two three-masted ships to be built for the monastery—the Nikolai and the Savvatii. While these were not specifically bought to ferry pilgrims, they may have flouted a provincial law forbidding the monastery from carrying pilgrims in its own boats.2 Then, in 1836, the monastery built its first large-scale hostelry, the Archangel guest house, to take care of pilgrims. With expanded ship connections and accommodations, pilgrimage grew. By mid-century, some eight thousand pilgrims were arriving at Solovki each year. Short-term pilgrims invariably came to Solovki from late May through August. In fact, about 80 percent of the faithful traveled to Solovetskii in the first half of the season, almost all of them from Pentecost to mid-July. After the British attack, though, Solovki became both a religious and a patriotic shrine. Pilgrims peered at the bullet holes. They crawled over pyramids of cannonballs and visited the armory, still fitted out 170


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with pikes and muskets. Solovki, it seemed, had suddenly found new cachet, appealing to both religious and patriotic sentiments of the newly mobile peasants, who were no longer bound to the soil and were eager to experience the world of Holy Russia. Even women, long banned from Solovki, were welcomed as three-day pilgrims. The monastery decided to buy a used steamship to ferry the faithful and other goods from the mainland to the islands. On 15 August 1862, the Vera made its maiden voyage from Solovki. Ironically, given anti-British sentiments prevalent among monks and pilgrims, the ship had been built in England in 1847. It cost the monastery 24,479 rubles, paid over five years.3 In short order, Solovki added another steamer, the Nadezhda, in 1863. Between them, the two ships, operating from midMay to mid-September and holding 400–450 passengers each, made it possible for thousands of pilgrims to come to Solovki each year. As a result, the number of pilgrims grew tremendously, from about six thousand in 1863, just after the Vera was put into service, to around twenty-four thousand in 1900.4 Who were the pilgrims? One could be overwhelmed by their sheer variety: ‘‘Here are priests,’’ said the prominent bishop Evdokim Meshcherskii, on his way to Solovki, ‘‘candidates of the academy, priests [mentioned again!], pupils of seminaries, priest-monks, monks, nuns. There is a merchant, here is a soldier, there a bureaucrat, here a group of peasant men and women.’’ 5 The vast majority of pilgrims, however, were ‘‘peasants of the provinces of Archangel, Olonets, Vologda, and Viatka; but among them it was not rare to encounter pilgrims who had traveled many thousands of versts.’’ 6 Another writer, describing the pilgrims, noted that ‘‘from this mass of gray chuyki [overcoats] of the people of the northern borders that make up the majority of the public’’ could be seen peasant costumes from the central provinces, Riazan, and ‘‘the elegant figures of the servants of Mars.’’ 7 Starting in the 1870s, a few pilgrims began publishing their reminiscences of travel to Solovki. The most famous of these, by V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko and S. V. Maksimov, became minor classics. A later pilgrim remembered how important these works were in deciding him to make a pilgrimage: ‘‘The beauty of northern nature, with its


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overgrown forests and its terribly beautiful ocean, were conveyed by S. V. Maksimov, V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, and others; [but] it is comparatively more rare to read about the educational meaning of the Solovetskii community and the spiritual-educational aspect of its activities.’’ 8 Here are the stories of three pilgrims—Bishop Evdokim, a peasant named A. A. Zamaraev, and an Anglican priest, Reverend Alexander Boddy.9 Their accounts, woven together, give a good picture of the three-day pilgrims to Solovki. Because of Solovki’s dual heritage as both a religious shrine and the site of a patriotic defense of the motherland, travelers there were sometimes grouped as ‘‘pilgrims’’ versus ‘‘tourists.’’ Bishop Evdokim, remembering his first views of the White Sea, wrote that ‘‘the thought of a tourist, of course, was concentrated exclusively on the picture unfolding before his eyes. But the thought of the pilgrim is unconsciously carried away on this watery plane to the place of great labor and podvig, to Solovki.’’ 10 For the most part it was hard to differentiate between pilgrims and tourists: pilgrims wrote about the astounding natural beauty of the White Sea area, noting interesting flowers, trees, and animals—even whales. Tourists, on the other hand, took part in the life of the monastery while staying there. The main problem was getting to the islands. Even for the northern peasants who made up the majority of pilgrims, this was a long and expensive trip. Nevertheless, the always resourceful peasants found ways to make the trip more affordable. For every two or three passengers in first class and few dozen in second class, literally hundreds of peasants crowded into cabins of the third and fourth classes or stayed on deck, exposed to the elements. Many peasants, one man observed, ‘‘make the journey on foot, suffering all the discomforts of travel in the third and fourth classes and on ‘group tickets.’ ’’ 11 Poor pilgrims could even find work on riverboats that carried wood to fuel the steamers or helped push them off sandbars and shoals. The most generous aid, however, came directly from the monastery. Passage on the monastery’s steamships were kept artificially low—from three to ten rubles—and the monastery regularly provided free passage to the poorest pilgrims.12 There were a number of routes to the islands, each of them packed


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with pilgrims during the peak months of travel. From the village of Totma, the peasant A. A. Zamaraev took the steamer Zosima in third class along the Sukhona River north to the Severnaia Dvina. At Velikii Ustiug, Zamaraev’s group met other ships leaving for the far north. The Dvina was chief among the northern waterways, often crowded with steamships, some of which pulled up to six wooden barges laden with people and cargo. Reverend Boddy was overwhelmed by what he saw in the fourth-class cabins.

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The bárka [barge] is an immense ark truly, more than 300 feet in length, I should think, and in breadth about 36 feet. I feel sure that on the three decks she could easily carry a thousand passengers, stowed as Russian bogomóltsy [pilgrims] are stowed. In the darkness of the vast lowest hold scores of families were trying to sleep. On the main deck were the largest number, lying on the piles in which their luggage was arranged so as to leave two main gangways from end to end. From the low ceiling endless packages and baskets hung and swung, and on the floor crouched or reclined the owners.13 Passengers with tickets in the lower classes like Zamaraev traveled in the stern of the ship, sometimes with men and women separated. Though undoubtedly packed as tightly as on the barka, Zamaraev didn’t complain, writing simply that ‘‘in third class there were many passengers.’’ 14 Others reported, however, that ‘‘third class is like a jail—in the stern and the bow of the ship. . . . My God, the crush there! . . . All the benches were occupied; there were many [people] on the floor; many stood and, among them, many more were on the open deck in the rain. The air in the third class cabin was unimaginably foul.’’ 15 Somewhat forward of third class was the second-class accommodation, with rather more comfortable cushions on the seats. ‘‘The warm cabin of second class,’’ wrote a seminarian on his way to Solovki, ‘‘cordially received soaked pilgrims’’ who had been outside during a stopover in Velikii Ustiug.16 Reverend Boddy traveled in the first-class saloon, ‘‘some fifteen feet long with windows all round, so that we can


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enjoy the scenery on all sides, and strollers on deck can and do flatten their noses against the glass and have a good stare at us.’’ 17 The pilgrims passed innumerable villages and settlements along the way. Zamaraev noticed that Brusinets, just upriver from Totma, ‘‘was a large village, but with no important buildings. It was a holiday. There were a lot of folk on the pier. Women in sarafans (peasant dresses), and among them one drinker, swearing obscenely.’’ 18 Very often, pilgrims noted both the holy places and the factories that had sprung up along the river, especially the paper mills.19 The seminarians, with the eager eyes of men looking for future employment, counted some fifteen parishes and one monastery in the fifty miles between Velikii Ustiug and Kotlas.20 Travel by boat to the Solovetskii monastery gave pilgrims many chances to go ashore and experience the sacred sites around them. There were many ancient monasteries across the north: Novgorod province had forty-four monasteries, Archangel province had twentyeight, and Olonets had fourteen.21 Russia’s northern provinces also abounded with folk shrines and wayside chapels.22 Likewise, memorial crosses dotted the landscape, spiritual landmarks in the local religious world. Pilgrims could stop at the holy springs, groves, and stones that the crosses marked, and sometimes leave a piece of clothing—a shirt, for example, in hope of a cure for a bad back. There were more than three hundred holy stones, chapels, and sacred springs in the region.23 Most pilgrims came north to Archangel, where they had to arrange for passage to the monastery. Local newspapers carried the embarkation times for steamers to the islands, a trade that included both the monastery’s vessels and private steamships. The monastery had a hostel in the city and a guest house at Solombalskoe, just outside. By monastic tradition, visiting the guest house was free—once a pilgrim had made it to Archangel, the cloister offered a bed and some hot tea. As Solovki became more popular, the monastery simply could not keep pace with the flood of pilgrims desiring its hospitality. Up to 900 people sometimes found shelter at the city hostel designed for about 150. Sometimes twenty-seven people piled into rooms designed for six.


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Men and women were forced to stay in the same room; women slept fully clothed for propriety’s sake. Overcrowding made tea drinking an ‘‘organized spectacle,’’ with pilgrims jostling each other for access to the samovar. There were other routes to Solovki. Published travel guides to the monastery listed two alternatives—the first via Povonets, at the northern edge of Lake Onega, and then Sumskii Posad, the closest mainland village to the monastery. The second way went by river to the city of Onega, the southernmost point of the White Sea. Until 1823, when Solovki received the right to bring pilgrims from Archangel, most pilgrims came from Sumskii Posad, where they had to hire a karbas, that ubiquitous White Sea rowboat. In the summer, steamers from Solovki made regular stops at both Sumskii Posad and Onega. Passages from these towns offered two advantages: first, pilgrims could stop at the Monastery of Aleksandr Svirskii to celebrate its feast in early summer before journeying on to Solovki. Second, both of these ports of embarkation meant far shorter trips over water, a real attraction for those afraid of storms. Finally, some pilgrims took the long route north to Kem, where they could stay at Solovki’s hostel while waiting for a ferry. Kem was a flat, dirty town presided over by a beautiful eighteenth-century wooden church near the waterfront. Ferry rides from Kem to Solovki were short—just seven hours—but getting to the city was its own hardship.24 Unlike the short trip from Kem, the voyage from Archangel to Solovki took seventeen hours. The monastery’s steamers were not handsomely decked out—private boats were more comfortable—but they did run frequently and were very cheap. At the helm of a monastery steamer was always a monk trained as captain. When Reverend Boddy made the trip, the first-class saloon had only three passengers. Though there were some second-class passengers, the majority of pilgrims traveled in third class. These passengers were stuck in the close, humid air of the lower decks, where fresh air rarely wafted down and in bad weather seasickness made the situation worse. Alternatively,


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Solovki as seen by approaching pilgrims in the late nineteenth century (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Prokudin-Gorskii Collection, LC-DIG-prok-02038)

some passengers were left on the ships’ open decks, buffeted by winds and waves, retching over the side of the boat. Luckily, observed an old monk, ‘‘pilgrims don’t grumble.’’ Everyone who went to Solovki commented on the sea crossing, for there was real drama on the open ocean.25 Even in June (just before the holiday of Pentecost and the beginning of the pilgrim season), the journey to Solovetskii was cold. The White Sea could be furious— wind from the Arctic, high seas, rain pelting down on huddled pilgrims. It was in this weather that the faithful would make a low bow when they arrived, thanking God for a safe passage across treacherous waters.26 Yet on other days, the White Sea was so calm that the pilgrims could watch seals playing off the sides of their ships. Then the mighty fortress monastery of Solovetskii—domes, spires, and magnificent stone walls—rose out of the sea. ‘‘I quickly climbed to the deck,’’ wrote Bishop Evdokim. ‘‘In front of my eyes unfolded a staggeringly wonderful picture. . . . And just in front of us, in all its grandeur, flooded in golden-bright morning sunlight, lay the holy cloister of Solovetskii with its great sacred places.’’ 27 Arriving in safe harbor at the foot of the monastery’s walls, the pilgrims disembarked, some of them going immediately to bathe in the Holy Lake. When an important person arrived, like Reverend Boddy from England, there was a special reception party waiting. The Englishman—introduced as the ‘‘archimandrite of Sutherland,’’ was ushered into the monastery’s formal apartments. Pouring into the room, light reflected off the parquet floor and shone on tropical plants, glowing


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through the sheer curtains hanging from floor-to-ceiling windows. The walls held row upon row of portraits—emperors and empresses, grand dukes and duchesses, princes of the church—bishops and abbots who had served at Solovki. Most pilgrims were not whisked to Solovki’s state apartments. As they came off the steamers, men and women got shepherded into rooms at the monastic guest houses—some for the ‘‘clean public’’ (chistaia publika) and others for the ‘‘gray public’’ (seraia publika). The ‘‘better’’ pilgrims were led to the Transfiguration hostelry. The ‘‘gray public’’ had a short walk further on—a couple of minutes from the main Holy Gate (just over the drawbridge leading to Solovki’s dry docks) to the Archangel Hostel. At the opposite end of the monastery complex stood the women’s guest house, the St. Petersburg, overlooking the monastery’s wheat and vegetable gardens. Though women had arrived periodically on the islands since the seventeenth century, Solovki didn’t develop a formal way to take care of them until the mid-nineteenth century. Officer’s wives, when they had come to Solovki, had provoked consternation in the monastery since there was nowhere for them to live or eat. An imposing, three-story stone building that took six years to build (1859–65), the Transfiguration guest house had its main doors opening right onto the dock. Of the seventy rooms in all, numbers one and six on the middle floor were the very best: clean, with beautiful views and upholstered furniture. This was where Reverend Boddy stayed. He wrote: ‘‘here a suite of beautiful rooms are placed at my disposal . . . lofty and cheerful, our windows look over the harbor, towers, and the monastery walls, or out to Peshii Island.’’ Since the nights in June still became quite cold, an ingenious heating system kept rooms comfortable. Reverend Boddy remembered that ‘‘through the night a strange rattling in the walls was made by [a] monk, who kept charging with fuel the stoves, whose flues passed round every room.’’ Other rooms at the Transfiguration guest house were less comfortable than Reverend Boddy’s. The second floor had the best places, followed by the third floor and then the first. Rooms on the first floor even had graffiti plastering the walls: ‘‘Here was the merchant’s son Nikolai Gubanov,’’ to which was later added: ‘‘fool and pig.’’ 28 Pilgrims


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on these floors were crammed together with strangers, sleeping on the floor when there were too many people for the four couches furnishing each room.29 With the opening of the Transfiguration guest house, the older lodging places fell into disrepair (‘‘neglected and filthy,’’ wrote one traveler), though the Archangel guest house proudly showed scars from British shells. There, some forty or fifty people packed into a single room: ‘‘the place, whenever I visited it,’’ wrote Reverend Boddy, ‘‘was crammed with pilgrims reclining on the sloping counters which did duty as beds. It was somewhat like the steerage on our great Atlantic steamers, where all sorts and conditions of men, women, and children come together.’’ 30 Guest house rules made it clear that this was a monastery dedicated to work and prayer. ‘‘ ‘You came to pray—you can’t expect more and you’re not worth more’: such is the internal sense of the monastic attitude toward their lay brothers.’’ 31 Monks were not allowed to visit the hostels to keep order and as a result pilgrims sometimes became rambunctious, even falling into ‘‘fighting, profligacy, and theft.’’ 32 Three times a day, the ‘‘gray public’’ tramped to the men’s or women’s refectories, while monks, trudniki, and ‘‘clean’’ guests ate at the ancient refectory of the brothers. ‘‘The experience and practicality of the monastic refectory is shown in this regard,’’ wrote one pilgrim, as the monks were faultlessly able ‘‘to assign the mass of people, as was done in the guest houses, dividing men into two parties and directing one to the lower refectory and the other to the brothers’ and then women to their particular one.’’ 33 Apparently, though, this system did not always work. For some meals, the peasant Zamaraev ate among the ‘‘gray’’ masses. On the last day of his pilgrimage, however, he remembered that ‘‘we ate lunch together with the brothers. Here the food was better, in four courses, in the Dormition church.’’ 34 Reverend Boddy was invited to sit at the head table. In keeping with Solovki’s Rule, the refectory was opulently decorated with frescos and icons, with the east end set up as a church for the winter months. Under the wide arches covered with paint and gilt were wooden tables on which stood ‘‘a container with kvas and a spoon, a salt cellar and nothing more.’’ Table manners and overt cleanliness, Fr. Boddy noted,


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were considered too worldly and bourgeois for the monks of Solovki. Often, the monks’ beards seemed to hold as much food as their platters. According to the Rule, however, great ceremony and blessings accompanied each course of food. Among the brothers, the luncheon meal could be quite extensive—sometimes four kinds of fish in addition to bread, kvass, and vegetables. The menu in the other dining rooms was more austere: first course—cold cod or haddock with kvass, without horseradish but sometimes with sour cream; second course—cabbage soup with vegetables, large pieces of barley, cabbage, and a little haddock bone for taste; third course—buckwheat or barley porridge with butter.

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Early in the morning, a budilnik clomped through the halls of each guest house, calling pilgrims to prayer. Not all made it to Matins, held at three in the morning in the small church of the Trinity.35 Instead, most people found their way to one of the three Liturgies celebrated daily during the summer, at six, seven, and nine in various churches. With so many services starting throughout the day, bells seemed to be ringing endlessly from one corner or another of the monastery. Reverend Boddy wrote that the ringing of bells in Russia is utterly unlike the peal of bells or the chimes of England. There is a special kind of barbaric music for each different occasion: and for the liturgy before the service there was first an agitation of higher-pitched bells, then some middle-voiced bells chimed in, and then came the deep measured bass of the heaviest bell of all. ‘Tinkle-tinkletinkle-tinkle; Tonkle-tonkle-tonkle-tonkle; BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG!’ The bells are not swung: the clappers are agitated by ropes or the bells smitten with wooden mallets. They are hung in open belfries, and, looking up when the bells are ringing, you will often see the bell-ringer holding ropes extending to the clappers of different bells, and dancing on different pedals or levers connected with the hammers or clappers of the greatest bells.36


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Every few days, the archimandrite of Solovki served the Liturgy himself. From the time of Peter I, who bestowed this honor, the abbot was allowed to serve an ‘‘archimandrite’s service’’ like that of a bishop. This caused some excitement among the pilgrims, many of whom rarely witnessed a hierarchal Liturgy. Zavaraev noted: ‘‘The superior served. Communion lasted until one in the afternoon.’’ 37 Another pilgrim wrote, ‘‘the solemn liturgy was served by the archimandrite himself with many of the brothers. There were many people in the church. They served with grandeur. It is true that they sang, as always, loudly and not particularly harmoniously; however, the ‘archbishop’s service’ of the archimandrite produced a strong impression on the people. Liturgy ended around one.’’ 38 After lunch, pilgrims stood in line for hours to venerate the relics of Sts. Zosima and Savvatii. Bishop Evdokim asked: ‘‘Is it necessary to speak of the feeling of fullness in our souls when we bowed down before those shrines? No, it is not necessary. I wanted to lie on the floor forever in front of those saints in fear and trembling, wanted to be dust and perpetually be trampled upon before them.’’ 39 It was indeed an impressive sight: Reverend Boddy noted that ‘‘countless offerings of candles were blazing around the tombs of the saints of Solovétsk, and the floor of the chapel, with its black and white pavements, was covered with a dense mass of kneeling humanity all worshipping toward the rich shrines glittering with gold—a contrast to the two simple old men who lie there.’’ 40 In addition to the founder’s bodies, the monastery’s exceptional collection of other relics and holy objects also attracted the pilgrims. Miracle-working icons included a ‘‘Slavianskaia’’ Theotokos; an image of the Savior painted by St. Eleazar himself; and the wonder-working icon of the Mother of God that had saved the monastery from bombardment by the British.41 Objects from the saints’ own lives were particularly popular, chief among them a stone cross brought by St. Zosima to the islands. Appealing to pilgrims’ sense of history and patriotism, the monastery displayed its many gifts from tsars and emperors. These included gold crosses sent by Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, among others.42 In late afternoon, the monks began to serve intercessory services


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(moleben) and services for the dead (panikhida). To have the monks of the holy island pray for one’s family was a high point of the pilgrimage. The monastery therefore developed a system to serve the spiritual needs of thousands. Pilgrims queued at the cashier’s desk near the back of the church and paid for the services. Priest-monks stood ready there too, to take the faithful into one or another corner of the church to hold the services. Once finished, the priests came back to the cashier to pick up other believers.43 In this way, the monks could hold five to six hundred of these short services per day. This put extreme demands on the monks and upset their daily routines, established for the rest of the year. In 1863, the monastery leadership had to implore priests to take part in holding these services, saying that all consecrated monks of any rank needed to serve in rotating shifts at the churches. In fact, anyone who ‘‘could sing even a little’’ was called to the cathedral to help serve at the saints’ graves. Importantly, the document also exhorted the monks to treat the pilgrims ‘‘cordially, affectionately, and with decent respect, and to bear all their imperfections tolerantly.’’ 44

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The special services for pilgrims had to finish by early evening, when the regular cycle of liturgical life began again. Monks welcomed pilgrims into the churches for Vespers, but with the exception of major holidays (Pentecost, Sts. Peter and Paul, and the Dormition, for example), the monastery closed its gates at about 10:00 p.m. Those who were caught inside could join the brothers in the night services or find shelter under the gateways, near the shops that lined the walls. Once they had fulfilled liturgical obligations at the main monastery, pilgrims tended to wander around the islands. On their expeditions, the pilgrims were never far from monastic settlements. In all, there were nine sketes, or hermitages, on the islands by the late nineteenth century. These ranged from the tiny Jesus Hermitage (Iisusova Pustyn) near the brickyards to the Sekirka-Resurrection Skete (SekirnoVoznesenskii Pustyn), which sat above a high flight of steps on Mount Sekirna, the site of St. Savvatii’s encounter with the Karelian woman. The most adventurous visitors took the long road north to Rebolda, a settlement on the northeastern edge of the monastery where a few monks tended ferries to Anzer Island. From there, men (never women,


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The Holy Gate, with the church above, welcomed pilgrims (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Prokudin-Gorskii Collection, LC-DIG-prok-10346)

who were strictly forbidden) could take a short boat trip to Anzer, spending a day at the St. Eleazar’s famous skete. In 1884, Solovki rebuilt the octagonal stone church at Anzer. This unique church, with the bones of St. Eleazar safely held in its altar, then lured even more pilgrims to the skete. The most ambitious pilgrims experienced their own podvig by climbing the winding road and towering staircase to the Golgotha-Crucifixion (Golgofo-Raspiatskii) Skete, perched at the top of a hill on the island. Awash in stones, Solovki could not help but have at least one holy one. Bishop Evdokim reported that on Anzer, ‘‘in the entrance of the temple, on a peculiar pedestal, lay an odd stone, as if it had been polished. This was the stone that served as a pillow for St. Filipp. Is it necessary to say how many tears of emotion and lamentations are heard


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from the breasts of pilgrims here, at this stone? In the same church is an excellent spring and, worthy of note, a representation of the suffering Savior.’’ 45 The spring was the result of a vision of St. Filipp. Christ had visited the holy man and, where the suffering savior’s blood had dripped there flowed a spring of clean water. During pilgrimage months, a monk stood at the spring all day long, offering a sip of water to each pilgrim as he arrived. Reverend Boddy described his welcome this way: ‘‘We sat in a stove-heated, neat, white room, with rose plants in the window of double glass, and a loud-ticking clock.’’ 46 Back on the main island, pilgrims explored the lakes, woods, and canals that criss-crossed Solovki, sometimes astride one of the monastery’s two hundred horses. Unfortunately, vast numbers of pilgrims could not help but damage the islands’ natural beauty. By the 1880s, they were not allowed to pick apples, search for mushrooms, or go fishing. When, in 1885, Grand Prince Vladimir Aleksandrovich wanted to hunt during his visit to Solovki, the archimandrite refused to give him permission. The most common animals on Solovki were the ubiquitous seagulls, which congregated everywhere near the monastery. One writer said they reminded him of the ‘‘doves on the square of St. Mark’s in Venice.’’ 47 By tradition, pilgrims made it a habit to feed the gulls, luring them to take rye bread from their hands: ‘‘‘Eat, matushka [little mother], eat,’ called an old man to a gull greedily swallowing bread. ‘Okh! Okh! Okh! See how the gulls pray to the Lord God for us. Eat, matushka, eat!’’’ 48 It seemed that the gulls almost spoke Russian— ‘‘dalshe-dalshe,’’ ‘‘kuda-kuda,’’ ‘‘lodku-lodku’’ (‘‘further-further,’’ ‘‘to where–to where,’’ ‘‘the boat–the boat’’).49 On Anzer, where there were reputedly no seagulls, Reverend Boddy observed forty of them nesting in the front courtyard and taking exception to being bothered by the humans—‘‘the female seagull used all kinds of very bad language, opening her mouth very wide and spreading her wings.’’ 50 Even if they did not travel around the islands, pilgrims could shop. Kiosks and chapels offered all kinds of religious goods, from candles to icons, from crucifixes to Solovki’s famous prosphora. The woodcarving workshop, which employed about a dozen trudniki in addition to monk master carvers, was particularly well known, carved


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Three-day pilgrims amid Solovki’s wildflowers. The youngest boy, at right, shows his displeasure at the outing.

icons being a peculiar tradition in northern Russia. The ‘‘small ones with bones’’—meaning crosses with the figure of Adam’s skeleton under them—cost only ten kopeks in 1863, while larger crosses and icons cost much more.51 An indignant traveler later grumbled about illiterate but wealthy pilgrim women who thought nothing of paying thirty or forty rubles for icons, oleographs, and neck crosses but loudly


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complained when paying baggage porters five kopeks. He guessed that even the most ‘‘simple’’ pilgrims spent one or two rubles at the shops and kiosks.52 In addition to religious goods, Solovki offered extra food —bread, sweets, and dried fish—to augment monastic fare. It even became known for clothes and sundries—Solovki’s galoshes had the reputation of being particularly resilient and many pilgrims looked forward to buying a pair. All of this added up—icons, clothes, food, and services provided the vast income necessary to take care of thousands of pilgrims.

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Generally sparse in his descriptions, the peasant Zamaraev wrote down just the essentials of his trip home from Solovki: ‘‘At last, on 13 June somehow we left aboard the ship Vera, which departed at two o’clock in the afternoon. The weather is calm.’’ 53 With him on the trip back to Totma, via Archangel, Kotlas, and Velikii Ustiug, were hundreds of like-minded souls. Most of them were peasants, sprinkled with priests, bishops, and even a foreigner or two. The kingdom of peasants, as Solovki had been called, had offered them a mixture of piety and trade that was the real hallmark of its existence. Upon leaving, another pilgrim hoped that the ‘‘clean public’’ might also develop a greater interest in Solovki: ‘‘People who know Solovetskii well recounted to me in confidence that the former severity of monks in this monastery is beginning to change, little by little. The growing contingent is not only literate, but also cultivates a [higher] cultural-clerical level of the monastery. Year in and year out, the number of pilgrims from the ‘better’ class grows.’’ 54 If only, the pilgrim wrote, Solovki would orient itself to that ‘‘better class’’ and get rid of its bedbugs, it would develop a pilgrim trade based on the higher society of Russia.


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magine Solovki at the beginning of the twentieth century —tens of thousands of pilgrims tumbling off steamships, piling up prosphora for blessing during daily Liturgies, rowing through canals, waiting in line for dinner. Then, as the White Sea began to swell and the birches turned color, the pilgrims were suddenly gone. Solovki would settle in for renovation, education, and building; to accounting and to prayer. Though still remote, Solovki grew each year in stature and wealth. Steadily more famous, Solovki attracted men from across Russia—Kostroma, Kazan, Nizhnii Novgorod, Penza, Ekaterinoslav, Kharkov, and Kiev. In some ways, the monastery charged from one high point to the next. Solovki’s archimandrites hoped that they could attain the kind of income the monastery had enjoyed during its golden years, when salt gave the cloister its riches. To do this, Solovki added three more steam ships—the Nadezhda in 1863, the Solovetskii in 1881, and the Mikhail Arkhangel in 1887. Instead of buying used ships, the monastery soon had enough money to look abroad for high-quality new steamers. The Solovetskii, for example, came from a Norwegian company; it was designed to carry both cargo and pilgrims.1 By that time, Solovki itself was outfitted as a complete shipyard with northern Russia’s only dry dock plus 186



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tar works, rope works, and a sawmill. The new Vera, an updated version of Solovki’s first steamer, slid down from its stocks in 1902, the most important ship to be built completely at Solovki. Some monks did grumble at the pace and quality of work. One began talking about this to a pilgrim and then pulled back: ‘‘the father abbot fancies himself an engineer-shipbuilder . . . hm . . . I don’t know if this should be [said].’’ 2 No one could question, though, the profit made by the new ships. In 1863, Solovki had realized a 2,914-ruble profit from the Vera. After losing money in 1864, the steamships were again profitable until 1913. Moreover, their profits rose continually, except during the 1905 Revolution. By the eve of World War I, Solovki was earning a profit of over 50,000 rubles per year just on steamship tickets, averaging 11 percent of its yearly income. In fact, in the period from 1863 to 1913, the monastery consistently made more than 40 percent of its annual income from serving pilgrims, not including income derived from selling food, fur coats, and other goods produced on the island.3 Total income rose 71 percent in the period 1863–1913, with the increase directly related to the number of pilgrims arriving each year. The only significant downturn in income was during the Russo-Japanese War and the 1905 Revolution, when pilgrimage gave way to conflict.4 Solovki was the second richest monastery in Russia, behind only the venerable Trinity Lavra, which enjoyed an easily accessible location near Moscow. Though externally the monastery seemed to thrive, Solovki fell into a deep trough of scandal and self-doubt. The huge increase in income helped it to develop ever more effective ways to bring people to the islands, to enhance communication between the monastery and the mainland, and to build up the economic concerns of the islands.Yet with economic success came greed and disorder. The consequences of wealth and better connections to the mainland caused disputes among the brothers and threatened the monastery. So long separated from the mainland by sea and ice, the monks of Solovki were deeply affected by the transformation of Russia wrought by modernization. For all the pomp and the memory of times past, Solovki felt the flood of changes


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One of the many boats to arrive at Solovki during the short navigation season (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Prokudin-Gorskii Collection, LC-DIG-prok-02039)

sweeping across Russia—migration, industrialization, and democratization. There were positive results of Solovki’s newfound fame. More and more men took vows at Solovki every year, going from the ranks of novice to monk, then deacon-monk or priest-monk. In 1865, there were a total of 121 monks at the main monastery and a few more scattered in sketes across the islands. Of these, many were unable to read more than rudimentary texts, let alone take part in the Orthodox church’s complex liturgical life. By 1875, Solovki had 157 monks, a number that rose to 211 by 1915. At the latter date, less than 3 percent of all monks were illiterate—the educational programs begun by Archimandrite Porfirii in the 1860s had borne good fruit. Likewise, young men continued to come into the cloister, so that almost half the monks



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were under fifty years old in 1915. This was doubly significant because Solovki had slowly pushed up the age of tonsure to near thirty.5 Using its wealth, the monastery provided a comfortable life for its monks. By this point, the community had stopped emphasizing physical podvig at the main monastery, leaving the most ascetic life to hermitages, especially that on Anzer Island. The monks of Solovki still ate together at the large refectory; each monk received his own cell, including furniture and an icon. The other things that a monk might need, including tea, books, and prosphora, were allowed ‘‘according to established ancient procedures, with permission of the high spiritual leadership, with reviews according to service and merit, and obtained by monetary payment from the income gained through the work of all brothers.’’ 6 In order to manage monastic wealth more efficiently, in the 1860s the Holy Synod had decreed that councils be set up in all monasteries for financial oversight. The Black Council of Solovki had existed for hundreds of years but only the archimandrite, the cellarer, and their assistants had had real power over finances. At the same time, the Holy Synod decreed that monastery abbots should again be elected from within the communities, rather than imported from outside, as had become tradition since Peter the Great’s time.7 These administrative changes had enormous consequences for Solovki. Rather than perceiving their archimandrite as a vladika—master—the monks began to question and undermine his authority. After Archimandrite Porfirii’s death in 1865, there was never again to be a peaceful time among the monks of Solovki. Unable to elect anyone themselves, the monks had to ask the Holy Synod to appoint their leader in 1865, 1871, 1879, and 1892. In each case, anonymous letters, monastic quarrels, and fighting between the archimandrite and the monastery council had led to the dismissal or transfer of the abbots who had to be replaced.8 For many years, the poison pen behind the monastic scandals belonged to Father Serafim, a priest-monk trained at the Kiev seminary who had served as a professor at the seminary of Volinsk. By background, temper, and training, Serafim was not a typical Solovki monk. He had not grown up in the spiritual shadow of the monastery, he had


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not been educated at the cloister, and he was an academic rather than a peasant. Serafim enjoyed wide renown and respect outside of Solovki. He was described as ‘‘intelligent, eloquent, loving to talk; as a monk, he understood well not only the outward side of monastic life, but was concerned with the severity crucial to it.’’ 9 Inside the monastic community, however, Father Serafim seemed bent on destruction of the monastery’s leadership through reports sent directly to the Holy Synod. Though rarely wrong in his descriptions, he was also never compassionate. For example, Father Serafim lambasted Archimandrite Feodosii for not going to church or doing appropriate work. The monk did not mention, however, that the archimandrite suffered from rheumatism that got progressively worse in Solovki’s cold climate. When Feodosii’s successor, Meletii, opened a new biological station, bought new steamships, and built new stone living quarters for the brothers, Serafim repeatedly denounced the ‘‘outrageously evil consumption’’ on the island to the supreme procurator of the Holy Synod. He even complained about the behavior of fellow monks during dinner. Allegedly, a certain priest-monk Meliton ‘‘excitedly snatched a piece of fish off my spoon, began to bang on my spoon, brandishing the spoon, and, with a furious look, began to scream at me: ‘Where are you going, where are you going, foulmouth?’’’ Meliton claimed that he had only been trying to stop Serafim from the habit of ‘‘getting all the best bits onto his soup plate, and to stop illicitly snaring fish from the general bowl.’’ Unmoved by a public act of contrition by Meliton, Serafim chose instead to take the matter to the Holy Synod.10 Shortly after penning this screed, Serafim asked for a passport to live in a monastery in the Holy Land. The Holy Synod refused, sending him instead to the Filippovskaia hermitage at Solovki. Pilgrims then began complaining of leaving in tears thanks to the harsh monk living there. Archimandrite Meletii had been forewarned about Father Serafim, but he had just as many problems dealing with the monastery council. Though Meletii generally received support from the brothers and was even able to have belligerent council members promoted to other monasteries as abbots, he could not overcome the enmity that seemed to arise continually at Solovki. After yet another investigation by the



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Solovki’s innovative electric plant, just outside the monastery walls (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Prokudin-Gorskii Collection, LC-DIG-prok-10351)

Holy Synod into Meletii’s alleged misuse of money, he was relieved of his duties and sent to live at the Trinity Lavra near Moscow, where he died a few years later. Finally, the monastery was able to pick its own leader, a former monk from Solovki named Varlaam. Unfortunately, the archimandrite died after just two years, forcing yet another election, this time of Father Ioanniki, a peasant who had risen up through the ranks of Solovki’s monks. Archimandrite Ioanniki led the monastery from 1895 to 1917. During his administration, the monastery built its own electric station, radio-telegraph, horse farm, fish production plant, and other major projects, based on the skyrocketing income produced by the pilgrim traffic. Ioanniki’s policies probably helped the monastery to attract more


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Detailed map of Solovki in the later nineteenth century. Cultivated fields are north of the monastery, and the cemetery is the irregular hexagonal area just south of the walls. The St. Petersburg guest house is beyond the northwest corner of the monastery walls, the Transfiguration guest house is south of it, running parallel with the straight line of the wharf, and the Archangel guest house is just west of the cemetery.

pilgrims, since the great wealth and modern wonders to be seen there provided exotic reasons to visit Solovki. Though there were many monasteries in Russia, it seemed that pilgrims preferred to visit Solovki, a place where they could encounter the sanctity of Russia’s medieval saints while experiencing the great miracles of modern technology. The dramatic development projects favored by Ioanniki, however, lost



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support among the brothers of the monastery, who (especially after 1907 when he decided to build a turbine-powered mill) regarded him with suspicion. Others, however, had a more charitable view. A pilgrim seminarian remembered that the archimandrite approached. This is a stocky person with energy and small expressive eyes, the typical Russian peasant. His manner and method of conduct show his origin, but in his eyes one sees intellect, and in his step and in his characteristic features—between his brows—an unconquerable energy. This is a man of action—a child of the gloomy north. He does not make allowances for the monks and maintains strict discipline. The monks are afraid of him, but respect him; they elected him their leader for his outstanding intellect, boundless energy, and excellent understanding of the monastery and all of its procedures, since the archimandrite began his career from among the trudniki and then became a novice.11

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Though he fought back vigorously and continued to modernize the monastery, the archimandrite received increasingly harsh condemnations. In 1911, a former teacher of theology at Solovki penned a damning letter to the Holy Synod. Ioanniki, wrote the teacher, was ‘‘a nihilist, not only not an intellectual, but a loutish peasant nihilist, practically an atheist, for he is never wrong, making up his mind absolutely, like a pope, and having decided, destroys all who are against him.’’ 12 By this time inured to complaints about Solovki, though, the Holy Synod did not take immediate action against Ioanniki. Rent with dissension, Solovki had to show solidarity during two important public moments, occurring in 1912 and 1913. On 4 August 1912, after fifty-eight years ‘‘in captivity,’’ one of the bells taken from Solovki by sailors during the Crimean War was returned by the British government. This became a cause for great celebration, a symbolic joining of the British and Russian empires in friendship and a reminder of Solovki’s service in defense of the motherland. Four years before,


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Solovki’s archimandrite had conversed with an ‘‘English guest,’’ E. F. Kelaart, who promised to help bring the bell home. Then, in June 1912 (after Liturgy), the archimandrite and the visiting bishop of Archangel announced that they had received a telegram regarding the bell and its return.13 The date of transfer was set for 4 August 1912. Between June and August, a flurry of letters, telegrams, and official documents moved from London and St. Petersburg to Solovki, setting up arrangements and official events for the day. As he signed the act officially recognizing the bell’s transfer, the governor of Archangel said: ‘‘I drink to the health of the King of Great Britain, the Emperor of India, George IV. Hurrah!’’ 14 (With luck, no one was listening, since the King of Britain was George V.) About eight o’clock on the morning of 4 August 1912, the bell finally arrived home. It had been transferred the previous day from the British steamer Kennet to the Vera. At four in the evening, the Vera set out for Solovki, steaming alongside another of the monastery’s ships, the Solovetskii. A huge welcome had been prepared for the bell. Standards, flags, icons, priests with censers, pilgrims, and monks lined the dock awaiting its arrival. Solovki’s thousand bells welcomed their brother home. Hefting the heavy cargo from ship to shore, the entourage of monks and officials began carrying the bell to the tsar’s chapel, walking along a red carpet laid out along the entire path from the boat to the monastery. Moving through the Holy Gates into the monastery, the bell was greeted by two thousand people lining the walkway. The monastery’s bell towers turned to the trezvon, the ‘‘barbaric music’’ that marked the most important days of the year. The bells pealed wildly, cacophonously drowning out the choir singing ‘‘Lord Save thy people and bless Thine Inheritance. Grant Orthodox Christians victory over their adversaries and save Thy people with thy Cross.’’ The festive group made its way into the monastery, where the bell was placed on a special table in front of the archimandrite. A young trudnik placed flowers around the bell, given by the British consul for the occasion. The archimandrite compared his joy to that of the Jews of ancient times who received the Ark of the Covenant back from captivity with the Philistines. The entourage then served a festive Eu-



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charist, concelebrated by the archimandrite and twelve priests. Lunch followed.15 The joy and pomp surrounding the bell’s return from England was topped only by the arrival of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth for a fourday pilgrimage in 1913. This was an extraordinary trip not because of her rank—Solovki had welcomed Emperors Peter I and Alexander II— but because of the grand duchess’s spirituality. Born Elizabeth of HesseDarmstadt, the grand duchess had grown up with an Anglican mother and a Lutheran father. When she married Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, son of Emperor Alexander II, she converted to Russian Orthodoxy. In February 1905, at the peak of the first Russian Revolution, a terrorist killed Grand Duke Sergei, apparently waiting for a time when the duchess and duke were not together, since the terrorist respected the grand duchess. The murder of her husband profoundly affected Elizabeth, who decided to take the veil and open a convent in St. Petersburg. Named for Martha and Mary, the convent’s purpose was both public good works and prayer, including a small hospital, soup kitchens, and student dormitories. Her fame—based on a quick mind, sympathetic character, and quiet piety—spread quickly across Russia and abroad, where she was seen as an antidote to the ostentation of royal life in Europe. The grand duchess’s visit, timed to celebrate the three-hundredth anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, provided an opportunity to highlight Solovki’s own mixture of work and piety. In Elizabeth, the cloister saw a kindred spirit, a woman of the world who did not despise work or money but used them for the betterment of Russia. If anything, Elizabeth might have been a bit embarrassing to the brothers. Sophisticated and well spoken, she was nonetheless an embodiment of pious good works without the internecine politics that were so rampant at Solovki. On 25 June 1913, Elizabeth arrived on the new steamship Vera from Archangel. Stepping onto the dock next to the guest house, in front of the Holy Gates, the grand duchess received the same welcome as the ‘‘captive bell’’ from England. Banners and flags flew from masts, bell towers poured forth wave after wave of sound. Archimandrite Ioanniki


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met her at water’s edge, offered her a cross to kiss in veneration and then presented her with the traditional bread and salt of welcome. Unlike other pilgrims, the grand duchess stayed five days on Solovki, the better to pray at the outlying hermitages. As a nun, she spent more time in prayer than other pilgrims, staying at each outlying monastic settlement for some time. After three days of prayers, Elizabeth turned to more worldly concerns and officially opened the new canal dug for hydroelectric power. It was, of course, named the Elizabeth canal.16 Shortly after the grand duchess left Solovki, however, more formal charges were brought against Archimandrite Ioanniki, related to the misuse of funds, opening hermitages without consent of the brothers, missing church services, ‘‘irrationally altering’’ the steamship Vera, and secretly harboring vices like heavy drinking. The archimandrite fought the charges, even enlisting the Grand Duchess Elizabeth in his quest to be exonerated. He wrote to her that all the accusations were ‘‘lies, slander, and spite.’’ 17 By 1917, however, the Russian press began investigating the problems at Solovki and the Holy Synod was forced to act. A review of monastic life also had become an important part of a general church reform movement culminating in an all-Russian church council in 1917, the first one since Patriarch Nikon was deposed centuries before. Solovki provided a way for the Synod to experiment with new rules regarding monasteries, introducing more formal democratic tendencies and sacking Ioanniki.18 At the same time, the monastery had been affected by World War I. With fewer yearly trudniki and almost no three-day pilgrims, the monastery was far quieter than normal. Food production, for example, dropped precipitously—cabbage yield had fallen from a high of over 25,000 kilograms to less than 4,600 in 1916.19 All of this augured change at Solovki, but no one could guess how much of it there would be. In September 1917, in the midst of revolutionary upheaval across Russia, the Holy Synod appointed a new archimandrite to Solovki, Father Veniamin, who had served at the nearby Siiskii monastery. In addition, the Holy Synod approved new rules for the conduct of administration by the archimandrite, hoping finally to close the chapter



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Solovki’s forests and lakes in the early twentieth century (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Prokudin-Gorskii Collection, LC-DIG-prok-10356)

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of infighting and scandal that had sometimes overshadowed Solovki’s symbolism as defender of Orthodoxy and the motherland in the north. Here occurred an irony of history. At the very moment when Solovki was most closely tied to affairs in St. Petersburg; when it had embarked on a path toward renewing its brotherhood; when it could communicate with the outside world through telegraph and steamship, it was suddenly cut off from the rest of its world by the October Revolution and the ensuing civil war. Once again, northern Russia became a war zone. This time, unlike the Crimean War, the monks of Solovki had to be ambivalent— instead of rallying against Great Britain, they knew that foreign intervention might mean renewed security for their cloister. Throwing their whole support behind interventionist forces, though, was out of step with Solovki’s history—the monastery had survived centuries through careful accommodation to Russian rulers. Its only heroic stand against authority had ended in blood covering the January snow, almost 250 years before. In 1918, British, American, Italian, Serbian, and Finnish troops


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moved through the region, trying to establish a base. There is long debate whether the Allied intervention forces had arrived in Russia hoping to crush the communists or to defend their interests against a possible German assault on the region. Whatever their reasons for coming, the Allies experienced a number of early successes since the Red Army was not able to respond to a threat so far north. The invading forces, though, had little knowledge of the local population or the terrain, poor communication with other anti-Bolshevik forces, and inadequate war materiel. They landed at Archangel and Kem, where Solovki still had its guest house and a dock for wintering its steamships. The British Navy requisitioned the monastic steamer Mikhail Arkhangel, already thirty-one years old, to transport a small force from Kem to Onega, where they surprised and defeated thirteen Bolsheviks defending the town.20 To rouse support from an apathetic populace, the British forces— along with a charismatic Russian naval captain, G. E. Chaplin—decided to impose a new regime in Archangel. They installed a socialist intellectual, N. V. Chaikovskii, as its president. Chaikovskii had lived in the United States, had served in the Russian parliament, and spoke excellent English. Taking over the city after a Bolshevik retreat, he garnered some support, especially among the upper class and the peasants, neither of which had lost any love for the communists. Soon, however, Captain Chaplin coveted Chaikovskii’s power. On 6 September 1918, Chaplin had Chaikovskii and his cabinet shipped off to Solovki. The city of Archangel immediately went on strike, forcing newly arrived American troops to try and run the city’s utilities and streetcars. (Reportedly, the trolley engineer would call out names from his hometown of Detroit—‘‘Michigan Avenue! Woodward Avenue!’’— since he couldn’t read Russian street signs.) Aghast when he heard about the coup, the British ambassador in Archangel bellowed, ‘‘The hell you say!’’ Quickly, Chaikovskii was retrieved from Solovki and Chaplin was transferred to the front.21 The monastery fell back into a fitful winter sleep, waiting to find out how events would unfold. By 1920, however, the Allied forces left the north completely, taking with them any chance of White victory there. The new Soviet state was



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still eking out an existence according to the policy of War Communism, including the expropriation of goods and land. Worst of all, the Bolsheviks had decided to root out religion, that ‘‘opiate of the people.’’ As much as by a theoretical hatred of religion, the communists were motivated by their view of the Russian Orthodox church as a stronghold of reactionary politics and the monasteries as nests of monarchists. For that reason, cloisters across Russia were being turned into state farms, worked by the monks but owned by the communist government. Wasn’t it about time, the communists asked, for the monastic communities to do something useful? Solovki fell, without a fight, into Communist Party control. There remain only a few bits of data about those early days of state rule over the cloister, though there were some reports of looting. By summer 1920, the state had taken over the monastery’s property, legalizing— according to new Soviet law—a practice that had started even before that date. All the churches were locked up, ostensibly to keep monks from looting. Instead, waves of treasure-seekers and thieves descended on the cloister, stealing whatever might be considered valuable.22 In a small gesture of defiance, someone—perhaps Archimandrite Veniamin—gave three Solovki icons to the Anglican military chaplain Arthur Twidle, who spirited them off to England and safe keeping.23 The only building the communists allowed to function on Solovki was the small Onufrievskii church in the monastic cemetery. So far as they could, the monks continued their traditions—Vespers at 6:00 p.m., Liturgy at 4:00 a.m., with other services celebrated whenever possible. Brothers were rounded up from around the islands—no one was allowed to stay at Anzer, Golgotha, or the other hermitages. Since the monastery was now state property, monks were crammed into cells near the Fish Gate at the northern corner, near the walls. The monks did receive the right to continue wearing their old clothing—an emblem of piety for the brothers, it was a symbol of degradation in the eyes of their new government. The authorities in Archangel decided that the monks would concentrate on approved ‘‘cooperatives’’: (1) cultivating kitchen gardens; (2) fishing and fish preparation (especially of the herring for which the islands were famous; and (3) animal preparation, especially seal skins.24 The monastery did not get to keep the fruits of


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its labor. Monastic stores were taken by the local commissar, much to the chagrin of Archimandrite Veniamin, who complained to central authorities. The party manager of Solovki’s economic enterprises, one Comrade Alekseev, also became increasingly frustrated—here he had productive workers and a decent yield but the central authorities could not decide how to govern the newly acquired monastery. He summed it up in a report to his superiors in Kem: ‘‘Residing in the monastery are 566 persons. They are all engaged in field and domestic work. There are no shirkers. All are working quite willingly without any nudging and compulsion. They rise at three in the morning and finish at six in the evening. Here are people already seasoned in an on-going effort to sustain themselves by fighting nature, who are not daunted by work. . . . [Yet] In view of the chaotic situation that has taken shape on the Solovetskii Islands, where numerous and diverse authorities arrive from every quarter and take this and that without my permission, one doesn’t know whom to obey.’’ 25 In the topsy-turvy world of the early communist state, the monks had ended up doing many of the same tasks as before the Revolution but without enjoying the fruits of their labor. Realizing this, the monks tried to perceive their situation as a return to a state like that of novices or trudniki. In that way, the monastery had come full circle, back to its roots of prayer and toil. Like the worker-pilgrims of previous generations who distinguished between working for the church and toiling for their patron saints, the monks told the commissars that they labored not for the Soviet state, but rather for Zosima and Savvatii.26 The situation got worse. By 1921, Solovki was officially proclaimed a state-owned farm with managers brought in from the mainland. They took control from the monks and immediately things fell apart, since the managers neither knew nor cared about growing food or catching fish on Solovki. Perhaps in embarrassment, perhaps in anger, authorities decided to close the monastery altogether and send the monks away. All but the elderly and sick were packed off to the mainland. About 150 stayed behind—both parasitic and ancient, according to Soviet authorities—to grow their own food or to die. Archimandrite Veniamin wandered across the north until he found shelter with a



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peasant family who still revered Solovki. When local lads learned of his existence, they murdered him, looking for nonexistent gold or jewels that they hoped he had brought off the island. He was the last archimandrite; almost exactly five hundred years after Savvatii and German first laid eyes on Solovki, the monastery was no more.


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ire was no stranger to the Transfiguration cathedral— centuries of censers, oil lamps, and beeswax candles had guttered out within its walls. Each of these left a bit of combustible material behind, often layered on the pages of holy books (where candles had been held close for night reading) or puddled next to the ancient wooden icons. Over four centuries, sacrificial flames had glowed in supplication or thanks to Zosima, Savvatii, and the other saints of Solovki. Fire had damaged the monastery many times in previous centuries, as far back as the destruction of the first Chapel of the Transfiguration in the 1460s. The fire that began on the night of 25 May 1923 was different. It had started somewhere in the lower reaches of the monastic buildings and quickly gained strength. The flames swept across the monastery for three full days. The buildings had been linked since St. Filipp’s time by vast galleries and walkways, and the fire spread from each of them to the next until the entire ensemble was engulfed. The huge bells, which once could be heard on the mainland, melted in the intense heat, sending globs of molten metal crashing down a hundred feet to the ground. The library, already shorn of its most important holdings, burned completely. In the cathedral, only the sacristy was saved— 202


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Transfiguration cathedral after the 1923 fire (Photograph courtesy of the Museum of the Moscow Kremlin)

the holy area just off the altar had been guarded by two huge iron doors that held back the flames. As it spread, the fire whipped in circles around the cathedral, making whirlwinds in the windows where glass had been broken out. In the dome, a column of fire shot up to the ceiling, quickly scarring the huge icon of Christ Almighty. Flames tore up to the iconostasis. Egg tempera bubbled and white gesso foundations crackled. Painted faces on the icons contorted wildly from the heat but, miraculously, the iconostasis did not fall—saints and martyrs watched in mute painted horror. No one was sure how the blaze had started, nor could anyone explain why it had taken so long to raise an alarm. Party officials on the islands—bosses, really, more than administrators—quickly found their scapegoat—the aged and infirm monks who had not been banished from the island. But what of the big boss—the party administrator? Where was he and why couldn’t anyone find the keys to the gates—for three days? The massive stone walls could still keep people out, but this time it was firefighters who could not get inside. Some grumbled that the bosses were responsible through their negligence:


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huge mounds of garbage that had been left lying around might have caught a spark. More ominously, it could have been arson by bosses who had started the conflagration to burn inventories that would have shown what had been stolen by individuals rather than requisitioned by the state. Almost two years before, in October 1921, the Soviet government had approved study of Solovki’s main buildings ‘‘as monuments outstanding for their artistic-historical importance.’’ A small team had begun to study the buildings in May 1922. The main researcher on that trip, Pavel D. Baranovskii, was to become a leader in historic preservation across Russia. When his group arrived, much had already been taken from Solovki. The Archangel communist government had confiscated a total of 1,988 different ‘‘pieces’’ of treasure: hundreds of kilos of gold and silver objects (which were mostly melted down and sold as scrap), precious stones ‘‘from one to thirty karats’’ and—oddly— the shrines of the Solovki saints.1 Though the churches had already been ransacked, Baranovskii and his students felt a real kinship with the builders of Solovki, marveling at the energy and beauty there. In his diary, Baranovskii chronicled his team’s extensive drawings, photographs, and notes for a planned museum of art and architecture to be housed at Solovki. On 5 June 1923, Baranovskii received a short telegram telling him of the fire. He dispatched two of his students, A. A. Karpov and V. V. Kratiuk, to assess the damage and report back to him. They wrote back to their professor almost daily, chronicling what they had found: 1. Two churches were burned: the Dormition and the Nicholas [which had been built in the mid-1800s], and only the walls are left—the vaults have collapsed; all that was inside has been incinerated. The Trinity and Transfiguration Cathedrals were burned, the cupola was burned out completely, the arches remain. . . . 2. The archive and library were burned. 3. The sacristy survived. 4. The roofs of the monastery were burned as were the tent-roofs on the towers.


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5. All workshops, including the cellarer’s and the archimandrite’s buildings, were burned. About 40 percent of the living quarters was completely obliterated. . . . Now the monastery is a heap of bricks and pieces of iron.2

By the time Baranovskii’s team made its report, however, another group was also taking an interest in the islands—the secret police. Far away from prying eyes, Solovki seemed the perfect spot to test new ideas about incarceration and social engineering. As jails began to bulge from the sheer number of those arrested, the police looked for a different kind of penitentiary. The most promising of these seemed to be the kontslager—concentration camp—where inmates would toil for the state and learn the lessons of the proletarian revolution. On 1 June 1923, just as the navigation season began, 150 prisoners were hauled from Kem to Solovki. Instead of being returned to their former artistic glory, the engineering students wrote, the burned-out buildings were being turned into dormitories for the prisoners. The students could not compete with the Cheka (the acronym for the Soviet secret police)—they had ‘‘not even a single plank’’ to help them work on the buildings, since everything was being taken for use in the prison camp. ‘‘In the present state of affairs,’’ they wrote, ‘‘that’s how it’s going to be.’’ 3 Here began the story of Solovki’s descent into the special madness that was the Soviet prison camp system, the Gulag—an acronym for the Main Administration for Corrective Labor Camps. Though the communist government had opened other detention centers after the revolution, Solovki was to be their proving ground, an anchor for the string of camps that Alexander Solzhenitsyn later called ‘‘the Gulag Archipelago.’’ Men and women sentenced to Solovki became unwilling pilgrims, following the same routes and using the same ships as the believers who had flooded the monastery just a few years before. The fate of these prisoners is best conveyed through the stories of individuals, and here we will follow the experiences of three men, who arrived at different times but shared the same suffering. The first was Boris Cederholm, among the first wave of convicts sent to the


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island, a Finnish citizen convicted on a trumped-up spying charge. The second prisoner was E. I. Solovieff, a Latvian caught trying to transfer money from China back home to Latvia in 1925. The third was Dmitrii Likhachev, a promising student from St. Petersburg who survived Solovki to become a renowned scholar of medieval Russian literature.4 But first of all, some general background will be helpful to understanding what these three went through. The key to Solovki’s transformation from monastery to labor camp was SLON—the acronym for Northern Special Purposes Camps and the word for ‘‘elephant’’ in Russian. The term had been coined to cover the penal camps administered out of Archangel, but Solovki was simply too good a place for torture and incarceration. In 1923, the administration of the entire northern system was moved to the Solovki monastery along with the first 150 inmates.5 From its very first days, two things were sure about camp life at Solovki—it was both arbitrary and hierarchical. Underneath these two truths lay a bigger one—no one really knew how to create a labor camp including common criminals and priests, prostitutes and intellectuals, counterrevolutionaries and fallen communists. At Solovki, the rules were devised for the rest of Russia’s Gulag. For example, there were very few guards and administrators on Solovki—only a few dozen at any given time. To keep order and maintain bloody discipline, the camp staff relied on its power over life and death. It gave small rewards to imprisoned former imperial army officers, corrupt Cheka members, and others as long as those prisoners kept order. In its own upside-down way, each group tried to eke out a life based on its training and instinct. The former army officers became the enforcers for the new order, cheek by jowl with their Chekist brothers. The criminals were entrusted—with perfect irony—with making sure no prisoner amassed decent clothing or kept secrets. The prostitutes offered themselves for the chance to survive and to eat a little more than the camp minimum. So-called ‘‘politicals’’—men and women who had taken part in the revolution but had somehow fallen afoul of it—suffered the fewest hardships. In the early days, the politicals had their own camps out in the hermitages of Savvatievskii and on Muksalma Island. As socialists,


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they relied on international public opinion to safeguard them from the worst punishments by the Bolsheviks. Their camps had barbed-wire enclosures and gun towers, not used at the main monastery, but inside the walls they received a softer regimen and more personal freedom. Men and women stayed together, sometimes even families in one place. Ekaterina Olitskaia, a socialist prisoner, remembered that ‘‘political prisoners received additional portions of food. They were released from forced labor, they had self-government in the political isolators, they elected monitors through whom they communicated with the administration. They retained their belongings, clothes, books, pens, pencils, stationery, watches, knives, forks, and even razors.’’ 6 For most of the 1920s, miraculously, the politicals even received aid from the Red Cross. Politicals had a tendency to be uppity, from a camp point of view. In one famous incident of December 1924, they broke a newly imposed evening curfew, and six of them who were outside their camp after six o’clock were gunned down. The politicals buried their own dead and sang anti-Soviet songs at the funeral. This story leaked out, and the camp backed down and reestablished some freedom. If politicals lost privileges, they sometimes went on hunger strikes—an impossible idea for other prisoners—hoping again to publicize their plight. Mostly, though, that did not work: there was just too little contact with the outside world. The authorities could also play their trump card— threatening to mix the politicals with the rest of the prisoners.7 Likhachev, Cederholm, and Solovieff were all labeled ‘‘counterrevolutionaries,’’ traditionally known simply as ‘‘CRs.’’ A CR was anyone who defied the communist authorities by thought, word, or deed. (This recalled Peter the Great’s imprisonment because of ‘‘word or deed’’ against the autocrat; Peter sent a few dozen to Solovki; the communists sent thousands.) The category of CR (in Russian pronounced ‘‘kayer’’) included practically every kind of person: 1. officials from the imperial regime; 2. members of noncommunist political parties; 3. rich people and profiteers (like Solovieff ); 4. clergy;


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5. non-Russian patriots; 6. foreigners (like Cederholm); 7. Russians who had returned to the USSR from travel abroad; 8. Red Army commanders who lost support among the political elite; 9. sailors and peasants who had rebelled against the Bolsheviks; and 10. ‘‘socially dangerous elements’’ (like Likhachev).

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The largest in number, the CRs received the worst treatment at Solovki. Camp masters delighted in mixing criminals with CRs, watching the ‘‘counterrevolutionaries’’ lose their property, food, even their lives to the hardened criminals who shared barracks with them.8 The felons were most likely to be softened not with gifts or bribes—they took what they wanted anyway—but rather with stories. Telling tall tales—embroidering reality or describing faraway lands—became an art form in the Gulag. If they accepted him as a storyteller, criminals might look after a CR instead of abusing him.9 As times changed on the mainland, so did the inmate population on Solovki. In the early to mid 1920s, there were many common criminals, politicals, and ‘‘counterrevolutionaries.’’ The CRs tended to be intellectuals, priests, and foreigners caught in the new Soviet juggernaut. When collectivization and the Five Year Plans were introduced, the camp system across Russia was swamped with kulaks, peasants deemed too rich by the government and exiled from their land. As the wave of political terror washed over Stalinist Russia in the later 1930s, party members and workers were also swept into Solovki’s prison barracks. ‘‘Zzzdrrraaa!’’ ‘‘Louder!’’ ‘‘ZZZDRAAA!’’ The prisoners stood in ragged rows, still dizzy from the train ride and the forced march afterward. Many of them were hoarse, their throats parched from days on the train without enough water. The man directing the prisoners was named Beloozerov. His job was to round up the newcomers and get them ready for transport to the camp. Trains


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full of boxcars had brought the men this far, up the Karelian peninsula to a flat, cold town at the edge of the water. Once the point of embarkation on pilgrims’ routes, it was now the Kem Transfer Point— the last mainland prison before the Solovki Gulag camp. Beloozerov’s job was to instill a little discipline and a lot of fear in the group, as if they were not already afraid of their fate. He forced them to shout as loudly as possible, using military slang for hello: ‘‘ZZZdraa, prisoners! This is not Soviet Power, this is Solovki Power!’’ 10 As he strode in front of the huddled prisoners, Beloozerov upbraided one after another, part of the humiliation process that began in Kem and reached its nadir on Solovki itself. It was, as they said, Solovki power—far more brutal than normal Soviet power. Motioning to the guards, the commandant was known to say, ‘‘I will order them to hit you with their own cudgels until only a wet spot remains.’’ When a few nervously laughed, the commandant would pull them apart from the rest. They were then shot.11 One young man, painfully thin even before his incarceration, stood before Beloozerov with blood pouring from his nose, where another guard had stomped on his face. Dmitrii Sergeevich Likhachev could hardly believe that this was not a nightmare—until Beloozerov came right up to Likhachev and yelled in his face one of his trademark threats: ‘‘I’ll make you suck the snot out of dead men.’’ 12 Such was the first roll call of Likhachev’s new life—a ritual that would repeat itself every morning and evening for his entire imprisonment, no matter the heat or cold, rain or snow. The ride to Kem Transfer Point had been dreadful. Likhachev had been taken from his parents’ flat in Leningrad in February 1928. Then, after imprisonment in cell 273 in the Leningrad House of Police Custody for six grueling months, Likhachev’s case was heard, his sentence pronounced, and his person thrown into a boxcar headed farther north. The cars—one after another in a long human cage— had wooden slats laid on both sides of a central aisle. There was just enough room for a man to lie down on the slat. Once there, the men could neither sit nor stand—they learned to turn all at once on command from a guard since there was no room for one person to change


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position by himself. Railroad police walked the central aisle, iron bars on either side of it. Men lay with their heads toward the bars, making it easier for the guards to count them as they patrolled the cages. Between the end of the bunk and the bars was a space of about eighteen inches, just enough for a person to squeeze down the row toward an open toilet at the back of the car. This was the best-case scenario— sometimes there was no toilet or, more often, men were too squashed or too weak to make the trip down to the open hole. There had been a strange, almost festive air when the prisoners were pushed into the train cars—friends and family were there to say good-bye and the guards even handed over the flowers and baked goods brought to the doomed men. During the tsarist times, these prisoner transports had been known as ‘‘Stolypin cars,’’ after Peter Stolypin, prime minister in the early 1900s. Then, the cars were considered horrific; by 1928, though, they seemed to be almost comfortable in comparison to other punishments meted out by the communist authorities. Likhachev received a cake from his mother in honor of his departure. Others had been less fortunate in their travel to Solovki. Boris Cederholm, a Finn who was among the first to experience the Gulag firsthand, wrote in 1923: The first night of my journey was so horrible that I even thought of my life in solitary cell No. 26 as a state of bliss I should never know again. With people crushing against me on each side and the air filled with stenches, I could not get a minute’s sleep. One of my neighbors, an old peasant, coughed straight into my face all night, and early in the morning began to spit blood. Fleas and lice attacked us vigorously, and the movements of the people who lay on the topmost shelf showered these disgusting insects and clouds of dust on our faces. To crown everything, the lame old priest who lay on the upper tier was unable to get to the lavatory, though desiring to do so; and as there were interstices between the seats, we suffered horribly.13


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The time at Kem was meant to prepare the prisoners for Solovki, while also allowing Soviet authorities time to finalize paperwork. The transfer point was the commencement of a new life, where the assumptions and rules of everyday living were all turned on their heads. Likhachev and the other prisoners were thrown into long wooden huts, more like sheds than dormitories, about forty-four meters long by twenty wide. Like the trains, they had wooden bunks attached to the walls. The bunks had all been taken, though, by petty thieves and minor criminals whom communist officials deemed less vile than counterrevolutionary prisoners. Likhachev was forced to stand up through the night. For sport, the robbers and pickpockets pummeled Likhachev and the other newcomers with handfuls of lice. Bedbugs descended in a seething ‘‘black curtain’’ down the walls and onto the men huddled on the floor of the hut. Yet humanity shone through: near morning, when Likhachev’s swelling feet made it impossible to stand, a complete stranger let him take a place on the boards next to an old Ukrainian priest and an old Muslim mullah. As he lay there, given respite by men he’d never met, the priest told him to seek out one Father Nikolai Piskanovskii at Solovki, who would help the young man. Likhachev never forgot the name of the good foreigner—Divlet-Girey Albaksidovich—who helped him to survive the night. This came to be a kind of motif for Likhachev’s life in the forced labor camp—when the worst possible fate awaited him, some kind soul made it possible to survive for another day, week, or month. The Kem Transfer Point was actually located about seven miles from the city, on Popov Island. The island, shaped like a large letter C, made a good place for an internment camp. On the south side, barracks had been built during the tsarist period. These wooden buildings had a stove at either end—oddly called ‘‘the bourgeois’’—but the camp authorities often kept the doors open and sometimes refused wood for the prisoners. During the cold months (October to May), wind blew through the chinks between the logs, which had not been kept sealed over the years. Fleas infested the buildings all year long, happy to dine even during the winter on the bodies stuffed into the buildings.14 These, however, were not the worst barracks of the Gulag:


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they had outdoor latrines rather than large drums at the end of the hut, open save for a couple of boards across the top. Barracks with these arrangements were horrible. It was impossible to keep one’s clothes clean and the stench wafted through the entire barrack. The main street (nicknamed ‘‘Nevsky Prospect’’ after St. Petersburg’s most fashionable boulevard) ran from the north side of the island (where the camp administrators lived) to the south, where the guards and prisoners had their quarters. To the east of the settlement, near a large sawmill, was the train station leading into Kem. Prisoners were often put to work immediately upon arrival, moving timber or coal onto the Clara Zetkina, a barge that plied its way between the mainland and Solovki. In the morning, after receiving bread and hot water, the prisoners lined up along Nevsky Prospect for the count, shouting, always, ‘‘Zdra!’’ to their jailers. This was the prisoners’ first taste of quasimilitary discipline at Solovki, where daily prisoner counts were a way of life—standing in the rain or snow, after hours of work, waiting to be allowed back to their barracks to sleep. In Likhachev’s case, after roll call on the morning after his arrival, he was then marched directly into the hold of the waiting steamer, the Gleb Bokii. This was one of the monastery’s old pilgrim vessels, renamed for a communist Central Committee member who was among the first responsible for sending prisoners to work in the camp. The overcrowding was worse even than that of the fourth-class passengers in a previous generation: the prisoners were herded into the hold of the boat, far too many for the size of the ship. As he stepped toward the boat, Likhachev experienced another of his small moments of humanity: a prisoner named Ovchishnikov pulled him aside and told him to wait until the end. Only the last men on board were able to breathe easily and even smell the salt air of the White Sea. Underneath them, men passed out and suffocated on their way to Solovki. Time on board—some five hours on a good day, since the ship was so old—mixed horror with relaxation. Likhachev remembered enjoying the freshness of sea air after living in a dank prison cell for months. Boris Cederholm—who was left on deck rather than being forced into the hold—met an old Austrian woman who desperately wanted to


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speak German with him. Hearing them speak in a foreign tongue, another woman—a Russian married to a Parisian who had been imprisoned for writing him a letter—spoke to him in French. Hoping that Cederholm might be released early as a foreign national, the woman begged him to give her husband news of her whereabouts.15 Cederholm expressed his astonishment as he approached Solovki in words not much different from those of the pilgrims before the Revolution. ‘‘Despite the horrible desolation of the camp,’’ he wrote later, ‘‘the former monastery is astonishingly beautiful.’’ Later, he mentioned the ubiquitous Solovki birds: ‘‘Oh, the squawking of those Arctic gulls! One gets accustomed to it after a time, but for the first few weeks the screaming of those birds is enough to drive one mad.’’ 16 The Gleb Bokii began to hit ice as it neared Solovki, alerting Likhachev to their arrival. After lining up on the shore, just in front of the Royal Gates, guards instructed the inmates to lug the bodies of suffocated men and women up from the bottom of the hold. Those who survived the trip—‘‘we, the living,’’ Likhachev called them—were marched immediately to a bathhouse for showers and delousing of clothing. Water ran cold for an hour, though hot water did begin to flow at last and Likhachev was able to warm himself a little. Both bathhouses (Likhachev had been marched into Number Two) stood outside the monastery walls. As he walked through the Nicholas Gates at the north end, Likhachev doffed his student cap and blessed himself: ‘‘until then I had never seen a real Russian monastery, and I perceived Solovki and its kremlin [the monastery walls] not as a new prison but as a holy place.’’ 17 The most bizarre location in the camp was the Transfiguration cathedral, barracks for the newest prisoners on the island. After bringing the dead ones up from the hold of the Gleb Bokii and waiting for hours, naked and freezing, at the washing station, the prisoners marched, bedraggled, into the towering ancient cathedral. This was Company Thirteen, ‘‘the largest and most frightening. This was the reception company for new arrivals who were sent to do heavy physical work and had all desire to oppose or protest drilled out of them. All arrivals on Solovki were obliged to spend not less than three months in no. 13 company, which is why it was called the ‘quarantine’ company.’’ 18


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Likhachev and the others were herded into their new home. The ancient cathedral was filled with wooden shelves that passed for bunks. Three stories tall, the bunks filled the insides of the soaring cathedral, bathed only in the little light coming from the highest windows. Some 850 men were thrown into the cathedral, stacked on top of one another like firewood. The ventilation had been so completely cut off that a mist hung continually over the top bunks, coming from the men and their perpetually wet clothing.Water condensed on the dirty walls, which had been quickly whitewashed to cover up any frescoes that remained after the fire. Camp authorities refused to give inmates the time to clean the cathedral, nor was there any place to put garbage, since the central square of the kremlin had to be kept spotlessly clean for inspections. Instead, the dirt, clothing, tools, bits of food, and personal articles were heaped on bunks and the stone floor was ‘‘covered with a thick coating of dirt, and under the beds were heaps of decaying rubbish, shavings, and droppings of food. All this stuff was in a state of decomposition and emitted a revolting stench.’’ There was a cynical sign painted above the fresco icons: ‘‘Without education and cleanliness there is no road to socialism.’’ Adding to the insult, Lenin’s portrait had been hung in the place of Christ’s on the altar, with the inscription ‘‘We are showing mankind a new road. Labor will be the master of the world.’’ 19 Likhachev wandered among the mountains of bunks in the cathedral nave. He met with some good luck—the bunk ‘‘section chief’’ extorted a ruble from Likhachev but then cleared off a section of the lower pallets for Likhachev and his comrades to lie down. It was a ruble well spent—when the rest of the Thirteenth Company was called out to work, Likhachev was allowed to sleep. Rising, he realized the good fortune to be given extra hours’ rest that helped him to regain some strength. Likhachev learned that he had to sleep with all his clothes on and his legs pushed into the arms of his overcoat to keep it from being stolen. (This did little to dissuade the lice, bedbugs, and other vermin that covered the prisoners like a teeming form of long underwear.) In later years, the prisoner remembered the ways to stay sane on the boards of his Solovki bed. First, he tried to make a little mat-


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tress, stuffed with human hair, so as to sleep without crushing the pelvis. Then, he carried a small coverlet from home—a child’s blanket—that provided warmth for the legs or the shoulders. The little blanket covered Likhachev, who was tall and lean even when healthy, only if he put it over himself diagonally. He was forced to sleep this way in the same place where St. Filipp’s monks, centuries before, had been allowed to wear multiple fur overcoats to keep out the bitter Solovki winter.20 Underneath the bunks lived a whole other society—children. These young ones had been hooligans, street children, or drug addicts back in the cities, or sometimes they were just unlucky children of counterrevolutionary parents. The adult inmates would see small hands sticking out from beneath the bunks, begging for food. The children ‘‘had gotten into an ‘illegal situation’—they didn’t go out to roll call, didn’t receive rations, and lived under the bunks so as not to be chased out naked into the frost to perform physical work. Everyone knew of their existence, but the authorities had simply crossed them off, giving them no soup, bread, or porridge rations. They lived on charity. Or rather, they lived until they died!’’ 21 When he had arrived years before, Boris Cederholm, like many prisoners, had been put to work immediately. Right after being counted off and shown their barracks in the cathedral, Cederholm and his shipmates were force-marched through the forest to a nearby peat bog, where a summertime railroad had been laid. The inmates’ job: move iron trolleys that weighed 200 kilograms, then pull up and move 175 sections of cold iron rails, weighing 150 kilograms each. The prisoners did this with no tools, slogging through near-freezing water, with no rest, food, or warm clothing. When the work became unbearable, three men collapsed. Finally, a friend of Cederholm told a guard what was on all their minds that first day: ‘‘I’d rather you killed me. I’ve no strength left.’’ The guard replied: ‘‘Don’t be a fool . . . you’ve plenty of time to die.’’ What kind of person was sent to Solovki? All kinds. There was the woman imprisoned for writing to her husband abroad whom Boris Cederholm met on the deck of the Gleb Bokii. E. I. Solovieff had been


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caught transporting his worldly goods—partly in gold—from Harbin, China, back to his Latvian home. Cederholm had been arrested as a spy when he tried to develop a business contact with the new Soviet government. There was the Ukrainian nationalist S. I. Pidhainy. Others were priests, monks, nuns, pickpockets, and socialists who did not agree with communist policy. Still others were members of the Soviet regime itself who had been jailed in one of the periodic purges. Some of them had been secret policemen before their arrest, and they quickly became the favorites of their jailers. Among the stories of imprisonment, Dmitrii Likhachev’s was among the most poignant: he was sent to Solovki for hard labor as a result of a student joke. As a student in Leningrad during the 1920s, Likhachev took part in scholarly circles that formed—seemingly from nothing—around a specific man or idea. These were not revolutionary in any real sense, but were dedicated instead to learning and friendship. They were idealistic, often naive groups in the long tradition of intellectual salons in Russia. In Likhachev’s case, the circles sometimes had a religious bent (which ran counter to communist ideology), but just as often they were playful. This was especially true of the KAN— Russian initials for the ‘‘Cosmic Academy of Sciences’’—a jest on the highly select ‘‘SAN,’’ the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Instead of boring scholasticism, these lads wanted to produce ‘‘happy science,’’ claiming that intellectual work should make scholars joyful, not dull. In this vein, Likhachev wrote a paper mimicking a medieval diatribe against Russian heretics. Instead of heresy, however, Likhachev attacked innovations in orthography introduced by the Bolsheviks, which he said left the Russian language a little less interesting than before. (Though a joke, the piece was erudite enough that scholars in later generations thought it to be serious research.) For this paper, the KAN gleefully installed him in the Chair of Old Orthography, also known as the Chair of Melancholy Philosophy. The group continued to meet publicly, with believers debating atheists—both existed in the circle— or taking day-trips to historic sites. It was a masquerade, as Likhachev has written, ‘‘at a time when free philosophy and religion were steadily becoming forbidden, unofficial, and unrecognized,’’ and it attracted


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a little attention when someone sent a bogus telegram of congratulations, signing it ‘‘the pope of Rome.’’ 22 The ‘‘carnival atmosphere’’ that Likhachev so loved reached the ears of the Cheka, who were far less silly of spirit than the students. In February 1928—a time when St. Petersburg is dark for some twenty hours per day—the secret police came to Likhachev’s parents’ flat and demanded to look at their books. There, among the literature and philosophy, was a red volume entitled International Jewry, which had been seen by an informant among Likhachev’s student companions and reported as a Zionist text. This was a high crime; Soviets considered Zionism a threat to communist ideology. The book, however, was only a pretense: the secret police were angered about the ‘‘counterrevolutionary’’ Chair of Melancholy Philosophy, and they saw Likhachev’s goodnatured intellectual curiosity as a threat. Likhachev’s father collapsed in his easy chair over the ordeal in the apartment, but Likhachev’s mother prepared a few necessary articles for prison and Likhachev hoped that his arrest was a mistake. The Cheka agent, Likhachev remembered, was surprisingly polite; they rode to prison in a new Ford, a novelty in the Leningrad of 1928. Many incarcerated people, including Dmitrii Likhachev, could remember minute details about their cell mates, including their family backgrounds and their personality quirks that arose in confinement. Perhaps this was natural; in a world defined by walls sometimes slick with mold and cells that had been designed for one man packed with a dozen, there was little to do but talk and reminisce. Boris Cederholm, for example, especially remembered a semiliterate Estonian boy, orphaned in Russia and caught without a passport. Twelve years old, he did not understand the difference between the Russian words for ‘‘spy’’ (shpion) and ‘‘champion’’ (chempion) and could not fathom why he was being called a ‘‘champion’’ and then sent off to prison camp. Other men, Cederholm recalled, really were counterrevolutionaries. He spent time with a number of anarchists who, unbowed by their beatings, were finally dragged by their heels down the prison hallway, heads bumping along the corridor for all to hear—little different from the monks dragged centuries before in Solovki. Later, Ceder-


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holm specifically recalled the people sentenced to travel with him to Solovki: ‘‘several women in our party, apparently members of the educated class, four priests, a few peasants, a few ex-soldiers, a very feeble old man, and fifteen students.’’ 23 Pidhainy, a Ukrainian nationalist, remembered a man named Kushlinov, an ethnically Kalmuk man who had emigrated to Czechoslovakia in 1920. This itself was remarkable—the Kalmuks were the only European Buddhists, from a homeland near the Volga River, bordering the Caspian Sea. Kushlinov, who had been a high-school teacher of Kalmuk students in Prague, was attracted to the idea of making a Kalmuk homeland in the new Soviet Union. Returning to help the new Kalmuk communist government, he was branded a spy. The small, foreign-looking Buddhist regaled his cell mates with stories of both the life of rural ethnic Kalmuks and high society in Prague. This man, Pidhainy said, was the only one who could tell the truth about western Europe—if it ‘‘was really rotting away, or if it had bright prospects for the future.’’ 24 Like the others, Likhachev retained extremely detailed memories of those days in jail. He met a parade of characters: there was the thief who told him to keep on his overcoat during interrogation (‘‘you’ve got to keep warm—you’ll feel calmer’’); there was the shop owner who organized cleaning of the cell, including the toilet that alone took two days to scrub with woolen underwear left by a man probably executed. There was Count Shuvalov, the head of the St. Petersburg Boy Scouts, who had been famous for strolling around the city with a stout walking stick in his scout uniform and hat. Likhachev especially remembered the extremely high level of intellectual activity in the cells, a phenomenon that only gained strength at Solovki. After all, many of the people branded as counterrevolutionary (the largest single group of prisoners) were intellectuals who dared—outwardly or subtly—to question the truths of Marxist orthodoxy. In jail for meeting in an intellectual circle, Likhachev often found himself among some great minds, with days on end to discuss obscure philosophical ideas. In keeping with their world, which had been so cruelly turned upside down, the scholars created absurd theories that they then offered up in semiformal ‘‘research papers’’ culled from


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memories and conversations. Likhachev argued, for example, that Romantic poets ‘‘thrust themselves into death’’ while Realists settled down to live long and healthy lives. Thus, he said, one really controlled fate even when events seemed to be random. Likhachev claimed, however, that he was unable to grasp Husserl’s Researches in Logic as described by Count Shuvalov.25 Life on Solovki was a particular hell for women. For every woman on the island there were hundreds of men, including bosses and administration. In order to maintain order, SLON developed quasimonastic rules about the segregation of men and women. Each gender had its own quarters, the women in the old St. Petersburg guest house, and the men across the rest of the island. The bosses often, but not always, differentiated between men’s work and women’s work. In some cases, like cutting peat or hauling wood, women did hard manual labor. In others, they were expected to clean and cook for the bosses, the Chekists, and the camp administration. After complaints that there weren’t enough female workers on Solovki, police might randomly take women from the streets of Moscow or St. Petersburg to be sent—without trial—up north. At one point, some 523 women arrived on the island, having been charged with ‘‘secret prostitution’’ and transported immediately north. ‘‘The convict girls and women reported that they were taken directly from the street when returning home from movies or a walk; some were coming from work while others were going to work in factories for night shifts.’’ They received three-year sentences without any official charges being lodged.26 Of course, the men of power on Solovki used women prisoners for sex. Solovieff took the most pains to describe the plight of women in the mid-1920s. Making the crossing on the Gleb Bokii from Kem to Solovki, he had watched guards separating men from women. Then the guards took all the women toward the bow. Finding those who had been kept in solitary confinement for the longest time (since they would be the most pliable), the guards forced the women to drink vodka until they were divvied up for an orgy of rape in a ‘‘wellprepared devilish plan.’’ 27 Once in the camps, Solovieff wrote, the situation was no better:


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Force is the usual method. Everyone who has an office is entitled to have a live-in ‘‘woman cook’’ or ‘‘servant.’’ For such he selects a pleasing girl. Many of them, being starved and suffering from the labor, agree readily to communal living with their chiefs. Some, however, particularly the younger ones with stubborn characters who are not yet ‘‘broken,’’ refuse. In such cases women-Chekists in the division of labor of the ‘‘zhenkorpus’’ (women’s corps) who are experienced in such matters send girls to the heaviest and dirtiest jobs. After suffering so much and starving, the girl herself turns to the administration for help. She is willingly given assistance by accepting an offer to do ‘‘house work.’’ The recalcitrant ones [however] are immediately incarcerated.28

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The forms of punishment for women were different from those for men, though anyone could be sent to punishment cells for almost any kind of misdemeanor. Members of the women’s company especially dreaded a trip out to Zaetskii Island, the female penal colony. There, SLON’s bosses cut back on already meager rations, imposing more beatings and trying to wear down women’s spirits. Life on the island, which was buffeted by rain and wind, without even trees for natural shelter, was more bleak than anywhere else on Solovki. As the prisoners learned immediately, Solovki was organized according to companies, each with its own work duties and place to live. There was a particular ‘‘camp topography’’ as described by all the inhabitants, important because life or death depended on where one labored. At the main monastery was the dreaded Thirteenth Company, housed in the Transfiguration cathedral. After a period of some months, usually three, in ‘‘moral quarantine,’’ the prisoners hoped to be moved to different work, especially in places where they would not be bothered.29 The best place to work was in the First Company, composed of ‘‘privileged’’ inmates in league with the camp bosses, who lived in quarters behind the cathedral. A number of other companies (Two, Three, Eight, Nine, and Ten) had largely clerical or artis-


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tic jobs and also lived inside the walls. The sentry company—made up completely of monks, priests, and bishops, since they could be trusted—was Number Six. Company Ten—which Cederholm desperately wanted to join—was considered a cushy one, with smaller barracks, lighter work, and better food. Company Fifteen, as Likhachev described it, ‘‘was for those who lived in various corners outside the boundaries of the kremlin and was considered the most criminal, that is, the most privileged.’’ Company Sixteen, was also quartered outside of the kremlin, but that was because its duty was to bury the steady stream of dead coming from within the walls. Company Fourteen was not much better than Thirteen, because it was a catch-all for men who had left quarantine and were put to hard labor. From there, prisoners were marched out to the peat bogs and forests. This grinding manual labor exhausted both the body and the mind. Cederholm remembered that ‘‘the majority of the prisoners are in a state of debility and suffering from scurvy as a result of the meager and disgusting food, the utterly impossible housing conditions, and lack of clothing and footwear. . . . The prisoners never receive definite instructions from anyone as to what they are to do and how they are to do it. They cannot ask, for that might be regarded as a breach of discipline.’’ 30 Of all the jobs forced on the inmates (moving train track, cutting peat, carrying corpses), the worst were in the logging crews. In 1926, the camp had won a contract to sell timber to foreign nations, giving the young Soviet state hard currency.31 Solovki suddenly became a source of cheap export lumber, and Solovieff was one among many sent to the logging camps. Later, he typed out this memory and placed it at the bottom of a suitcase, to be found years afterward by his daughter. His recollections were among the very few written down by men in the logging crews. Lunch was not available largely because the majority could not accomplish the work ‘‘norm’’ or urok, i.e. the amount of prescribed work, until evening. Urok not completed = no dinner! Of course, the administration knew well that the urok could


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not be accomplished within the time span and deliberately did so to leave the people without lunch. The trees were cut by hand and in groups of eight men; each group was given one saw and one axe, both completely dull and useless. As much as we attempted to sharpen them, the poor quality of the steel made it impossible. And with such ‘‘tools’’ we had to fell thirty-six trees, remove the branches and then saw them into logs of specified length. For the smallest inaccuracy in the dimensions logs were not accepted and a penalty was charged. As we learned later, the strict measurements were set by the buyers abroad who did not accept the timber below a certain size. I happened to be in a group with the former locksmith Krasavin and the peasant Sherstnev. Neither had ever worked in logging and we all had it very hard. We could accomplish the urok only [by working] late into the night and could even do that only because I sharpened the saw several times during the day and because all three of us had come from the working class and knew how to handle tools. After a falling tree broke Krasavin’s leg, we received a Kuban cossack from the stanytsa (village) of Plotnirovskaia, one Sherstobitov by name, with whom we could complete the urok, though late. Only six groups were able to complete their urok; the others, who never had done such work, could not even think of fulfilling the norm as certain skills were needed to handle tools. Soon after the incessantly heavy work was begun, I strained myself. The seams of my previous operation opened up and I really could no longer work. However, the bosses suspected that I was pretending and they began to beat me to get me back to work. Only when they saw that my scar was bleeding and my underwear was soaked with blood did they leave me in peace and sent me to the infirmary of the first division. I lay in the infirmary until the spring of 1929 and in this manner was saved from a sure death on the logging job, where many completely healthy people, physically much stronger than I, perished.


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A System for Horrible Suffering As I already mentioned, almost no convict could get to lunch because none could finish a full day’s urok by noon. The rules for preparation of the log products were as follows: one arose at four o’clock in the morning, within half-an-hour the convict had to be dressed, fed, and ready for check-in. Then promptly to the woods to begin the work, although prior to that one has eaten very little for the morning meal and it has to last the full day, having completed the previous day’s urok only late the previous night. If one couldn’t complete the urok by night then one had to work through the night and continue back in the woods after check-in and have very little food. In such cases one frequently collapsed from exhaustion and crawled into bushes to sleep, only to be found asleep forever. Almost every day some were missing from the groups, having fallen asleep in tents under a spruce and then frozen to death. But before one freezes in Solovki’ s climate, the convict lives through the most thorough and severe mockeries. In this work convicts are cruelly beaten. The beaters are foremen—in other words, the bosses who themselves are convicted Chekists and want to excel for the OGPU in order to receive a ‘‘skidka’’ (reduction) of their own sentence. The totally exhausted [workers], having gone without sleep for several nights, cannot fulfill their urok anyway and themselves ask to be beaten dead at once rather than over the course of several days. Other convicts find the right moment to hang themselves in the barracks or in the woods. . . . Very many cannot tolerate the mockeries and sufferings and deliberately chop off a hand or a part of a leg, etc., in order to get into the infirmary of the first division and to remain there. To cut off one’s limb is necessary because other illnesses are not believed. I was witness to one such case: One young Jewish fellow . . . suffering from constant beatings and hunger, could no longer stand it and announced to us that he will ‘‘create a new category’’ by cutting off his hand so that


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he would be transferred into a group [unable to work in the woods] and thus save his life; he lost only three fingers of his left hand. Despite our attempts to dissuade him, he carried out his intention. Later, the samorubs [self-inflictionists], as they were called in Solovki, were no longer removed from the work in the woods but were left there until they died, as this selfinfliction became a mass occurrence. No one could receive medical help for injuries on the job because the assigned ‘‘feldshers’’ (physician assistants) were not trained for this. There are no medications at all other that iodine and rags, and the ‘‘thermometer’’ was a large stick used on all who presented themselves as sick. No attention was paid to frozen limbs and many died from gangrene and abscesses because frostbite was not treated. If, however, a man is totally unable to fulfill the heavy work, he still is not freed from the heavy forest labor but is assigned some senseless job, for instance pouring water from one opening in the iced-over lake into another opening. As a rule, no one is allowed to sit without working in the camp and no one is released from work because of illness; the administration does not recognize illness because the entire camp is full with sick people.

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How Potapov Tortured the Convicts During my time the appointed chief of the mission (‘‘komandirovka’’) was Potapov, who had distinguished himself elsewhere in mockeries and thus was sent to the logging area where the boss must be an especially wild animal. How he behaved is difficult to imagine. For instance, near those convicts who were finishing their urok late at night, and had worked over sixteen to twenty hours and thus were very chilled, he deliberately made a fire, sat by it with a revolver in his hand and did not allow them a minute’s rest. If any could no longer continue the urok from loss of strength, hunger, sleeplessness, and, most of all, from beatings, and, frozen stiff, passed by the fire to try to get warm,


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he shot at them; if still alive, he shot again. If one of the group of three was killed it was ‘‘natural’’ also to kill the other two. Consequently, if Potapov was in the woods, none of the convicts wanted to go for night work and begged to be shot on the spot rather than submit themselves to Potapov’s mockeries.32

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The prisoners of Solovki learned that their most severe punishment came from not knowing what would come next—a roll call, a change of labor detail, a small token of human kindness, or a gunshot to the head. When asked many years later to describe a ‘‘typical day’’ at Solovki, Likhachev recalled that there was no such thing—he met each day with trepidation. Boris Cederholm put it this way: ‘‘The most terrible feature of life in the Solovetsky camp is that no prisoner ever knows what the next minute has in store for him. Nothing is fixed and definite. No one knows exactly what is allowed and what is not.’’ 33 In place of podvigi, where monks toiled according to minute rules and daily rituals, the new inhabitants of Solovki had no solace of routine. Their burdens of labor led not to godliness and prosperity but to misery layered with anguish.


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here were two high hills on the Solovki islands: Golgotha, where the sick went to die, and Sekirka, where the damned went to die. For most serious health problems—typhus was normal and scurvy so widespread that it stopped being classified as a disease—prisoners ended up at the local hospital just outside the kremlin. Prisoners whose cases got worse, or who became too old or infirm to work, were carried off to the top of Golgotha, a makeshift infirmary and quarantine for infectious diseases. Legend had it that, on 18 June 1712, the Virgin Mary had told the monk Iov that the hill should be called ‘‘Golgotha,’’ and that it would be ‘‘whitened by the sufferings of countless multitudes.’’ The prophecy was fulfilled in the days of the Golgotha Hospital. There, ‘‘prisoners lay dying from lack of food and from cruelty, enfeebled priests next to syphilitics, and aged invalids next to young thieves. At the request of the dying, and in order to ease his own problem, the Golgotha doctor gave terminal cases strychnine; and in the winter the bearded corpses in their underwear were kept in the church for a long time. Then they were put in the vestibule, stacked up since that way they took up less space.’’ 1 226


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The other peak on the islands was also historic—Sekirka, the same Mount Sekirna where the angel had beaten the Karelian woman five hundred years earlier. There, the camp authorities had opened two penal isolators. The lower isolator was an intensive form of logging camp, with less food, more work, and no opportunity to buy extras. Regular logging detail was a ‘‘resort’’ compared to work at Sekirka.2 The upper isolator must have been the work of demons. There, men were made to sit perfectly still atop the ‘‘perch’’ or ‘‘pole’’—about an arm’s width wide—for hours on end, stripped almost naked, teetering in the high-ceilinged, unheated Church of the Beheading of St. John. Though they shivered and caught frostbite, the slightest movement was reason for falling off and a beating. The food was, if possible, even worse than in the kremlin or in the lower isolator. At night, without blankets or coats, the prisoners lay three or four atop another, hoping to stay warm. They would do anything to save themselves from more time on the perches: ‘‘I saw how people deliberately burned their mouth or sex organs to simulate syphilis in order to get into the infirmary or the syphilatorium where the disease can really be contracted. People swallowed pieces of glass of various sizes or nails to get into the hospital, hoping that they would be operated for removal of these objects. In other words, the convicts are ready to do anything to get out of Sekirka. . . . The simulations of syphilis were discovered and later its existence was denied even in those who really had it. The number of deaths was enormous here.’’ 3 Golgotha’s and Sekirka’s staircases were particularly potent symbols at Solovki. These were the former sites of a pilgrim’s podvig, climbing up to the churches. During the Gulag years, though, the important journey was down the stairs, not up. In the case of Golgotha, dead prisoners were tossed down while frozen, rolling down the stairs toward their burial. In Sekirka, guards pushed the corpses down the stairs while they were still barely alive: the prisoner would be strapped to a log ‘‘beam’’ and rolled down 365 stairs, his body bouncing on the frozen wood treads. With death everywhere, how did a prisoner survive? The answer lay in an incessant battle of wills at Solovki. It was not a battle joined


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Drawing of Sekirka, showing its deadly stairway, from Major General I. M. Zaitsev’s book Solovki: Communist Penal Servitude or Place of Torture and Death, published in Shanghai in 1931. The caption reads: ‘‘Mount Sekirna: Here was a monastic skete and a highly esteemed temple. Formerly a place of fervent prayers and mental tranquillity, Presently the Hell of Communist torment.’’ The penal isolator is marked with a large cross in the former church, with a line of sight to the Solovki lighthouse. To the left of the isolator is the barracks with the kitchen in between. At the bottom of the 365 stairs down the hill, Zaitsev notes the bathhouse and the shed.

equally, but both sides had weapons. The bosses seemed to have the upper hand—violence and food shortages were the bludgeons they used to drive all humanity out of prisoners. The convicts, though, had their own arsenal—wit, intelligence, and a seemingly limitless ability to suffer. In the ‘‘fantastic world’’ of Solovki, the laws of concentration camps had not yet been written.4 Both sides used this uncertainty to their advantage in a struggle for dominance or survival. The great mixture of upper class and lower, of cleric and thief, of worker and scholar, created an oddly vital atmosphere in Solovki. One could labor side by side with princes or priests or prostitutes, in


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a democracy of convicts. Boris Cederholm described his first days as a watchman for a prisoners’ kiosk: ‘‘The employees of that shop were a curious collection. The manager of the cooperative store, Barkan, had formerly been the doyen of the brokers on the Petrograd Bourse, and, as it happened, had executed commissions for me before the Revolution. The jeweler Kümmelmach was his assistant. The book-keeper of the kiosk was a priest, a doctor of theology named Lozina-Lozinsky. The Mexican Consul-General in Egypt, Violara, sold milk. A former gentleman-in-waiting, named Elagin, and I were watchmen.’’ 5 Other inmates had equally fantastic stories—meetings with old friends, famous scholars, and shop attendants from one’s old neighborhood all made it slightly more possible to live in the conditions of Solovki. Amid the wholesale destruction of the monastery, there flickered some interest in the history and riches contained there. The kremlin’s extensive collections of icons and other objects, for example, while damaged extensively by fire and theft, still offered inmates the opportunity to follow their research interests. The restoration expert Baranovskii’s work on Solovki helped to give an imprimatur to studying its history, but the real attention came from the prisoners themselves, who developed a small museum within the stone walls. The existence of the museum, in Likhachev’s view, was ‘‘if not magical, at least amazing.’’ Ironically, its first leader was the exiled Estonian communist F. I. Eikhmans, who made a name for himself as director of the Solovki Local History Society. He left that post to become commandant of the entire Solovki labor camp, where he distinguished himself by extreme cruelty.6 In Eikhman’s place at the museum came N. N. Vinogradov, trusted by the bosses to be a curator because he was a criminal—having stolen exhibits from a Kostroma museum—rather than a counterrevolutionary. Vinogradov helped to keep important religious artifacts, especially icons, when they were in demand from the coffin-making shop, which sometimes ran low on wood. The museum had its own little ironies— it was ostensibly a museum of antireligion but did much to retain the treasure of Solovki. Its active director was an inveterate collector, while his assistant, nicknamed ‘‘the antireligious bug’’ or the ‘‘miniswine,’’ endlessly tried to find a mythical monastic treasure under the aegis of


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a ‘‘Commission for Excavations.’’ It was he who wrote extensively on the Solovki monastic prison, using a discovery of meathooks to claim that the monks barbarically tortured their prisoners. His work on the prisons, printed by the camp press, seemed to say, ‘‘See, things have always been bad here.’’ 7 The Solovki Museum provided safe harbor for intellectuals: ‘‘Every evening before going to bed,’’ Likhachev wrote, Vinogradov ‘‘would invite cultured people to leave their company bunks and camp-beds, where the little lamps flickered in the half-light, to hear lectures, work on the Museum card-indexes or simply to chat, and they felt for an hour or two that they were in the proper milieu.’’ Even after being freed from the camp, Vinogradov continued to study Solovki’s history in the Leningrad archives and even returned to give lectures on his studies. (When he arrived back at the camp, he brought a bar of ‘‘Tip Top’’ chocolate to Likhachev from his parents.)8 Another man, A. I. Anisimov, was far more open in his love for Solovki’s antiquities. Toiling quietly in the Church of the Annunciation above the Holy Gate, where the museum was housed, Anisimov actually restored damaged icons from the collection remaining at Solovki. He was a noted art historian and had been sent north as a spy because of his efforts to keep major art collections from being broken up as they were sold abroad. At Solovki, however, he was given surprising freedom to work and to teach, developing lectures on Russian art and tutoring the young Likhachev, who was attracted to the seriousness and the energy of this striking figure. By 1932, though, the tide had turned again to militant atheism. An outside commission arrived to study conditions on Solovki, and its members were ‘‘besides themselves with rage: it was ‘religious propaganda.’ An icon that Anisimov valued highly . . . was smashed to pieces in front of him. Anisimov developed heart trouble. The Museum was closed.’’ 9 The museum, however, could affect only a very few inmates at a time. It was an oasis; visiting it gave a little hope to the ‘‘counterrevolutionaries’’ who had been rounded up from universities and cafés and sent up to the Gulag. Far more effective, and equally miraculous,


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was the camp press that thrived between 1924 and 1927 and then again, briefly, in 1929. The newspaper—first painstakingly typed out on an old Underwood—was called SLON; in 1925 the name changed to Solovetskie Ostrovy (The Solovetskii Islands), with Novye Solovki (New Solovki) appearing just months later. Among them, the publications illustrated the peculiar culture developing in the Gulag.10 The periodicals even had a subscription service and people across Russia could try to decipher exactly how life in the Gulag was proceeding. Here, for all the world to see, the camp’s intellectuals and propagandists dueled with words. No one expected a free press. Yet even early on, in the poor paper and faint typing of SLON, there were glimpses of wit and spine, journalists playing hide-and-seek with the bosses. The hard line was kept by a communist exile named Tobias Tverie, or Tveros, writing under the pen name ‘‘Tiberius.’’ Generally a toady for the bosses, Tiberius summarized the journalistic slogans of the period, and was unwittingly ironic in the process: ‘‘Our language is undergoing mechanization, improvement and simplification, its active vocabulary is being condensed, while the concepts defined grow more sophisticated. [Communist man’s] mind is becoming synthetic, tending towards generalization and simplification.’’ 11 In some cases, SLON was forced to publish just the party line, and prisoners could only hope that readers on the outside would be able to discern the difference between the oversincere saccharine of propaganda and the more sophisticated voice of the inmate-editors. Here are two examples. The first, from a piece by a ‘‘Female Proletarian,’’ was obvious hogwash: When I was being sent to Solovki, I was afraid. They said that life here was bad and other horrible things about local life. They stated that prisoners do not receive bread or tobacco, and they eat only cod. There were rumors that prisoners are starved, and their feet are ulcerated and are only made worse by the salty seawater. I thought that I was certainly going to die there. Upon arriving at Archangel, I quickly became dissuaded of these


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wicked and silly rumors. The camp’s administrators treated us with understanding and all our requests were immediately fulfilled. Now I want to explain how relatively easy it is to serve one’s term at the Solovki Camps. At first, I was working at an infirmary with contagious patients. People were very considerate toward me and they tried to make me comfortable at work. I had to leave my work at the infirmary due to weakness and I was employed at another place. I had to do some community work as well. I saw the same affectionate attitude toward me again. Soon, I was employed as a seamstress in the dressmaking shop. At first, I felt somewhat sad. I did not know how to sew. I was only observing. My friends did not know sewing either. Out of sixteen women, only two knew how to sew. The boss of the dressmaking shop was very kind to her students. She tried to teach every one of us to sew—and voila! —soon, one could hear all the sewing machines working. We produced eight shirts a day and also learned to sew uniforms. The women-prisoners worked with exceptional diligence. They valued the good attitude of the boss. The seamstresses, once they learn sewing, value it very much. When they serve their term, they will be able to live on their own, and, of course, will not cause any trouble. At the present time our boss is an ex-employee, Comrade Zakharova, and she treats us with kindness and consideration. It is a pity that she will leave us soon. Comrade Zakharova, a non-prisoner employee, behaves as if on our level and is very friendly with us. We value her attitude toward us. The example of this dignified woman-proletarian is admired by many of us. It is a pity that many of us seamstresses are illiterate, but they show a great deal of interest to learn. We need to involve these women in cultural activities. Then some of the things that are now so obscure and incomprehensible will become quite clear and understandable.


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At the end I want to say that here are no such horrors as the rumors have it. All women-prisoners are well dressed and have shoes. That is how we live here at Solovki, the camp of mandatory work.12

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On the other hand, the editors tended toward a mixture of humor, sarcasm, and—to the extent they could pull it off—criticism of conditions in the camp. Here is an example from the very first days of SLON, in which even Tiberii showed a sly side of himself in ‘‘Solovki Encyclopedia (Solovki Humor)’’: Prisoner—person that never pleads guilty. Is staying at Solovki due to a ‘‘misunderstanding.’’ Has a right to appeal to be released on parole. Parole—yummy treat that pet trainers throw at their favorite pets. Court Clerk—makes, receives old and sometimes new criminal records. Editor—long-haired young man that hates grammar mistakes to a point where he just skips them. Cult (from ‘‘Culture Club’’)—Solovki’s Temple of Art, where some nutty people read and rehearse classical plays for ‘‘experts of art’’ who need to be taught the alphabet. Correspondent—person that consumes paper in big quantities. Characteristics: verbal diarrhea and thought constipation. Typist—a typical office animal. Characteristics: works submissively and neatly. Motto: patience and work will conquer all. Women’s Quarters—convent where all Solovki nuns live. Top Quality—a rare breed in our museum of gastronomy. . . . Amnesty—subject of passion of Solovki prisoners. But—alas— hopeless. . . . Lecture—new narcotic treatment for Solovki nationals who suffer from sleep disorder. Lecturer—a quite cultured person who cannot stand criticism. Curses silently.


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Camp Foreman—see ‘‘Army Commander.’’ A person that was elected out of prisoner population. Is not treated with respect. Can’t wait until new election! Navigation—Goddess of Hope for obedient Solovki dreamers. Easter—outdated tradition of bourgeois-capitalistic epoch. However, it is celebrated—either out of habit or stupidity.13

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The newspapers came under constant pressure from all sides— while trying to fend off the most blatant propaganda, editors also had to deal with the ‘‘normal’’ criminals who wanted to take part in publication, to have their voices heard. One wrote to Novye Solovki in 1925 with a journalistic threat: ‘‘We’ll latch on to your literary hairdos and shout ourselves hoarse until you tell us how to write! Why do our items lack interest? Correct our mistakes. Since you cry out so much about the public, and we are no aliens to it, admit us to the pages of the Solovetskii press!’’ 14 At the opposite extreme, a critic acidly described the Solovki press as ‘‘Party narrow-mindedness and intolerance, and all the shortcomings of the clannishness of old-time intellectuals, but without their merits.’’ 15 The critic, it seems, missed the point. The convict-editors of Solovki courted a trip to the isolators at Sekirka whenever they admitted humor, satire, or commentary on their pages. Yet only to be a mouthpiece for the camp administration was a fate even worse. The editors, for example, published the following cry for reform, sent in from one of the lumber camps: ‘‘Every measure should be taken to awaken, wherever proper, and to develop in the convicts a sense of human dignity. Most resolute measures should be taken against all, not excepting members of the administration, who by their actions abuse and diminish this sense.’’ In the camps, it was human dignity that convicts fought hardest to maintain, aided by newspapers sent across Russia. Novye Solovki’s editor, N. Litvin, once lamented that ‘‘indeed, fighting depersonalization and narrow-mindedness is irritating!’’ 16 One more Solovki institution—another ‘‘Chekist miracle’’—offered hope against the oppression of work, dirt, and sickness. It was the Solovki Theater (Solteatr), an amalgamation of professional and ama-


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Cartoon from the Solovki prison newspaper SLON in 1924, titled ‘‘From Our Aphorisms,’’ about the trip from incarceration to freedom: ‘‘(a) Our Solovetskii ordeal is like tightrope walking: one false step and you can hurt yourself; (b) beginning of sentence; (c) Sekirka; (d) isolator; (e) extension of prison term; (f ) end of sentence—freedom.’’

teur actors, directors, musicians, scene painters, and copyists. Pulled in as quickly as directors could finagle them out of the quarantine company, anyone with training and talent was able to take part in a multitude of productions each year, ranging from operettas to revues poking fun at camp life. The driving force behind the theater for much of its existence was Boris Glubokovskii, a distinguished writer and (on Solovki) director and actor. Likhachev remembered him as ‘‘tall, elegant, good-looking, lively and well-mannered. He dressed in the Solovki style adopted by the few people who had access to the needlework shop: a short black coat with a sash, black riding-breeches, topboots and a cap worn slightly to one side.’’ 17 One of the few remaining photos of Glubokovskii confirms this memory—a thin man with an open face, dark, receding hair, slim nose, and a confident gaze.18 The plays and, especially, the ‘‘Solovetskii Revue’’ proved to be so popular (with both prisoners and bosses) that the theater actually expanded during the late 1920s. First the ‘‘Trash’’ company and then


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‘‘Our Own’’ moved theater out of the realm of intellectual discourse, witty satire, and scholarly lectures. The new groups had their roots in other social strata at Solovki—including the thieves and prostitutes that made up much of the camp population. The idea was theater in quick strokes—cabaret, short pieces, songs, dance numbers, and raunchy double-entendres that could be remembered and repeated at work. Convicts responded thunderously: ‘‘prominent in the auditorium were members of the work gangs, the riff-raff of the camp, with only a few intellectuals. . . . The audience, as one man, vociferously acclaimed’’ every act.19 The theater also provided one of the few opportunities for meeting the opposite sex. This was especially important for married couples who (with the exception of socialists in their own camp) could not live together, see each other, or communicate within Solovki. Even conversing on the street—with its own intricate ritual dance of following each other but pretending not to speak—was reason for detention in penal cells. (The young men who tried to keep contact during these strolls were called ‘‘hot lovers.’’) Sometimes, however, it was possible for a prisoner to buy two tickets to a theater or cinema performance. One ticket might be sent through the zhenkorpus to his wife or girlfriend—it is not clear if women were allowed to buy tickets for their husbands or boyfriends. Then, during the show, the couple could spend a couple of hours together. For the cinema especially, the worst seats in the balcony were among the most sought after. Solovieff showed a prudish side, writing that ‘‘it is frightening to note what goes on in the higher balcony and in the last rows of the theatre among the scum of the camp and their girls: their behavior is not even interrupted if the lights are suddenly turned on because the film has broken.’’ 20 Many convicts, not just actors or professors or musicians, hoped to work in the theater at least for a short time. It was one of the best positions to be found in the camp. The theater had heat in the wintertime (the bosses, after all, also attended productions), was relatively clean, and—best of all—even resounded with laughter during rehearsals as well as performances. Solovieff received a posting as a painter at the Solteatr in 1930, after which he was transferred to its related company


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in Kem, where the camp administrators had moved that year. Cederholm spent even more time there, copying parts for plays and spectacles. He loved being present in the theater, watching rehearsals and staying warm. Though the leading artists had better conditions than other convicts, life was not easy for them either—‘‘in particular the actresses must have their own costumes and, as they are always busy rehearsing, they always have to [finagle extra food for] one of their fellow-prisoners in order to get their dinner cooked. . . . There are eternal feuds among the ‘artistes,’ and it not infrequently happens that the hero or heroine of to-day is sent to the brickworks or the furnaceroom to-morrow. In the Solovetsky camp everything is unstable and subject to change.’’ 21 In a world of change, there was one eternal thing at Solovki—its island surroundings. Solovki’s great natural beauty comforted the men and women imprisoned there. Through all of the long, dark winter nights and the grueling work outside, even slogging through the ice floes, Solovki convicts seemed to gain strength from the natural world around them. In a typical Solovki irony, in the early years prisoners were allowed to walk anywhere they wanted around the island, once they had a pass to leave the monastery compound. However, ‘‘needless to say, no one goes about the island except on duty; for in the first place all the prisoners are continually occupied, and in the second place it would be very dangerous to wander about the island simply for the pleasure of a walk.’’ 22 Yet the prisoners clearly cheered up when able to spend time, quietly, amid Solovki’s flora and fauna. Lacking any natural predators, the wild animals of Solovki were quite tame—a reindeer named Misha wandered around the kremlin for almost a decade as a prison pet. The hares were particularly friendly, since monks of previous generations made it a point to take care of them and the Solovki guards were not allowed to waste ammunition killing them. Likhachev remembered that he ‘‘made the acquaintance of a remarkable family of hares. I was lying half-asleep in the bushes, and when I opened my eyes I saw opposite me, no more than an arm’s length away, a delightful female hare and


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several leverets. They were staring fixedly at me as if at a miracle. The monks had taught the animals not to fear man, and the mother hare had obviously brought her babies to show me to them.’’ 23 Cederholm had a slightly more pragmatic view of the natural beauty around him, finding himself as a night watchman for a vegetable garden outside the kremlin walls. With no one around in the evenings—no Chekists, no prisoners, no bosses—Cederholm enjoyed his most pleasant time ‘‘not in prison only, but in Soviet Russia. The quiet moonlit nights of autumn had set in, and from the watchmen’s hut, which stood on an eminence, we could see an endless vista of vegetable gardens, silvered by the moon. A thick wood stood like a dark wall round the gardens. In the hut one could light a fire and cook potatoes and turnips in a kettle; these we, the watchmen, stole from the gardens.’’ 24 His reverie was short-lived; as soon as the vegetables were harvested, he reported back to the kremlin. To be sure, nature could be harnessed for horror at Solovki. Perhaps the most infamous form of torture was called ‘‘on a rock’’ or ‘‘presenting to the mosquitoes.’’ The names explained the simple process— under guard, prisoners were forced to strip down and perch on a stone in a marshy part of the island. There, made to stand completely still, prisoners suffered while thousands of mosquitoes (in thirty different varieties) covered the prisoner’s entire body with bites. In the winter, instead of mosquitoes there was frost—in November 1928, half of the three hundred inmates set ‘‘on a rock’’ came back with their hands and feet frostbitten. This did not, of course, preclude their being assigned work duties.25 The natural habitat also inspired some of the more utopian ideas in SLON. In 1926, the economic office decided to import muskrats from the United States, hoping that they would multiply and provide food and fur for sale. The exchange of letters between Solovki’s prison specialists and American zoologists had to rank among the most peculiar correspondence in the annals of science. The experiment was published in a series of pamphlets detailing historical, archeological, and natural phenomena on the island.26 The gulls were the most important feature of Solovki’s natural splendor. The curtain at the Solteatr had a cloth gull stitched onto it,


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reminding the audience both of the dove on the Moscow Art Theater curtain and, more poignantly, of the gulls’ freedom to leave Solovki. After a long winter, prisoners awaited the moment of the gulls’ spring arrival. Around 25 March, the first arrivals flew around the walls, looking for nesting spots. Once the gulls had paired off and made nests, the walls of Solovki became a breeding colony, with gulls warming their eggs all around the courtyard, even in windowsills or alongside a pathway. This intrigued Katka, a partly tame fox that had escaped from a fur farm on the island. Katka tried to make her way into the monastery through its only opening—the Holy Gates—so that she could feast on gull eggs. Chekist guards had strict orders not to let Katka enter the kremlin during springtime. When they failed their duty, hundreds of gulls swooped down on the fox, sending up an alarm and scaring her away from nests. Though the prisoners sided with the gulls in the ensuing fight, they were always pleased to see Chekist guards reprimanded for poorly guarding the gates—the Chekists were used to keeping prisoners inside the walls, not keeping out wily foxes. During the summer, prisoners watched the gull families grow up, with the chicks first sheltering in the nests, then perching on cell window sills waiting for a bite of bread or fish. It was a testament to the birds that prisoners kept a bit of food for them. As they grew, the gulls began readying themselves for the trip south, their cries becoming muted as the autumn came on. ‘‘When they left,’’ Pidhainy remembered, ‘‘the prisoners wished them a safe arrival at their winter quarters, as they did not want them to stay at Solovki where they would increase the sorrowful memories even more.’’ 27


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s spring arrived each year, the camp was rife with parashi, which at Solovki meant both ‘‘latrine buckets’’ and ‘‘rumors.’’ The parashi were variations on the same theme: a commission would be sent to study prison conditions, or prisoners would be sent back to the mainland, or—just maybe—there was to be a general amnesty. In fact, commissions did look over the camp somewhat regularly, though conditions never improved. As early as 1925, Boris Cederholm remembered wandering into a set piece created for the camp photographer—Chekist guards dressed up in hospital gowns to be photographed among clean white bedding and watchful nurses. A real prisoner did not fit into that picture and Cederholm was shooed away. In 1926, a group of ex-convicts who had spent three years on Solovki wrote directly to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, describing the result of investigative commissions: If you complain or write anything (‘‘Heaven forbid’’), they will frame you for an attempted escape or for something else and they will shoot you like a dog. They line us up naked and barefoot at 22 degrees below zero and keep us outside for up 240


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to an hour. It is difficult to describe all the chaos and terror that is going on in Kem, Solovki, and the other sections of the concentration camp. All annual inspections uncover a lot of abuses. But what they discover in comparison to what actually exists is only a part of the horror and abuse of power, which the inspection accidentally uncovers. One example is the following fact, one of a thousand, which is registered with the GPU and for which the guilty have been punished: they forced the inmates to eat their own feces. . . . It is possible that you might think that it is our imagination, but we swear to you all, by everything that is sacred to us, that this is only one small part of the nightmarish truth, because it makes no sense to make this up.1 In June 1929, it seemed that finally there would be relief. Foreign newspapers had been full of reports on Solovki’s horrors; a few memoirs were starting to appear in Germany, France, China, and the United States. Boris Cederholm, for instance, who had been released as a Finnish citizen, published In the Clutches of the Tcheka in 1929. International competitors had started to complain about lumber coming out of the USSR at severely discounted prices—levels attainable only through slave labor, and the United States Congress had called for an embargo on Soviet lumber. Called to make a defense of Solovki was Maxim Gorky, the Soviet Union’s most important writer. In mid-June he headed to the islands. Authorities at the camp began a frenzied cleanup and set to work creating Potemkin cells, infirmaries, and kitchens—props to impress the famous guest—in place of actual facilities. The prisoners, who learned of Gorky’s visit through the camp grapevine, had great hopes that the great author would report back to Moscow and finally conditions would get better. Gorky arrived with his son, a coterie of Chekists including Gleb Bokii (for whom the camp steamer had been named), and a beautiful young woman sporting black leather, who made a great impression on all who saw her. This little band traveled through the islands, taking in concerts and seeing the spruced-up infirmary with a line of doctors


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Cover of Zaitsev’s Solovki: Communist Penal Servitude or Place of Torture and Death (1931)

at its disposal. In one such hospital, Gorky reputedly said ‘‘I don’t like parades’’ and walked out. He did, however, stop to speak with a boy in Solovki’s new children’s colony, where Likhachev was working and observing the goings-on. For forty minutes, the boy told Gorky how things really worked at Solovki, including details of forced labor and torture. As he left the youth, Gorky could not hold back his tears, and the ‘‘crowd of prisoners was in ecstasy. ‘Gorky’s learned it all! The boy’s told him everything!’ ’’ 2 Finally, the author went to see the penal company at Sekirka, climbing up the stairs to inspect how prisoners were treated. When he arrived, the sitting-poles were gone, convicts had been cleaned up and given new clothes, a table and chairs had been found, and—in a stroke of genius—there were newspapers! The inmates sat at the table, quietly


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reading when Gorky arrived. He walked over ‘‘to one of the ‘readers,’ and turned the newspaper round: he had been ostentatiously holding it upside down.’’ 3 Gorky, it seemed, had again understood—all of this was for show. However, like all the other visits from commissions and high-level people, Gorky’s time on Solovki did nothing to help the prisoners’ plight. The boy who spoke so eloquently was shot and immediately became part of Solovki mythology. Life went back to normal at the hospitals, the kremlin, and Sekirka. Gorky wrote generally about prisoners at Solovki but made no public denunciations and had no appreciable effect. That fall, another incident occurred that became the stuff of Solovki myth. In October 1929, a group of ex-officers, intellectuals, and others organized a rebellion. The goal was to kill the few Chekist administrators, take over the Gleb Bokii, and sail for Finland. The uprising —only hours in the making—was discovered by authorities and squashed. Rumors, however, continued to wash over the camp. There was a minesweeper on its way to save them! There was a new government in Moscow! People had escaped and were living in the forest! Except that, apparently, there had never been any uprising at all. Some people guessed that the ‘‘Kremlin Plot’’ had been the work of rats among the prisoners, set up to make the turncoats look good with the bosses. This was apparently the case—two stoolies from among the prisoners had brought others into the ‘‘plot’’ and then denounced them to authorities. All were summarily shot (probably fifty-one in total, though estimates of the executions range as high as three hundred). Just as he was about to be killed, one prisoner lamented: ‘‘What a pity that I’m innocent.’’ 4 In the winter, typhus again ran rampant through the camp, even as new inmates again began pouring off the Gleb Bokii. Some 44 percent of all prisoners apparently got typhus in 1930, of a population pushing past 28,000. At the peak of the prison’s population in mid-1930, there were almost 50,000 prisoners on Solovki—one source precisely notes 49,456 while others round up as far as 70,000. (During peak pilgrimage season, the monastery had never held more than a few thousand at one time.) The spike in population at Solovki reflected a trend across Russia. Government policies of collectivization expanded the Gulag con-


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siderably: from June 1929 to January 1934, the Soviet prison population grew by twenty-three times.5 Finally, economic pressure began to bear down on Solovki—four years of intense logging had denuded most of the islands, leaving the prisoners to produce some peat, iodine from seaweed, and a few handicrafts. As the population swelled, the prison camp was unable to pay for itself or to contribute income toward the Soviet economy. All these pressures—rumors, illness, growing numbers, and declining income—brought Solovki to a breaking point. Guards became even more brutal than before, killing people, beating without provocation, and lowering food rations even further. Finally, the government sent in one more commission to look at conditions—led by A. M. Shanin from Kem—which returned with a report full of horrors. Shanin’s account was long, detailed, and frank. The commission immediately noted, for example, these problems:

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1. sending out, absolutely naked, prisoners at twenty degrees below freezing to the bathhouse one-half kilometer distant from the barracks. 2. sending inmates in one piece of underclothing or entirely unclothed from one place to another located at a distance of five–six kilometers. 3. the loss of up to 60 percent of the potato supply from shipments, and thus the lack of [potatoes], which puts people into a condition of complete emaciation. 4. the issuing of putrid meat. 5. the lack of medical assistance for the sick. 6. the leaving open, in visible places, of pits into which the corpses of inmates are thrown.6 This report, finally, did have an effect. Together with Solovki’s declining production and profitability, it led to a wholesale reorganization and evacuation of the camp that began in the early 1930s. The first to go were technical and artistic folk—editors, printers, and the entire theater troupe had been taken off the island already in December 1929. In late 1930, though, the oldest and most infirm were packed off to


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other camps, many of the prisoners dying in transit or shortly thereafter. Vast numbers of prisoners who could still work were enticed with offers of shortened prison terms to work on the mainland on the new White Sea–Baltic Sea canal, a boondoggle that cost countless lives in construction, only to prove too small for submarines and other boats to use it. Prisoners, many from Solovki, dug the 227-kilometer canal using mostly pickaxes, shovels, and wheelbarrows. The canal was finished in just twenty months, built on the bodies of tens of thousands of dead men and women. Likhachev, among those who willingly left Solovki for the canal, lived through the ordeal by working in an accounting office for the project, alongside other ex-Solovki inmates.7 The exodus was part of a reorganization that involved moving SLON’s administration back to Kem and folding Solovki into the larger system of labor camps. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn later wrote, Solovki ‘‘was transformed increasingly into the then new, but to us old, species of generalized ITL, or Corrective Labor Camp.’’ 8 In keeping with the reorganization, Solovki began to welcome far more women, especially thieves, prostitutes, and nuns, through the kremlin gates. The number of inmates also fell dramatically, dropping to fewer than ten thousand by mid-decade. The change in demography—more women and fewer total inmates—altered the complexion of Solovki. In some ways, life became easier. Fear of typhoid forced the administration to take clothing and cleanliness seriously, making sure that the inmates had more adequate clothing than before and regular times to wash. The camp even opened laundries, looked after by nuns imprisoned on the island. A small fire and the hostility of the Shanin commission (horrified at its ‘‘religious propaganda’’) closed down the museum; the theater reopened, though with less verve than it had had in the early days. Solovki’s reputation even softened among prisoners at other camps. One prisoner said that ‘‘when we learned that we would be taken to Solovki, we were not afraid in the least. Just the opposite, it was somehow mysteriously interesting.’’ In fact, life for some inmates did become tolerable. Both nuns and women who had borne children on the island (a type of event unimag-


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inable ten years earlier) lived at the Golgotha hospital. Letters written from the camps often actually were sent home and mail arrived at the camp, irregularly, from the mainland. Even family visits, which had been allowed sporadically for years, became more commonplace. In 1937, an inmate named Olga Adamova Sliozberg moved into a room with three other women: ‘‘Once in our cell, we set up a regular routine. We got up at eight and did exercises in front of the open window. Then we had breakfast and sat down to our studies: for two hours a day, Zhenya taught us English, then we had two hours of mathematics with Zina. I taught French to Zhenya for an hour and spent an hour on Russian with Lida. Then I read French literature, for the library contained some 250 volumes in French.’’ 9 Women took a more prominent place in prison life than before. Stories circulated about a huge number of prostitutes brought to Solovki; in truth, many more probably prostituted themselves to survive than any who had made a living in prostitution back home in Moscow or Leningrad. Nevertheless, Solovki again played its ironic tricks: prostitutes returned home from Solovki with embroidered clothes, handmade and laundered by nuns who worked in the dress shop and laundry. With so many more women around, sex became an even greater mark of power for the bosses. A large group of women, convicted of cannibalism during the Ukrainian famines of the 1930s, were kept on Golgotha, separated from the rest of the population. There, the women were apparently used as a slave harem by the camp administration, which had brought them, nearly dead, to Solovki in the hold of the Gleb Bokii. In 1937, further changing the situation on the island, Solovki received yet another designation, as STON—the Solovetskii Prison for Special Purposes. Long-time prisoners noticed that ‘‘enemies of the state’’ were beginning to arrive, the first wave of convicts from the purges and terror beginning to rock the Soviet Union. Prisoner blacksmiths made hundreds of steel bars, which were then installed in all barracks windows. Even the old monastic prison cells in the towers were pressed into service for a new, politically dangerous, class of convict. In the fall of that year, secret police shot group after group of


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prisoners, covering up their deeds by later telling families that the inmates had died of disease. Thus, Solovki remained a study in contrasts; no one ever knew when conditions would change. On the one hand, some inmates (who were not killed) found the islands more comfortable than other prisons in the rapidly expanding Gulag. On the other hand, food supplies dwindled further as provisions went to the canal workers rather than those at Solovki. Reports of cannibalism became rampant as groups of inmates allegedly fled into the wilderness on Solovki and feasted on the remains of their dead comrades. ‘‘The killing and eating of human beings was not considered as something extraordinary above the sixtyfifth parallel, as it was a matter of survival and was considered a more or less original way to procure food.’’ 10

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The secret police finally began tapering off its use of Solovki, sending fewer convicts and even less food. By 1939, without fanfare, the NKVD destroyed its paperwork and evacuated the island. They left behind only a rotted corpse of a monastery and a huge cemetery dedicated to the development of socialism in the USSR. What had happened to the believers—the people who had learned to live on the islands before the Revolution, who had made Solovki ‘‘the richest place in the world’’? They were the victims of a militant atheism that—like everything else—got a little mixed up on Solovki. Hundreds of clergy could testify to the peril of religiosity. In some small measure, though, respect remained for the priests and bishops; they were allowed, for example, to continue wearing cassocks. Roman Catholic clergy, of which there were quite a few at Solovki, received marginally better treatment than Russian Orthodox clergy. Bosses and prisoners agreed that priests and other religious convicts could be trusted with certain jobs, like watching over food, because of their honesty. ‘‘The imprisoned priests,’’ wrote Boris Cederholm, ‘‘bear themselves with the greatest dignity. They carry out all the tasks they are compelled to execute without a murmur and with great courage.’’ 11 Priests, especially Solovki’s own monks, were horrified to watch their sacred places regularly violated. Bad enough that Solovki had been looted and burned; worse was the wholesale desecration of churches.


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One night in 1925, for example, the prisoners in the quarantine company were roused from their sleep in the cathedral. The convicts ‘‘as usual, anticipated that they were to be taken out and shot down with machine-guns.’’ Instead, the camp commander Nogtev clattered into the building on horseback, drunk. He jerked his horse to a stop, pulling too hard on the reins, and shouted out ‘‘Good morning boys! How are you bourgeois gentlemen?’’ Still on horseback, Nogtev blustered on beerily, vomited, and then clattered on foot down the flagstones to the door. After he left, a priest sat muttering and weeping. He turned to Boris Cederholm, standing next to him, and said, ‘‘My God, my God, we are trampling the place of the holy altar under our feet, and what words we are hearing! A drunken madman on horseback in the holy temple!’’ Cederholm noticed then that, indeed, they were standing just where the altar had once been.12 Solovki’s own monks, some of whom oversaw the old monastery waterworks, saw their rights diminish each year. At first they were free to pray regularly, but as time wore on they were allowed only short vigils on Saturday nights, never the Eucharist or holiday services. Prayer had to be fit in after work norms had been fulfilled. The clergy did try to maintain some semblance of their religious life. They called one another by the traditional titles—Father, Master, or Batiushka (Little Father)—and retained the discipline of monastic life as best they could. To the extent possible, the bishops even tried to influence the relations between church and state in Soviet Russia. In 1926, the convictbishops responded to the takeover of religious property and the secularization of society under communist rule. In their letter ‘‘To the Government of the USSR,’’ the imprisoned clerics called for real independence of church from state, which would have ensured the freedom of conscience guaranteed by the USSR’s Constitution. Without compromise, the bishops argued that communism and Christianity had dramatically different goals. Knowing this only too well from their suffering in a prison camp, the clergymen did not hope for harmony between church and state. The bishops did not expect agreement from the Soviet government. Instead, they hoped to be witnesses for believers in an atheist state.


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In 1927, the Solovki bishops again took up their pen—this time to congratulate the new Patriarch Sergei, whose appointment had finally been allowed by the government. The letter of congratulations, however, underlined the peril of Sergei’s situation. Sergei was allowed to become patriarch because he was willing to subordinate the needs of the church to those of the state. The Solovki bishops disagreed with his decision to work with the atheist state, writing that

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many bishops and priests, on the basis of just an administrative order, are languishing in prison, exile and labor camps purely because of their church activity . . . or for reasons which are often not even known to the victims. The real reason for the conflict, which is a burden for both the Church and government, is the task of eradicating religion which the present government has undertaken. Namely this attitude of the government to religion, which is at its very root negative, makes the government look upon the Church with suspicion, regardless of her statements about politics. The Church, on the other hand, cannot accept laws aimed at her own destruction.13 The letters written by the Solovki bishops were illegal, of course, and had to be smuggled to the mainland. They circulated in handwritten copies and typescript. Not only a cry for fairness for the church in the USSR, the letters dramatically illustrated religious life continuing on Solovki. Like Patriarch Sergei in Moscow, who made his peace with the Soviet state, religious believers had to decide if they would cooperate with camp authorities. At the furthest extreme, a few religious prisoners became converted to the Gulag. Dmitrii Vasilievich Uspenskii, the son of a priest, came with his father to Solovki after both had been condemned as social parasites. While the father became progressively more frail, the son became increasingly cruel. Camp stories said that, during a forced march across the island in a blizzard, the priest could not keep up. Unwilling to let down his Chekist masters, Uspenskii shot his father and left him to freeze in the snow. Even after the spring thaw,


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believers said, the priest’s body still had not decayed—another Solovki saint! Appreciating his cruelty, the bosses made Uspenskii a guard and he moved up the ranks until he became Solovki’s prisoner-commander. Some priests, especially those housed among the other prisoners, considered the camp as their parish, an opportunity to serve God by helping other convicts. A few clerics even continued liturgical duties in secret. Stories abounded about a priest named Father Nikodim, who kept a small cup and cotton cloth around his neck to celebrate the Eucharist secretly. He worked among the regular prison population, rather than with the other clerics, and became well known around Solovki simply as the ‘‘comforting priest.’’ Continuing to celebrate Christian holidays and so ‘‘spread the opium’’ of religion, Father Nikodim ended up at Sekirka. There he perished, asphyxiated under three layers of men sleeping, all stacked like firewood on top of one another to keep warm.14 Late in the camp’s history, prisoners who gave birth were even able to have their children secretly baptized by convict priests. One woman remembered that ‘‘we walked together into the forest, to where there was a small wooden chapel, some benches, and a spring. There the priest, who had a cross and was wearing a cassock, baptized my son.’’ 15 At the other extreme from religious prisoners who sided with the authorities were those believers who refused all interaction with the Soviet state. Like Christian martyrs centuries before, they openly defied authority and accepted persecution. The best-known of these at Solovki were the Khristosiki, sectarians who refused to give their names to the authorities, since that would enroll them in the books of the Antichrist. Absolutely unwilling to cooperate, they became heroes at Solovki, regarded with respect by even the coarsest prisoners. In 1931, the administration finally had enough of the sectarians and sent them away for execution. A guard described them just before they were shot— bearded peasants with their hands tied behind their backs. Silently, they stood in the church, refusing to speak to authorities but praying quietly among themselves when left alone. They stood for two hours, knowing that they were to be put to death, waiting for the executioner to arrive. The guard remembered that ‘‘each of them whispered their


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names, strictly guarded from the Antichrist; this time, they reverently rose to the everlasting God.’’ 16 Finally, Uspenskii arrived to begin the killing. He was particularly perturbed by the Khristosiki, perhaps because they showed no fear of death. He ‘‘became nervous. As if to conceal this state, he lit a cigarette, and over his shoulder, hurled a command to the executioners.’’ It took almost two hours for eight executioners and Uspenskii to kill all the peasants and have them loaded into carts to take down the hill. In this way, religious believers on Solovki revived the life of its earliest Christians. Coming to the frozen north, Christians had willingly abandoned the cares of the everyday world. For the unwilling pilgrims to the Gulag, just like the early ascetics, both work and death were constant companions. In the twentieth century, though, the demons of Solovki had faces and names, in the end far more dangerous than the spirits that threatened Savvatii and Zosima.


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he final boatloads of prisoners left Solovki in 1939. Shut up in cargo holds and sent off to prisons in central Russia and Siberia, they departed as they had come—under guard, cold, and unsure of their fate. Solovki, located close to the Finnish border, had become a risk, for the Soviet government desired the annexation of Finland and expected a war. It was better to move the prisoners inland, away from the conflict. Once Finland had been subdued in the Winter War of 1940, Solovki was put back to use. The monastery proper and surrounding buildings briefly housed a naval academy during World War II, and about a thousand young sailors were crowded into the space. Then, for about twenty years, the place was left to decay, watched over by the few people who eked out a living fishing or farming on the island. There were pockets of memory. Some locals recalled the Gulag but did not speak openly. Old men and women sometimes still sang songs about Solovki. One was sung in Finnish, not Russian: A holy man left for Solovki. He looked for a companion. He saw a peasant plowing a field. 252


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Now he said: ‘‘Come with me, become my comrade!’’ Now they left. Now they left for Solovki Island. There were two, but it was the older, who took a peasant as a comrade. Thinking: ‘‘I will have a comrade.’’ They left for Solovki Island and for a third comrade they found A white horse. ‘‘Shall we now start to work hard? We’ll start to construct a castle. This is an excellent site, a monastery will be good here. Do not worry, we will have visitors.’’ They started to drag a stone, to construct the castle. So, they went into a forest, ah, the horse as a third comrade is white. Now they laid a stone in a sledge. They started their journey with a stone. There is a river or what is it? a line of a sea, like a curve.

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It was too big a stone they laid in a sledge. Ah, one man said it aloud: ‘‘Let the horse pull, the ice must stand.’’ The ice broke. The stone went in the sea. The other man said: ‘‘Why did you think! If you had not thought, the stone would not be dropped in the sea and the ice would not be broken.’’ Oh, the ice broke, however the stone must get up, somehow. Now they prayed to the Holy Miikkuloa [the Archangel Michael]. ‘‘Holy Michael the feeder, come to help us to pull up the stone!’’ Now they got the stone up.


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They put the stone in the castle’s lintel, that stone, in the wall. And forever the stone is sweating water droplets like beans. Common people visit and they put their fingers in water drops and they rub their eyes. Then eyes will be healed. And The Lord said: ‘‘I was there to help to pull up the stone. I said to Holy Michael: Let us pull up the stone and lay it in the lintel, because Sanctifiers will build up the monastery to heal people.’’ Those Sanctifiers were Izootei [Zosima] and Savvatii. They made the monastery.1

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The words had a strange mix of piety, history, and fantasy. On the one hand, the term ‘‘comrade’’ may have been added after the 1917 Revolution, when it was used instead of ‘‘friend’’ or ‘‘mister.’’ On the other hand, some have even considered the white horse—otherwise lost in the legends of Solovki—to be a beluga whale who mythically helped the saints. Finally, it was remarkable that no stories of suffering and horror entered this twentieth-century text. For Miikkul Izrikki, who sang it for a Finnish folklorist sometime between 1935 and 1940, the story of Solovki was still one of miracles and salvation. The sixtynine-year-old man from near Lake Ladoga may have been the last to remember the song at all. During the period of Krushchev’s thaw, in the mid-1960s, curiosity began to grow regarding Solovki. Dmitrii Likhachev was by then a respected academic, a specialist in medieval literature and a scholar of northern Russian history. In 1966, he returned to Solovki as part of a conference on ‘‘Monuments of the Culture of the Russian North.’’ There, Likhachev wandered through the old cells, rowed out to Zaetskii Island (where he had never set foot), and saw the remains of SLON and STON. Encouraged by the interest in Solovki, Likhachev edited a coffee-table-size art book, The Architectural-Artistic Monuments of the Solovetskii Islands. Forty years later, the book has itself become a monument to



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Return to the monastery: young monks of Solovki (Photograph by Tomasz Kizny)


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The island’s inhabitants make use of both tsarist and Soviet-era buildings

scholarship about the islands, showing the buildings in their mid-1960s condition and imagining the possibilities for reconstruction. Young scholars, artists, and conservators took up the task outlined by Likhachev. Arriving in the summer like pilgrims, they began the process of rebuilding the main kremlin buildings. In response to the new interest in Solovki, the Council of Ministers of the Russian Republic formed the Solovetskii Historical and Architectural Museum-Preserve. Solovki also became known as an offbeat tourist destination. Though foreigners needed not apply, it was not too difficult for Soviet citizens to spend a week mushrooming, exploring, and rowing around the lakes. Solzhenitsyn was stunned at the attitude of Solovki’s tourists. He wrote that ‘‘right now, there on the stones over which they dragged them, in that part of the courtyard secluded from the Solovetskii wind, cheerful tourists, who have come to see the notorious islands, sock a volleyball hours at a time. They do not know. Well, and if they did know? They would go on socking anyway.’’ 2 Perhaps Solzhenitsyn was hard on the volleyball players—maybe life was beginning to win out over death in that Solovki courtyard. Very few people were willing to talk about the Gulag. One man, Iurii Brodskii, had fallen in love with the islands and made it a per-



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sonal mission to remember the Soviet past. He copied Gulag graffiti from Anzer and Golgotha to preserve the thoughts of prisoners; he interviewed survivors and compiled an informal archive. In 1973, he even scaled the side of the Transfiguration cathedral and painted the words ‘‘Fiftieth Anniversary of the Soviet Special Purpose Camp’’ in big letters. The KGB was not amused, but Brodskii was not arrested.3 With the opening of Soviet society under Mikhail Gorbachev, news about Solovki began to improve. In 1989, the Soviet filmmaker Marina Goldovskaia released a hugely popular documentary called Solovki Power, which included an interview with Likhachev. The volunteer group Memorial, dedicated to unearthing the history of Stalin’s victims, began collecting memoirs and letters regarding the Gulag. In 1990, a small guide to the islands was published by V.V. Skopin, one of Solovki’s most prominent scholars. The guidebook described buildings and monuments from each epoch of Solovki’s history, for the first time also including the Gulag period. It was published with an incredible press run of 150,000.4 Finally, in 1992 the United Nations named the islands a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This marked Solovki as one of the earth’s most important cultural treasures—others include the Taj Mahal and Chartres Cathedral. That same year, a band of ex-prisoners, historians, and priests stepped off the boat from Kem. They carried with them a precious cargo: the remains of Sts. Zosima and Savvatii, which had been shipped to Leningrad as curiosities for a communist museum of atheism. For the next three days, these pilgrims toured the monastery, prayed for the countless dead, and erected a huge commemorative cross on the shore of the sea. During the pilgrimage, the healing of Solovki began. Monks began to move back to the island, the monastery received a new archimandrite, and the Russian Orthodox Church began to canonize the bishops and priests who had suffered there. Little things now show that Solovki has come back into Russia’s collective memory. The five-hundred-ruble bill has a picture of the monastery on its reverse. Ready for a joke, Russians note that the engraving was taken from a Soviet-era picture. Maybe, they say, the government is reminding them where people end up if they amass too many large bills. People in the Russian north still recall the island’s history, either


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Solovki turned pastoral—a cow grazes in front of the monastery’s walls

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as Gulag or as monastery. In the villages, for example, one can still hear an old woman evoking the suffering of many generations with a song: ‘‘Let us die, but defend our Old Belief, We will serve God eternally, and be together with Him in the Holy Kingdom.’’ They loaded their guns and balls into their cannons, They shot cannons over the tsar’s soldiers In order not to kill the tsar’s army and not to make him angry. And when the Great Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich knew about it, He sighed, and cried: ‘‘Are there guards and fast messengers here? To rush to the monastery and convey the tsar’s order Not to ravage the monastery and not to destroy the Old Belief.’’ But the soldiers have already advanced and destroyed the monastery,



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Solovki in the mid-1990s, under continual renovation

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Imprisoned the elders and submerged them alive under ice, Torn up old books and thrown them into the fire.5

On 11 November 1998, for the first time since the communist revolution, Russia granted its most exalted honor—the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called. The order had been begun by Peter the Great and first given in 1703. It bore the same name as the chapel on Zaetskii Island founded by Peter just one year earlier. Since the communist revolution of 1917, the award had been superseded by the Order of Lenin as the highest honor in the land. It took seven years after the downfall of communism for Russia’s president to award the order—inscribed ‘‘For Faith and Loyalty’’—to its first recipient. Thin and bald but spry for ninety-one years old, Academician Dmitrii Sergeevich Likhachev bowed his head as President Boris Yeltsin placed the wide blue ribbon over his shoulders. The X-shaped cross— in memory of St. Andrew’s crucifixion—shone with gold, sky-blue enamel, and precious stones. Likhachev stood there in his modest dark suit, the ‘‘conscience of Russia.’’ He had become a world-famous


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scholar, a defender of Leningrad during World War II, a dissident with one of the KGB’s fattest files, and a member of the new Russian Parliament. Yet as he championed the revival of civility, humility, and culture, Solovki was never far from Likhachev’s memory. Not far from the Moscow Kremlin, where Likhachev was receiving his medal, lay a stone on a small marble pedestal, nestled in a garden near the notorious Lubianka Prison, from which prisoners had once been shipped to the Gulag. It was a stone from Solovki. The stone had taken the pilgrims’ and the prisoners’ route in the opposite direction— it had been brought from Solovki to bear witness to the islands’ suffering multitudes. It sits there, in quiet testimony, still.


NOTES

one Stones 1. Basic information on early Saami and northern culture can be found on the Web site Prehistory of Finland (National Museum of Finland), http://www .nba.fi/NATMUS/Julkais/Prehist/text.htm (retrieved 9 June 2000). 2. A. A. Kuratov, ‘‘Solovetskie labirinty—drevnie pamiatniki kul’tury severnoi Evropy,’’ Sever 2 (1990): 14. 3. Kuratov, ‘‘Solovetskie labirinty,’’ 19, and N. N. Gurina, ‘‘Kammenye labirinty belomor’ia,’’ Sovetskaia arkheologiia 10 (1948): 139–40. See also A. A. Kuratov, ‘‘On the Stone Labyrinths of Northern Europe (A Preliminary Classification),’’ Soviet Anthropology (Fall 1973): 61–83 (reprinted from Sovetskaia arkheologiia, no. 1 [1970]: 34–47). Hypotheses regarding labyrinth usage in general can be found in W. H. Matthews, Mazes and Labyrinths: A General Account of the History and Developments (London: Longmans, Green, 1922), 149. A dissenting view, claiming that labyrinths were probably built sometime after 1400 c.e., is Ivor Winton, ‘‘Labyrinths: Chapters Towards an Historical Geography’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1987), 151–53.

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two Saints 1. These words, written by St. Athanasius for the liturgical service commemorating Holy Thursday, became a cornerstone of Orthodox theology. See Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (New York: Penguin, 1964), 236–42. 2. There are many versions of St. Savvatii’s life. The latest (in Russian) is S. V. Mineeva, Zhitie i chudesa prepodobnykh Zosimy i Savvatiia, Solovetskikh chudotvor-

261


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tsev (Kurgan: Izdatel’stvo Kurganskogo Gosudarstvennogo Pedagogicheskogo Instituta, 1995; hereinafter cited as Mineeva, Zhitie). My translations are generally taken from The Northern Thebaid (Platina, Calif.: Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1975). 3. There are no records of Savvatii’s exact date of departure for Valaam and then for Solovki. Some evidence, though, points to his exodus to Valaam taking place in 1427 and his flight to Solovki in 1429. 4. This translation comes from an excellent dissertation on Solovki: Jennifer Baylee Spock, ‘‘The Solovki Monastery, 1460–1645: Piety and Patronage in the Early Modern Russian North’’ (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1999), 299 (hereinafter Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery’’). 5. Mineeva, Zhitie, 91. 6. Northern Thebaid, 73. 7. Mineeva, Zhitie, 241. 8. Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 304. 9. The classic description of this idea can be found in the erudite yet accessible book by G. P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 246–64. 10. Fedotov, Russian Religious Mind, vol. 2, 260. 11. Ware, Orthodox Church, 114–17. See also John Fennell, A History of the Russian Church to 1448 (London: Longman, 1995), 205–17. 12. Mineeva, Zhitie, 93, 74. 13. Mineeva, Zhitie, 95. 14. Mineeva, Zhitie, 102. 15. Mineeva, Zhitie, 105. 16. Mineeva, Zhitie, 105. 17. Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 57. 18. Archimandrite Dosifei, Geograficheskoe, istoricheskoe i statisticheskoe opisanie stavropigial’nogo pervoklasnogo Solovetskogo Monastyria i drugikh podvedomykh sei obiteli monastyrei, skitov, prikhodskikh tserkvei i podvor’ev, s prisovokupleniem mnogikh Tsarskikh, Patriarshikh i drugikh znamenitykh Grazhdanskikh i Dukhovnykh lits, grammat, otnosiashchikhsia k Istorii sego Monastyria, sostavlennoe trudami Solovetskogo Monastyria Arkhimandrita Dosifeia, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1836), 9–13 (hereinafter Dosifei, Geograficheskoe opisanie). 19. See Gail Lenhoff and Janet Martin, ‘‘Marfa Boretskaia, Posadnitsa of Novgorod: A Reconsideration of Her Legend and Her Life,’’ Slavic Review 59, no. 2 (1999): 343–68. 20. Lenhoff and Martin, ‘‘Boretskaia,’’ 365–68. 21. Dosifei, Geograficheskoe opisanie, 13–14.


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three Prosperity 1. The exact date of Fedor Stepanovich Kolychev’s birth is somewhat of a mystery. The Letopisets Solovetskii na chetyre stoletiia ot osnovaniia Solovetskogo monastyria do nastoiashchago vremeni, to est’ s 1429 po 1847 god (Moscow: V Tip. V. Kirilova, 1847), 22 (hereinafter Letopisets Solovetskii), claims he was born on 15 February. The great modern study of Filipp is George P. Fedotov, St. Filipp Metropolitan of Moscow: Encounter with Ivan the Terrible, trans. Richard Haugh and Nickolas Lupinin (Belmont, Mass.: Nordland, 1978; hereinafter Fedotov, St. Filipp). Fedotov, who accepts the June date of Fedor’s birth (St. Filipp, 16), relies heavily on the Life of Filipp, written about twenty years after his death. For analyses of that source, see I. Iakhontov, Zhitiia sv. severnorusskikh podvizhnikov Pomorskogo kraia, kak istoricheskii istochnik (Kazan’: Tip. Imp. Universiteta, 1881), 135–54, and Paul Bushkovitch, ‘‘The Life of Metropolitan Filipp: Tsar and Metropolitan in the Late Sixteenth Century,’’ in Medieval Russian Culture, ed. Michael S. Flier and Daniel Rowland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 29–46. 2. Fedotov, St. Filipp, 43. 3. This document is preserved in Dosifei, Geograficheskoe opisanie, vol. 1, 63. See also I. Z. Liberzon, Akty Solovetskogo monastyria, 1479–1571 gg. (Leningrad: ‘‘Nauka’’, Leningradskoe otd-nie, 1988), 16 (hereinafter Liberzon, Akty 1479– 1571 gg.). In 1507, Ivan III’s heir Vasili III again confirmed the grant to Solovki. See also Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 68. 4. For gifts to Solovki, see Liberzon, Akty 1479–1571 gg., 18–47. Fedotov, St. Filipp, 50–52, describes the period too. 5. The particulars of Fedor/Filipp’s life before and during his time at Solovki come only from his Life. While written as hagiography and not as history, the Life is probably reasonably accurate and has been used as the basis for most studies on him, including Fedotov’s. See also, for example, Dosifei, Geograficheskoe opisanie, vol. 1, 72–84. 6. Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 350. 7. Solovetskii paterik (Moscow: Sinodal’naia Biblioteka, 1991), 47 (hereinafter Solovetskii paterik). 8. Filipp’s podvig life as a hermit is described in the Solovetskii paterik, 47–48. For a description of his rise to father superior, see Fedotov, St. Filipp, 54. 9. Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 349. Spock’s discussion in ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 344–57, is the basis for my interpretation of Filipp’s character, though Spock has a somewhat different view. 10. Fedotov, St. Filipp, 54–56, portrays this as a highly unusual occurrence and posits factional opposition to Filipp. For another opinion, see Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 352–53.


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11. Ivan’s gift appears in most accounts of Filipp’s time as father superior. See, for example, the Letopisets Solovetskii, 24, or Archimandrite Meletii, Istoricheskoe opisanie stavropigialnogo pervoklassnogo Solovetskogo monastyria (Moscow: Tip. M. N. Lavrova, 1881), 169 (hereinafter Meletii, Istoricheskoe opisanie). Solovki received many gifts from Ivan IV (or his regents) even during his minority, including twenty-one saltworks that provided significant income to the monastery. Ivan’s gifts are discussed in Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 72–74. 12. Quoted in Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 119. 13. An analysis of miracles at Solovki can be found in Paul Bushkovitch, Religion and Society in Russia: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 106. 14. As Bushkovitch argues, the ‘‘regional character of the Solovetskii cult precluded noblemen, as there was no land in the north other than monastery and crown land.’’ Bushkovitch, Religion and Society, 214. For the analysis of miracles according to group, see 110. A modern Russian version of the miracle tales can be found in Mineeva, Zhitie, 127–60. 15. In fact, Savvatii and Zosima largely supplanted St. Nicholas as the patron saint of seafarers in the north, where travel by boat was central to life and livelihood. Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 402, argues that the ‘‘drive to make Zosima and Savvatii the patrons of all sailors was an important missionary goal. . . . If Solovki’s founders could prove that they were powerful intercessors on the seas, their cult, and therefore the Monastery’s missionary activity, would prosper spiritually and economically.’’ 16. Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 383–87, and Bushkovitch, Religion and Society, 110. 17. Quoted in Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 388–89. 18. Bushkovitch, Religion and Society, 119. 19. Meletii, Istoricheskoe opisanie, 121. Meletii’s description dates the inscription to 1543; that is certainly an error, since Filipp was not yet father superior in that year. 20. Alexander A. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims: Being an Account of a Sojourn in the White Sea Monastery and a Journey by the Old Trade Route from the Arctic Sea to Moscow (London: Wells Gardner, Darton, & Co., 1893), 313 (hereinafter Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims). 21. Letopisets Solovetskii, 25. 22. A. G. Mel’nik, Ansambl’ Solovetskogo monastyria v xv–xvii vekakh: Istoriia, arkhitektura, oformlenie khramovykh inter’erov (Iaroslavl’: n.p., 2000), 17. 23. Letopisets Solovetskii, 22–23. 24. The economic life of Solovki is quite well documented. The classic study, still unsurpassed, is A. A. Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, XV-XVII v.: opyt izuche-


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niia khoziaistva i sotsial’nykh otnoshenii na krainem russkom severe v drevnei Rusi (Perm’: Izd. O-va Istoricheskikh Filosofskikh i Sots. Nauk pri Permskom Gos. Universitete, 1927; hereinafter Savich, Solovetskaia votchina). In the late Soviet period, I. Z. Liberzon edited and published the economic documents from Solovki, most of which were found in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, Moscow (hereinafter RGADA): Liberzon, Akty 1479–1571 gg., and I. Z. Liberzon, Akty Solovetskogo monastyria 1572–1584 gg. (Leningrad: ‘‘Nauka,’’ 1990). Among the more innovative works on Solovki is Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ which is often cited here. 25. Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 72–76. For the texts of major grants to Solovki by Ivan IV, see Liberzon, Akty 1479–1571 gg., 96, 148–49. Also see Dosifei, Geograficheskoe opisanie, vol. 3, 1–35. 26. Liberzon, Akty 1479–1571 gg., 186. Spock’s dissertation is the most comprehensive review of gifts to the monastery, with painstakingly complete tables of gifts broken down by many variables. See especially Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 259–69. 27. For a copy of the 1547 act, see Liberzon, Akty 1479–1571 gg., 87. Other economic charters written by Filipp can be found in Liberzon, Akty 1479–1571 gg., 163–65. One of the significant problems of economic administration was labor. With the meager population, poor transportation, and large distances in the region, it was often difficult to keep track of all the peasants, squatters, Cossacks, merchants, and tradesmen who were indebted to the monastery. See, for example, Liberzon, Akty 1479–1571 gg., 180–81. Fedotov, St. Filipp, 64–69, concludes that ‘‘this entire system not only fell on the shoulders of hegumen [Father Superior] Filipp but, to a significant degree, was his creation. The great increase in the monastery’s possessions and the codification of patrimonial law which it brought about occurs precisely in his time. St. Filipp, who once rejected the burdens of rule, grew in a few years into a model administrator who reveals to us a new side of his personality.’’ 28. Letopisets Solovetskii, 31–32. Since monks never ate meat, these could not have been used for food, but may well have been kept for sale. 29. Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 50. 30. See Mel’nik, Ansambl’, especially 24–39, for an analysis of the Dormition church’s layout and interior design. Scholars reconstructed the building in drawings during the early 1920s. See, for example, V. A. Burov and U. A. Chernovol, eds., Solovetskii monastyr’: Iz arkhiva arkhitektora-restavratora P. D. Baranovskogo, vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress-Traditsiia, 2000), 67–69 (hereinafter Burov and Chernovol, Solovetskii monastyr’). See also D. S. Likhachev, ed., Arkhitekturnokhudozhestvennye pamiatniki Solovetskikh ostrovov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1980), 50–59 (hereinafter Likhachev, Arkhitekturno-khudozhestvennye pamiatniki). The best synthe-


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sis of building on sixteenth-century Solovki is William Craft Brumfield, ‘‘Tradition and Innovation in Sixteenth-Century Architecture of Solovetskii Transfiguration Monastery,’’ Russian Review 62 (July 2003): 333–65. 31. The clock is often mentioned (Fedotov, St. Filipp, 57, for example). Burov and Chernovol have published a study of the clock done by Baranovskii in the early 1920s. See Burov and Chernovol, Solovetskii monastyr’, 70–72. 32. Mel’nik, Ansambl’, 31. The altar-feast of a church means the event or person to whom the church is dedicated. 33. Letopisets Solovetskii, 26. See also V. V. Skopin, A. A. Zakharchenko, and I. I. Leitsinger, Solovki: istoriia, arkhitektura, priroda (Moscow: Iskusstvo, Terra, 1994), 80–81 (hereinafter Skopin et al., Solovki). 34. Solovetskii paterik, 51. 35. For an analysis of the Transfiguration cathedral’s place in Novgorod’s architectural history, see D. A. Petrov, ‘‘Spaso-Preobrazhenskii sobor Solovetskogo monastyria v ego otnoshenii k novgorodskoi arkhitekture pervoi poloviny xvi v.,’’ in Pamiatniki arkhitektury russkogo severa: Sbornik statei, ed. L. D. Popova (Archangel: Izdatel’stvo Pomorskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta Imeni M. V. Lomonosova, 1998), 193–217. 36. Based on the inventories of 1514, 1570, and 1582, Mel’nik has recreated the probable size and layout of the iconostasis at that period. See Mel’nik, Ansambl’, 75–89, esp. 75–78. 37. Mel’nik, Ansambl’, 172. 38. The Transfiguration cathedral has received far more scholarly research than its sister church, that of the Dormition. See, for example, Mel’nik, Ansambl’, 39–53. 39. Solovetskii paterik, 52. 40. ‘‘Ustav o kolichestve monastyrskogo plat’ia 1553 g.,’’ Russian State Library, Otdel’ Rukopisei, Solov. Sob. No. 1127/1236, l. 66. For a more general discussion of monastic food, especially fish, see Elena Romanenko, Povsednevnaia zhizn’ russkogo srednevekovogo monastyria (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 2002), 227–84 (hereinafter Romanenko, Povsednevnaia zhizn’). 41. Letopisets Solovetskii, 34. 42. Letopisets Solovetskii, 31. 43. I. A. Lobakova, ‘‘Ob odnom iz neuchtennykh istochnikov po istorii Solovetskogo monastyria vremen igumenstva Filippa (Kolycheva),’’ in Chteniia po istorii i kul’ture drevnei i novoi Rossii: Materialy konferentsii Iaroslavl’ 7–9 oktiabria 1998 goda (Iaroslavl’: n.p., 1998), 73. The text was added to the frontispiece of the ‘‘Ustav o kolichestve monastyrskogo plat’ia 1553 g.’’ See also the discussion and quotations in I. A. Lobakova, ‘‘Mitropolit Filipp Kolychev i Solovetskii monastyr’ ’’ in Monastyrskaia kul’tura: Vostok i zapad, ed. E. G. Vodolazkin (St. Petersburg: Rossisskaia Akademiia Nauk, Institut Russkoi Literatury, 1999), 184–95. See


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also Fedotov, St. Filipp, 60, and, for a more general discussion, Romanenko, Povsednevnaia zhizn’, 278–82. 44. Fedotov, St. Filipp, 186. four Struggle 1. Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 75. 2. The doctrine of the ‘‘Third Rome’’ has been studied and debated by historians for centuries. In essence, the principle bestowed on Moscow the power of Rome and Constantinople to defend Orthodoxy. Rome had fallen in 1054 with the schism between the Eastern and Western churches. Constantinople had fallen in 1453 to the Turks, leaving Moscow as its only successor. 3. Fedotov, St. Filipp, 73, muses that, with the land, economic, administrative, and church reforms of Ivan IV’s early reign, including the Stoglav, the ‘‘future appeared cloudless to contemporaries of this great epoch.’’ 4. Quoted in Fedotov, St. Filipp, 74. Archimandrite Dosifei described the Bashkin heresy as a result of ‘‘Latin’’ learning and influence in Dosifei, Geograficheskoe opisanie, vol. 1, 76. Fedotov, St. Filipp, 73–74, claims that Artemii was probably the very first in a long line of men who were sent into exile at the monastery. See also A. S. Prugavin, Monastyrskie tiur’my v bor’be s sektantstvom (K voprosu o veroterpimosti) (St. Petersburg, 1904; reprint, The Hague: Mouton, 1970), 24–25 (hereinafter Prugavin, Monastyrskie tiur’my). 5. Many historians take Silvestr’s authorship of the Domostroi for granted, based on extant manuscripts. See, for example, Likhachev, Arkhitekturno-khudozhestvennye pamiatniki, 37. The most careful analysis of the book’s authorship in English is Carolyn Johnston Pouncy, ed., The Domostroi: Rules for Russian Households in the Time of Ivan the Terrible (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994), 37–44. 6. J. L. I. Fennell, ed., Prince Kurbsky’s History of Ivan IV (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 17. While cautioning against hyperbole written about Silvestr (either positively or negatively), Fennell claims that the priest had significant influence on Ivan IV. Pouncy, Domostroi, 46, however, claims that Silvestr ‘‘acquired a reputation out of all proportion to the evidence about him.’’ 7. The quotation here is from the most accessible and concise description of Muscovite politics, Geoffrey Hosking, Russia and the Russians: A History (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), 93 (hereinafter Hosking, Russia and the Russians). 8. There has been much new research on political and social life in these times. See, for example, Nancy Shields Kollmann, ‘‘Concepts of Society and Social Identity in Early Modern Russia,’’ in Religion and Culture in Early Modern


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Russia, ed. Samuel H. Baron and Nancy Shields Kollmann (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1997), 34–51. 9. An analysis of this ritual can be found in Michael S. Flier, ‘‘Breaking the Code: The Image of the Tsar in the Muscovite Palm Sunday Ritual,’’ in Medieval Russian Culture, ed. Michael S. Flier and Daniel Rowland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 213–42. 10. See Fedotov, St. Filipp, 16–39, who conjectures about the early life of Filipp. 11. Hosking, Russia and the Russians, 106. Also see Janet Martin, Medieval Russia: 980–1584 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 261–63. Fedotov, St. Filipp, 79, has unabashed praise for Makarii, whose ‘‘influence on the young tsar was great and beneficial. The metropolitan was the most learned scholar of his time. . . . Undoubtedly Ivan the Terrible’s brilliant education and his broad historical ideas were the result of his close association with Makarii. He had no other teachers.’’ 12. S. F. Platonov, Ivan the Terrible, trans. Joseph L. Wieczynski (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press, 1974), 99. For analysis of the oprichnina, see Platonov, Ivan the Terrible, 97–107. 13. The image of the oprichniki as avenging angels comes from Priscilla Hunt, ‘‘Ivan IV’s Personal Mythology of Kingship,’’ Slavic Review 52, no. 4 (1993): 784. 14. Henri Troyat, Ivan the Terrible, trans. Joan Pinkham (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1984), 133. 15. For an overview, see Martin, Medieval Russia, 328–29. 16. Solovetskii paterik, 55. Although the word groznyi has traditionally been translated as ‘‘terrible,’’ it has even stronger connotations of ‘‘severe,’’ ‘‘stern,’’ and even ‘‘dread.’’ 17. Fedotov, St. Filipp, 85–86. I have made minor stylistic changes in the translation. 18. Fedotov, St. Filipp, 85–86. 19. Fedotov, St. Filipp, 96. My description of this period in Filipp’s life follows Fedotov, St. Filipp, 91–98, quite closely. 20. Fennell, Prince Kurbsky, 229. Fedotov, St. Filipp, 97, quotes the great Russian historian N. M. Karamzin to the effect that there was a total of ‘‘six ‘epochs of execution.’ ’’ Platonov, Ivan, 108, claims that Ivan’s ‘‘oprichniki felt no shame when killing defenseless people ‘for fun’ or robbing and raping them. . . . Ivan grew morally degenerate, wallowed in orgies and debauchery and surrounded himself with reprobates, allowing them everything their licentiousness demanded.’’ 21. Fedotov, St. Filipp, 122–23. A highly stylized version of this conversation can be found in the Life of Filipp, Solovetskii paterik, 59–60. Filipp’s words


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as quoted in the Vita were actually taken from earlier Greek texts that were known in Muscovy. Scholars have shown, however, that the borrowed text closely followed the contemporary account quoted here. Another account of the exchange emphasized that ‘‘Metropolitan Filipp could remain silent about this business no longer, and spoke affably to the Grand Prince saying that he ought to live and rule as his forefathers had.’’ Heinrich von Staden, The Land and Government of Muscovy: A Sixteenth-Century Account, trans. Thomas Esper (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967), 24–25. A complete analysis of the speeches can be found in Ihor Ševcˇenko, ‘‘A Neglected Byzantine Source of Muscovite Political Ideology,’’ in The Structure of Russian History: Interpretive Essays, ed. Michael Cherniavsky (New York: Random House, 1970), 80–107. 22. Fennell, Prince Kurbsky, 237. 23. The trumped-up charges and the trial of Filipp are described in Solovetskii paterik, 62–64, and Fedotov, St. Filipp, 127–30. 24. The chronology of events regarding Ivan Kolychev’s murder is not clear. See Fennell, Kurbsky, 217; Fedotov, St. Filipp, 125; and Solovetskii paterik, 64. 25. Von Staden, Land and Government, 26.

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five Guardian 1. On the trial and exile of the anti-Filipp contingent, see the Letopisets Solovetskii, 37. See also Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 75–76, for details on Ivan IV’s gifts. 2. Letopisets Solovetskii, 39. 3. For copies of documents regarding the placing of troops at Solovki, see Dosifei, Geograficheskoe opisanie, vol. 3, 34–36. 4. Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 60–62; see also Dosifei, Geograficheskoe opisanie, vol. 3, 59–63; and Letopisets Solovetskii, 43–44. 5. Letopisets Solovetskii, 42. 6. Likhachev, Arkhitekturno-khudozhestvennye pamiatniki, 81. 7. See Skopin et al., Solovki, 121. 8. Meletii, Istoricheskoe opisanie, 83–84. 9. Fedotov, St. Filipp, 157. 10. Letopisets Solovetskii, 47. A commission arrived from Moscow to approve of the work. Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 64. 11. The original of the treaty is available at the Archives of the Foreign Ministry in Moscow. The Swedish original and an English translation have been published on-line: Paul Kruhse, trans., The Treaty of Peace Between Sweden and Russia at Teusina, 18 May 1595 (2002), http://www.pp.clinet.fi/pkr01/history/teusina .html (retrieved 12 June 2002).


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12. Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 65–66. 13. Letopisets Solovetskii, 52. 14. Letopisets Solovetskii, 53. 15. A good introduction to this subject is M. S. Anderson, Britain’s Discovery of Russia: 1553–1815 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1958). 16. ‘‘Proposal for Muscovites to become Subjects of the King of England,’’ Public Record Office SP 91/1, fols. 228–30. Published transcription in Inna Lubimenko, ‘‘A Project for the Acquisition of Russia by James I,’’ English Historical Review 29 (1914): 246–56. 17. The most complete study of this issue can be found in Chester S. L. Dunning, ‘‘James I, the Russia Company, and the Plan to Establish a Protectorate over North Russia,’’ Albion 21, no. 2 (Spring 1989): 206–26. 18. Lubimenko, ‘‘A Project,’’ 250. 19. ‘‘Memorial on Abbey of Solovski,’’ Public Record Office SP 91/1, fol. 250. An English transcription and Russian commentary were published as ‘‘Zapiska neizvestnogo avtora o Solovetskom monastyre,’’ Starina i novizna 14 (1911): 193– 95. 20. Lubimenko, ‘‘A Project,’’ 254. 21. In a masterful investigation, Dunning has proven that the letter to James I (‘‘Invitation to [James I] to attack Russia,’’ Public Record Office SP 91/1, fol. 220, which was unsigned and long misidentified in the British archives) was written by Captain Margaret. See Chester Dunning, ‘‘A Letter to James I Concerning the English Plan for Military Intervention in Russia,’’ Slavic and East European Review 67, no. 1 (January 1989): 94–108; quotation, p. 107.

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six Triumph 1. See Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 157–58, 252. 2. In addition to Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ see Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 209–12, and Likhachev, Arkhitekturno-khudozhestvennye pamiatniki, 26–27. 3. Though the term inok is translated simply as ‘‘monk,’’ Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 157, argues that at Solovki it designated a specific kind of brother. 4. M. V. Kukushkina, ‘‘Biblioteka Solovetskogo monastyria v xvi v.,’’ in Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za 1970 god (Moscow: Akademiia Nauk SSSR, 1971). 357. 5. Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 214–15. See also Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 338. 6. ‘‘Ustav,’’ Russian National Library, Solovets. sob. 1123/1232: n.d., l. 24–25. 7. For a general description of early modern monastic practice in Russia, see Romanenko, Povsednevnaia zhizn’, 147–226.


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8. ‘‘Ustav,’’ l. 66. Turnips were at this time as common a food as potatoes later became. See R. E. F. Smith and David Christian, Bread and Salt: A Social and Economic History of Food and Drink in Russia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 8–9 (hereinafter Smith, Bread and Salt). 9. ‘‘Ustav,’’ l. 26–27 ob. 10. Smith, Bread and Salt, 34–36. 11. Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 221. 12. Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 24–25. 13. Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 214. 14. ‘‘Ustav,’’ l. 69. 15. Solovetskii paterik, 83. 16. Dosifei, Geograficheskoe opisanie, vol. 3, 116. 17. Solovetskii paterik, 80. 18. Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 221–22. 19. S. K. Sevast’ianova, ed., Prepodobnyi Eleazar, osnovatel’ Sviato-Troitskogo Anzerskogo skita (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo ‘‘Aletetia,’’ 2001), 12–13 (hereinafter Sevast’ianova, Prepodobnyi Eleazar). 20. See E. S. Ovchinnikova, ‘‘Ikona ‘Zosima i Savvatii Solovetskie’ s 56 zhitiinymi kleimami iz sobraniia Gosudarstvennogo Istoricheskogo muzeia’’ in Likhachev, Arkhitekturno-khudozhestvennye pamiatniki, 290–307. For the economic impact of the icon studio, see Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 216. A recent museum catalog has superior pictures and description of Solovki’s artistic output: Sokhranennye sviatyni Solovetskogo monastyria: Katalog vystavki (Moscow: ‘‘Belyi Bereg,’’ 2001). 21. See M. I. Mil’chik, ‘‘Arkhitekturnyi ansambl’ Solovetskogo monastyria v pamiatnikakh drevnerusskoi zhivopisi,’’ in Likhachev, Arkhitekturno-khudozhestvennye pamiatniki, 230–67. 22. See Likhachev, Arkhitekturno-khudozhestvennye pamiatniki, 28. 23. See Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 199–204. Smith, Bread and Salt, 10–11, describes the eating of fish in early Russian culture in more general terms. 24. Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 93; see also Smith, Bread and Salt, 35, for a translation. The most detailed description of Solovki’s salt production and trade is found in Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 93–169. Smith, however, offers the more accessible description within the context of a wider analysis of food in Russia. 25. Smith, Bread and Salt, 30. 26. Smith, Bread and Salt, 31, and Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 101. 27. Smith, Bread and Salt, 32–34, gives information about wood use, though the conversions are my own. See Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 221, on the army of workers. 28. Akty sobrannye v bibliotekakh i arkhivakh Rossiiskoi Imperii, vol. 3 (St. Petersburg:


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V Tip. II otd-niia Sobstvennoi E. I. V. Kantseliarii, 1836), 152 (hereinafter Akty sobrannye). 29. Smith, Bread and Salt, 40. seven Defiance 1. Dosifei, Geograficheskoe opisanie, vol. 1, 277. 2. Akty sobrannye, 485. 3. Dosifei, Geograficheskoe opisanie, vol. 1, 282. 4. Sevast’ianova, Prepodobnyi Eleazar, 15. 5. The term ‘‘church Babylon’’ was used by Likhachev, Arkhitekturno-khudozhestvennye pamiatniki, 30. 6. Dosifei, Geograficheskoe opisanie, vol. 3, 217. 7. Georg Michels, ‘‘The Solovki Uprising: Religion and Revolt in Northern Russia,’’ Russian Review 51 (1992), 7–8 (hereinafter Michels, ‘‘Solovki Uprising’’). 8. Michels, ‘‘Solovki Uprising,’’ 8. 9. For a fuller analysis, see Ruslan G. Skrynnikov, The Time of Troubles: Russia in Crisis, 1604–1618, ed. and trans. Hugh F. Graham (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press, 1988), 272–74. 10. Dosifei, Geograficheskoe opisanie, vol. 3, 132. A short description of Avraamii’s work can be found in Hosking, Russia and the Russians, 139–41. 11. Solovetskii paterik, 78. 12. Solovetskii paterik, 78, and Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 358. 13. Solovetskii paterik, 79. In the version described by Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 358, the demons/brigands physically beat Nikifor. 14. Solovetskii paterik, 79. See also Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 360. 15. Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 359, specifically notes that an early version of the Life uses the term ‘‘filthy body,’’ which might have had sexual overtones. The later publication of the Life in the Solovetskii paterik, 79, says ‘‘perishable body’’ instead. 16. See Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 360. 17. Sevast’ianova, Prepodobnyi Eleazar, 8–9, 271. 18. Sevast’ianova, Prepodobnyi Eleazar, 17. 19. Solovetskii paterik, 87. 20. Solovetskii paterik, 89. 21. The conversation—real or imagined—is reported in Solovetskii paterik, 90. The hundred-ruble gift came as a result of the official letter of 20 January 1621, published in Sevast’ianova, Prepodobnyi Eleazar, 163–65. Another source claims that Irinarkh wrote to the patriarch and the tsar regarding Anzer, rather than traveling there: Solovetskii paterik, 82.


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22. Sevast’ianova, Prepodobnyi Eleazar, 165–68. 23. This scene, which appears in some versions of Irinarkh’s Life, is reported in Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 368–69. 24. The letter from Tsar Mikhail is in Sevast’ianova, Prepodobnyi Eleazar, 173–74. 25. Solovetskii paterik, 93. 26. Sevast’ianova, Prepodobnyi Eleazar, 34. 27. Solovetskii paterik, 94. 28. Solovetskii paterik, 94. 29. Georg Bernhard Michels, At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 281 (hereinafter Michels, At War with the Church). 30. Michels, ‘‘Solovki Uprising,’’ 9. 31. I. Ia. Syrtsov, Vozmushchenie Solovetskikh monakhov-staroobriadtsev v xvii veke, 2d ed. (Kostroma: Tipo-lit. F. A. Fal’k, 1888), 14 (hereinafter Syrtsov, Vozmushchenie). The document can be found in Dosifei, Geograficheskoe opisanie, vol. 3, 224–25. 32. Syrtsov, Vozmushchenie, 13. 33. Fedotov, St. Filipp, 162–63.

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eight Rebellion 1. Fedotov, St. Filipp, 163–65. 2. Paul Meyendorff, Russia, Ritual, and Reform: The Liturgical Reforms of Nikon in the Seventeenth Century (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991), 52. This is the most accessible discussion of the reforms. 3. Meyendorff, Russia, Ritual, and Reform, 49. 4. Meyendorff, Russia, Ritual, and Reform, 44–80, describes these events. Avvakum’s autobiography has become a classic of seventeenth-century Russian prose. It is available in English in Basil Dmytryshyn, Medieval Russia: A Source Book, 850–1700 (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press, 2000). 5. See the excellent Margaret Ziolkowski, Tale of Boiarynia Morozova: A Seventeenth-Century Religious Life (Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 2000). 6. Michels, ‘‘Solovki Uprising,’’ 10, states that Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich sent 142 men of various ranks to Solovki during his reign and notes their ability to rise to the very elite of the community. 7. Syrtsov, Vozmushchenie, 27. 8. Quoted in Michels, ‘‘Solovki Uprising,’’ 10. 9. The Letopisets Solovetskii, 69, sets the date of the books’ arrival at 1656, but O. V. Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie 1667–1676 gg. (Novosibirsk: Izdatel’stvo SO RAN, 1998), 26, offers a later date—1657–58. She notes that the first revised books to arrive at the cloister had been printed in 1655–57. The most


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significant collection of sources for this period is N. Subbotin, Materialy dlia istorii raskola za pervoe vremia ego sushchestvovaniia, izdavaemye redaktsiei ‘‘Bratskogo Slova’’ shest’ tomov, vol. 3: Soderzhit akty, otnosiashchiesia k istorii Solovetskogo miatezha (Moscow: Bratskoe Slovo, 1878). 10. Quoted in Michels, ‘‘Solovki Uprising,’’ 6. Michels states that the rejection of the reformed ritual books was ‘‘not very popular’’ and was instead the work of ‘‘a powerful monastic elite.’’ In quoting the dissenting complaint, Michels claims, however, that only ‘‘a few dissenting priests dared to protest.’’ Chumicheva, to the contrary, claims that the ‘‘great Black Council’’ —a large group of monastic leaders—‘‘categorically rejected’’ the reformed church books. For a longer description of the meeting and its aftermath, see Syrtsov, Vozmushchenie, 50–56. In fact, we do not know to what extent the brotherhood supported the Black Council, but it seems that the old books did have significant backing throughout the monastery. See also Michels, At War with the Church, 66. 11. Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie, 30. 12. Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie, 29. 13. N. Nikol’skii, Sochineniia Solovetskogo inoka Gerasima Firsova po neizdannym tekstam (K istorii severno-russkoi literatury xvii veka), Pamiatniki drevnei pis’mennosti i iskusstva, vol. 188 (St. Petersburg: M. A. Aleksandrov, 1916), ix. Michels, ‘‘Solovki Uprising,’’ 11, reports that Firsov continued his larceny by stealing at Solovki. 14. Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie, 32. 15. Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie, 34. 16. Letopisets Solovetskii, 72. 17. These events are well-described in Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie, 45– 49, 164. 18. Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie, 52–53. 19. Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie, 53–56, and Michels, At War with the Church, 150–51. Michels places great importance on this event, claiming that it illustrated a ‘‘mix of violence and religious radicalism.’’ He argues that the leader of the incident, the monk Iev (Ivan Saltykov) may have harbored a Protestantinfluenced hatred for religious images. It is possible, though, that the images were actually being saved from the books that were about to be destroyed. 20. Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie, 57. 21. Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie, 59. 22. Text published in Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie, 191. Description of these events can be found in Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie, 60–61. 23. Dopolneniia k aktam istoricheskim, 12 vols. (St. Petersburg: V Tip. II otd-niia Sobstvennoi E. I. V. Kantseliarii, 1846–72), vol. 5, 340–41 (hereinafter Dopolneniia). 24. Semen Denisov, ‘‘The History of the Fathers and Martyrs of Solovetskii,’’


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translated in W. Palmer, The Patriarch and the Tsar, vol. 2 (London: 1871), 439–40. A Russian edition of this work, which was to become the most influential history of the uprising, can be found in Istoriia o otsakh i stradal’tsakh Solovetskikh: Izhe za blagochestie sviatykh tserkovnykh zakonov i predanii, v nastoiashchie vremena, velikodushno postradasha (Leipzig: V. Gergard, 1863). See also Nikolai Nikolaevich Rozov and M. I. Avtokratova, Povest’ o Solovetskom vosstanii (Moscow: ‘‘Kniga,’’ 1982), which has a shortened version of the history. A document published in the Dopolneniia shows that twelve rebels had been dispatched to Sumskii Ostrog, only to be moved to other monasteries because there was no jail to hold them at the fortress. See Dopolneniia, vol. 5, 344. 25. Dopolneniia, vol. 5, 339. 26. Dopolneniia, vol. 5, 345. 27. Dopolneniia, vol. 5, 346–48. 28. Dopolneniia, vol. 5, 352, 356–57. 29. See Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie, 93–96. 30. Michels, ‘‘Solovki Uprising,’’ 11–12. 31. Michels, ‘‘Solovki Uprising,’’ 12. 32. Dopolneniia, vol. 5, 341. 33. Dopolneniia, vol. 5, 339–43. 34. Michels, At War with the Church, 171–72. 35. Michels, At War with the Church, 171–72. 36. Dopolneniia, vol. 5, 357–65. 37. Dopolneniia, vol. 5, 365–69, and vol. 6, 175. 38. Dopolneniia, vol. 5, 367–73. See also Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie, 68–69. 39. Both quotations from Michels, ‘‘Solovki Uprising,’’ 10. 40. See Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie, 74. 41. Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie, 77–78, analyzes the final storming of Solovki and concludes that it was Feoktist’s actions, not Meshcherinov’s tunneling (as he would later claim), that enabled the commander to enter Solovki.

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nine Emperor 1. V. Veriuzhskii, ‘‘K istorii raskola na severe,’’ Khristianskoe Chtenie 80 (September–October 1900): 419–21. In 1682, just six years after the fall of Solovki, some Old Believers had tried to roll back all church reforms by supporting a rebellion of musketeers (strel’tsy) in Moscow. The Moscow uprising even resulted in an adversarial public ‘‘discussion’’ where Old Believer leaders—including one Nikita the Bigot—browbeat the royal family and called for the repeal of all Patriarch Nikon’s reforms. The musketeers and their patron Prince Khovanskii (later immortalized in Mussorgsky’s opera Khovanshchina) failed in their


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rebellion; this left the Old Believers in an even worse position than before, for they had backed the wrong faction at court. 2. Veriuzhskii, ‘‘K istorii raskola na severe,’’ 564. A fuller analysis of Afanasii’s career can be found in Georg Michels, ‘‘Rescuing the Orthodox: The Church Policies of Archbishop Afanasii of Kholmogory, 1682–1702,’’ in Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia, ed. Robert P. Geraci and Michael Khodarkovsky (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001), 38– 69. 3. Letopisets Solovetskii, 76. 4. Dopolneniia, vol. 11, 109. A letter in the name of the co-tsars, Ivan and Peter, demanded that no tolls be collected from pilgrims on their way to the monastery. 5. Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World (New York: Ballantine, 1980), 129–30. 6. Letopisets Solovetskii, 82–83. 7. Letopisets Solovetskii, 87–104. 8. For more on the construction of the labyrinths, and on the question whether the labyrinth really was constructed for Peter, see Nikolai Vinogradov, Novye labirinty Solovetskogo arkhipelaga: Labirint B. Zaiatskogo ostrova, Materialy/ Solovetskoe Obshchestvo Kraevedeniia (Solovki: Izdanie Biuro Pechati USLON, 1927), 115–18. A semiotic study of Peter’s importance to the Russian north can be found in I. M. Terebikhin, ‘‘Obraz Petra I v onomastike sakral’noi arkhitekury russkogo severa (khramy, labirinty, korabli),’’ in Pamiatniki arkhitektury russkogo severa: sbornik statei, ed. L. D. Popova (Archangel: Izdatel’stvo Pomorskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta Imeni M. V. Lomonosova, 1998), 246–65. It is undeniably odd that Peter commanded that such a maze be built, and his intentions remain somewhat mysterious. 9. For more on this battle and its importance, see Paul Bushkovitch, Peter the Great: The Struggle for Power, 1671–1725 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 232–34. 10. Robert O. Crummey, The Old Believers and the World of Antichrist: The Vyg Community and the Russian State, 1694–1855 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970), 64. See also E. M. Iukhimenko, ‘‘Sokhranenie vygovskimi staroobriadtsami drevnerusskoi modeli monastyria kak dukhovnogo i kul’turnogo tsentra,’’ in Monastyrskaia kul’tura: Vostok i zapad, ed. E. G. Vodolazkin (St. Petersburg: Rossisskaia Akademiia Nauk, Institut Russkoi Literatury, 1999), 176–83. 11. Crummey, Old Believers, 68. 12. Alexander V. Muller, ed., The Spiritual Regulation of Peter the Great (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972). 13. Opisanie dokumentov i del khraniashchikhsia v arkhive Sviateishogo Pravitel’stvuiushchogo


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Sinoda, 50 vols. (St. Petersburg: Sinodal’naia Tipografiia, 1868–1916), vol. 3, 273 (hereinafter Opisanie dokumentov). 14. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 29, 89. See also vol. 29, 129; vol. 21, 588; and vol. 50, 431–32. 15. For the 1705 data, see Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 16, 123. For the 1727 numbers, see Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 7, xi. 16. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 5, 370. 17. Letopisets Solovetskii, 108–10. For details of Varsonofii’s first, failed, bid for a bishop’s see in Vologda, see Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 20, 269. See Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 20, 283, for information on his appointment to Archangel. 18. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 12, 320–24.

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ten Prison 1. Prugavin, Monastyrskie tiur’my, 24–25. See also M. A. Kolchin, ‘‘Ssyl’nye i zatochennye v ostroge Solovetskogo monastyria v xvi–xix vv.: Istoricheskii ocherk,’’ Russkaia starina 56 (1887): 54 (hereinafter Kolchin, ‘‘Ssyl’nye i zatochennye’’). 2. Prugavin, Monastyrskie tiur’my, 26. 3. Evgenii Anisimov, Dyba i knut: Politicheskii sysk i russkoe obshchestvo v xviii veke (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 1999), 598. 4. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 4, 294. 5. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 3, 434–35. 6. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 1, 200. 7. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 1, 457. Once arrived at the monastery, the monk Makarii falsely claimed that the emperor had ordered his release. When his ruse was brought to light, he was sent back to St. Petersburg for more punishment. Father Efimov, however, was released on account of some ‘‘important affair.’’ 8. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 9, 410–11. 9. Anisimov, Dyba i knut, 601. 10. Nikolai Tolstoy, The Tolstoys: Twenty-Four Generations of Russian History, 1353– 1983 (New York: William Morrow, 1983), 87. 11. For the Kostromin trial, see Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 1, 655–66, and vol. 2, 890. For the drunkenness defense, see vol. 12, 479. For the priest-monk sentenced for indecency, see Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 2, 620–21. 12. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 15, 417–19. 13. For the wandering monk, see Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 5, 348 and 553–54. For examples of baptized Jews and former Catholics, see vol. 34, 321 and 444. For the Muslim convert, see vol. 26, 150.


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14. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 1, 309–10. For the false accusation, see vol. 10, 495–96; for the mention of chains, see vol. 10, 611. 15. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 10, 396; vol. 9, 535. 16. The Kuptsin case—a massive ninety-one pages in manuscript form— can be found in the Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 22, 784–89. 17. E. B. Smilianskaia, ‘‘Kamerger i koldun,’’ in Rossiia v XVIII stoletii, pt. 1, ed. E. E. Rychalovskii (Moscow: Iazyki Slavianskoi Kul’tury, 2002). 18. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 22, 1. For another case of clerical theft, see vol. 10, 156. 19. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 1, 706. 20. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 12, 141–42. 21. For the transfer of the monks, see Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 7, 120. For Evfimii’s release, see vol. 8, 609–10. 22. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 1, 91, 219, 565. 23. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 9, 256–57. 24. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 6, 388–90. 25. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 5, 103–6. 26. Russian State Historical Archive, St. Petersburg (hereinafter RGIA), f. 796, op. 1726, delo 11, l. 7–8 ob. 27. Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 8, 497–99. 28. The material on Kalnishevskii is surprisingly slim, given his colorful story. See Danilo Kuliniak, Solovetskii v’iazen’: Ostannii koshovii Sichi Zaporiz’koi (Kiev: Radianskii Pismennik, 1991). 29. Kuliniak, Solovetskii v’iazen’, 47–48. 30. Kuliniak, Solovetskii v’iazen’, 50. 31. Kuliniak, Solovetskii v’iazen’, 63. 32. Kuliniak, Solovetskii v’iazen’, 63.

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eleven Reform 1. Tat’iana Viktorovna Kokoreva, ‘‘Monastyrskie tiur’my kak mesto zatocheniia staroobriadtsev i sektantov v xix veke’’ (Diss., Moscow State University, 2000), 64–70. 2. A report of a gift to the monastery and the funding of schoolchildren can be found in the Opis’ dokumentov i del, khraniashchikhsia v arkhive Sviateishogo Pravitel’svuiushchogo sinoda, s ukazateliami k nei: Dela komissii dukhovnykh uchilishch 1808–1839 gg. (St. Petersburg: Sinodal’naia tip., 1910). For a description of the monastery’s construction projects, see the Letopisets Solovetskii, 140–42. 3. RGIA, f. 797, o. 1818, d. 6993, l. 7. 4. RGIA, f. 797, o. 1818, d. 6993, l. 88.


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2 7 9

5. Alexander V. Muller, ed., The Spiritual Regulation of Peter the Great (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972), 75. 6. RGIA, f. 797, o. 2, d. 6993, l. 112. 7. RGIA, f. 797, o. 2, d. 6993, l. 13 ob. 8. RGIA, f. 797, o. 2, d. 6993, l. 13 ob. 9. RGIA, f. 797, o. 2, d. 6993, l. 14–14 ob. 10. RGIA, f. 797, o. 2, d. 6993, l. 14 ob. 11. Letopisets Solovetskii, 143. 12. Letopisets Solovetskii, 147. 13. To some extent, this may explain the Letopisets Solovetskii’s unwillingness to speak about anything but Paisi’s need ‘‘for rest.’’ Dosifei not only had to contend with his own similar scandal but also was the editor of the Letopisets. 14. RGIA, f. 797, o. 4, d. 15909, ll. 1. 15. RGIA, f. 797, o. 4, d. 15909, l. 6–6 ob. 16. RGIA, f. 797, o. 4, d. 15909, l. 15–16 ob. 17. See Likhachev, Arkhitekturno-khudozhestvennye pamiatniki, 27. 18. RGIA, f. 797, o. 4, d. 15909, l. 9–12 ob. 19. RGIA, f. 797, o. 4, d. 15909, l. 10. 20. Kolchin, ‘‘Ssyl’nye i zatochennye,’’ 64. 21. RGIA, f. 797, o. 4, d. 15909, l. 10 ob. See also Kolchin, ‘‘Ssyl’nye i zatochennye,’’ 55–57. 22. Kolchin, ‘‘Ssyl’nye i zatochennye,’’ 55–57. 23. Kolchin, ‘‘Ssyl’nye i zatochennye,’’ 64. 24. RGIA, f. 797, o. 4, d. 15909, l. 9–12 ob. 25. RGIA, f. 797, o. 4, d. 15909, l. 11. 26. Letopisets Solovetskii, 159–60. 27. RGIA, f. 797, o. 4, d. 15909, l. 64. 28. RGIA, f. 797, o. 4, d. 15909, ll. 74–75 ob. 29. Letopisets Solovetskii, 160–62. 30. The architectural plans are preserved in RGIA, f. 835, o. 1839, d. 1. The actual changes made to the prison are described in Kokoreva, ‘‘Monastyrskie tiur’my,’’ 77. 31. For a longer description of the Decembrists at Solovki—some of whom were kept there only a short time—see Likhachev, Arkhitekturno-khudozhestvennye pamiatniki, 38–39. 32. Kororeva, ‘‘Monastyrskie tiur’my,’’ 70–71. 33. Kororeva, ‘‘Monastyrskie tiur’my,’’ 77, 94. Lists of specific inmates and the reasons for their incarceration can be found in Kororeva, ‘‘Monastyrskie tiur’my,’’ 101–2, 192–97. 34. Kolchin, ‘‘Ssyl’nye i zatochennye,’’ 65.


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twelve War 1. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims, 101–2. 2. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims, 110. 3. United Kingdom, Public Record Office ADM 53/5697. 4. United Kingdom, Public Record Office ADM 53/5817. 5. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims, 118–19, and Solovetskii monastyr’ i opisanie bombardirovaniia ego anglichanami 7-go iulia 1854 goda (Moscow: V tipografii M. Smirnovoi, 1855), 32–33. 6. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims, 123. 7. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims, 134. 8. P. F. Fedorov, Solovki, Zapiski Imperatorskogo Russkogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva po otdelenuiu etnografii, vol. 19, fasc. 1 (Kronstadt: Tip. ‘‘Kronshtadskogo Vestnika,’’ 1889), 195 (hereinafter Fedorov, Solovki). 9. RGIA, f. 796, o. 251, d. 28, l. 5 ob. 10. RGIA, f. 796, o. 251, d. 28., l. 6. 11. RGIA, f. 796, o. 251, d. 28, l. 4 ob. 12. RGIA, f. 796, o. 251, d. 28, 13 ff. 13. Fedorov, Solovki, 35–36. 14. Fedorov, Solovki, 35–36. 15. Fedorov, Solovki, 38–39. An incomplete list of early nineteenth-century pilgrims (noting their arrival dates—usually mid-June—their names, and their social ranks) can be found in RGADA, f. 1201, o. 4, d. 778. 16. Fedorov, Solovki, 38–39. 17. RGADA, f. 1201, op. 4, d. 935, quoted in A. A. Soshina, Palomniki i palomnichestvo v Solovetskii monastyr’ v xvi–nach. xx vv. (Solovki: Ob’edinennaia direktsiia Solovetskogo Gosudarstvennogo Istoriko-arkhitekturnogo i Prirodnogo Muzeia-Zapovednika [SGIA PMZ], 1991), 5 (hereinafter Soshina, Palomniki i palomnichestvo). 18. Natalia Kuziakina, Theatre in the Solovki Prison Camp, trans. Boris M. Meerovich (London: Routledge, 1995), 6 (hereinafter Kuziakina, Theatre). 19. Spock, ‘‘Solovki Monastery,’’ 399. 20. See, for example, Opisanie dokumentov, vol. 25, 454–55. 21. RGIA, f. 796, op. 1740, d. 35, l. 6–7. 22. This system was described in the late 1880s in Fedorov, Solovki, 54–55. The main outlines of the policy had been in place for generations. 23. See Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, 212, Michels, At War with the Church, 281, and Dosifei, Geograficheskoe opisanie, vol. 1, 269. 24. Fedorov, Solovki, 50. The same instruction prohibited female animals from the island.


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2 8 1

25. Fedorov, Solovki, 49. 26. See ‘‘Tserkovnaia letopis’,’’ Dukhovnaia beseda 36, no. 158–60 (1864). 27. I.Vopilovskii, Solovetskii monastyr’: V klasse monastyrskoi shkoly (Moscow: Solovetskii Monastyr’, 1912). 28. Vasilii Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko, Solovki: Vospominaniia i rasskazy iz poiezdki s bogomol’tsami (St. Petersburg: Tip. P. P. Soikina, 1884), 80. 29. Nemirovich-Danchenko had a generally positive opinion of the boys’ lives on Solovetskii. Fedorov, however, tended to agree with one Father Serafim, who saw life there as a latter-day ‘‘Egyptian slavery’’ that turned some boys into atheists while others became monkish automatons. See Fedorov, Solovki, 47, who quotes Father Serafim in Tserkovno-istoricheskii vestnik nos. 10, 68, 89, and 108 (1879). 30. T. Iu. Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’: khoziaistvennaia deiatel’nost’, sotsial’nyi sostav i upravlenie vtoraia polovina 19–nachalo 20 veka’’ (Moscow State University, 1997), 197 (hereinafter Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’’’).

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thirteen Pilgrims 1. Soshina, Palomniki i palomnichestvo, 8. 2. Vidy Solovetskogo monastyria, otpechatannye s drevnykh dosok, kraniashchikhsia v tamoshnei riznitse (St. Petersburg: Ekspeditsiia Zagotovleniia Gosudarstvennykh Bumag, 1884), 3. See also Soshina, Palomniki i palomnichestvo, 11. 3. Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’,’’ 103–8, has a long description of the economic impact made by the steamships. 4. Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’,’’ 107–9. 5. Bishop Evdokim Meshcherskii, Solovki: Stranichka iz dnevnika palomnika (St. Petersburg: Tipo-litografiia M. P. Frolov, 1904), 10. 6. N. F. Korol’kov, Solovetskaia obitel’ (St. Petersburg: Tip. M. Akinfieva i I. Leont’eva, 1901), 35. 7. Solovki i Valaam: Dnevnik studentov-palomnikov (Moscow: n. p., 1901), 84 (hereinafter Solovki i Valaam). 8. K. Kokovtsov, Poezdka v Solovetskii monastyr’ (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Iu. N. Erlikh, 1901), 1–2. 9. Alexander Boddy was a particularly interesting character in his own right. His many publications included By Ocean, Prairie and Peak: Some Gleanings from an Emigrant Chaplain’s Log, on Journeys to British Columbia, Manitoba, and Eastern Canada (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1896), and Days in Galilee and Scenes in Judaea, Together with Some Account of a Solitary Cycling Journey in Southern Palestine (London: Gay & Bird, 1900). In addition to being an inveterate traveler, Boddy is credited with beginning the Pentecostal movement in the


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Anglican Church. See Gavin Wakefield, The First Pentecostal Anglican: The Life and Legacy of Alexander Boddy (Cambridge: Grove, 2001). 10. Meshcherskii, Solovki, 5. 11. S. D. Protopopov, Iz poezdki v Solovetskii monastyr (Moscow: Tovarshchestvo Tipografii A. I. Mamontova, 1903), 26 (hereinafter Protopopov, Iz poezdki). 12. Free passage accounted for about 5–10 percent of all tickets, which did not significantly diminish the steamships’ profits. For example, in 1863, the Vera carried 268 free-ticket holders out of a total 4,711 pilgrims. See Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii Monastyr’,’’ 106, 201. 13. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims, 204. 14. A. A. Zamaraev, Dnevnik totemskogo krest’ianina A. A. Zamaraeva: 1906–1922 gody, ed. V. V. Morozov and N. I. Reshetnikov (Moscow: Rossiiskaia Akademiia Nauk In-t etnologii i antropologii im. Miklukho-Maklaia, 1995), 43. 15. Protopopov, Iz poezdki, 12. 16. Solovki i Valaam, 50. 17. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims, 197–98. 18. Zamaraev, Dnevnik, 43. 19. Zamaraev, Dnevnik, 44, and Solovki i Valaam, 49, 51. 20. Solovki i Valaam, 50. 21. See Pravoslavnaia russkaia obiteli (St. Petersburg, 1910; reprint, St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo ‘‘Voskresenie,’’ 1994). 22. Vera Shevzov has shown that the north had a much larger number of chapels than other parts of the empire. See her article ‘‘Chapels and the Ecclesial World of Prerevolutionary Russian Peasants,’’ Slavic Review 55 (1996): 589–90. Boddy, always the close observer, noted that in the village of Bereznik ‘‘the only two buildings in sight are two dark wooden houses and a tiny wooden tchasóvnya [wayside chapel] no larger than a bathing-machine. From the bárka numbers of pilgrims now issue with their packages, setting off to tramp home to still distant places in the interior. All stop at the chapel, taking off their caps, and as they murmur a prayer sign themselves with the sign of the cross.’’ Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims, 189. 23. See A. A. Ivanova, ‘‘Sviatye mesta v kul’turnom landshafte Pinezhia,’’ International Conference on ‘‘The Island and the Sacred,’’ University of Paris IV—Sorbonne, September 2001. See also V. N. Kalutskov, ‘‘Mikrogeografiia svatykh mest Pinezhia,’’ International Conference on ‘‘The Island and the Sacred,’’ University of Paris IV—Sorbonne, September 2001. 24. Pilgrim guides to Solovki, including information on the best routes to take, began appearing in the 1860s. See, for example, Rukovoditel’ dlia poklonnikov po Solovetskomu ostrovu i Solovetskomu monastyriu (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1864). 25. See Pravoslavnaia russkaia obiteli, 23–24. See also Putevoditel’ po Solovetskim ostro-


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vam (St. Petersburg: Tip. Spb. Akts. Obshch. Pech. Dela E. Evdokimov, 1900), 5–7. 26. Solovki i Valaam, 84. 27. Meshcherskii, Solovki, 8. 28. Protopopov, Iz poezdki, 18. Kokovtsov, Poezdka, 29–30, provides a more positive description of the Transfiguration guest house. 29. See Protopopov, Iz poezdki, 18, for a more complete description. 30. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims, 96–97. 31. Fedorov, Solovki, 71. 32. Federov, Solovki, 70. 33. K. Trush, Solovki v avguste 1905 g. (Moscow: Tip. G. G. Aralova, 1905), 12. Interestingly, one of the guides to Solovki noted the various dining rooms but did not explain the class differentiation connoted with each. See Putevoditel’ po Solovetskim ostrovam, 9. 34. Zamaraev, Dnevnik, 47. 35. There was some disagreement about the actual time: Protopopov says that the budilnik walked the halls of the Transfiguration Guesthouse at five o’clock. See Protopopov, Iz poezdki, 25. Zamaraev, however, agrees with Trush. See Zamaraev, Dnevnik, 46. 36. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims, 89. 37. Zavaraev, Dnevnik, 47. Considering that many priests would have been present to give communion to the faithful, the number of pilgrims communicating on that day must have been overwhelming for the service to continue that late into the afternoon. 38. Solovki i Valaam, 100–101. 39. Meshcherskii, Solovki, 14. 40. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims, 88. 41. Kokovtsov, Poezdka, 31. 42. Kokovtsov, Poezdka, 38–40. 43. Trush, Solovki v avguste, 12. 44. RGADA, f. 1201, o. 4, d. 788, l. 19, quoted in Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’,’’ 171. 45. Meshcherskii, Solovki, 18–19. 46. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims, 149. 47. Kokovtsov, Poezdka, 32. 48. Protopopov, Iz poezdki, 21–22. 49. Trush, Solovki v avguste, 22. 50. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims, 148. The legend of no seagulls living on Anzer is reported in Vidy Solovetskogo monastyria, 4. 51. Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’,’’ 112–13.


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52. Protopopov, Iz poezdki, 28–29. 53. Zamaraev, Dnevnik, 48. 54. Protopopov, Iz poezdki, 40. fourteen Revolutions 1. The monastery explicitly wanted to develop pilgrimage traffic by acquiring new, faster, and larger steamships. See, for example, RGIA, f. 799, o. 1879, d. 898, l. 1–1 ob. 2. Protopopov, Iz poezdki, 33. 3. Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’,’’ 107–9 and Table 15. In addition to pilgrims, the sea offered Solovki its greatest income. Seal and whale products from the fat-rendering yard across the bay from the monastery provided thousands of rubles in income. The monastery also continued to make bricks and tan leather, extract tar and produce pottery. Candles, sold to pilgrims, were immensely profitable. The smaller workshops like those for tailoring, carpentry, and kvass-brewing made it possible for Solovki to be almost completely self-sufficient. Profits helped to underwrite the poorest pilgrims and Solovki began regular donations to large charities, including sixteen thousand rubles to the Red Cross in 1877. The monks even paid for a women’s high school to be built in St. Petersburg in 1910. 4. Data from Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’,’’ 107 and Table 14. 5. Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’,’’ 39. 6. Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’,’’ 42. 7. A long description of administrative reforms can be found in Fedorov, Solovki, 280–84. 8. This period in Solovki’s life has been thoroughly analyzed and described by Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’,’’ 42–72. 9. Kolchin, Ssylnye i zatochennye, 153, quoted in Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’,’’ 50. 10. Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’,’’ 52–53, describes this tasty little scandal in detail. 11. Solovki i Valaam, 102. 12. Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’,’’ 62. Later charges that the archimandrite never served Liturgy seem to be misrepresentations—he did serve during the summer, at least, when ruble-bearing pilgrims were around. 13. Vozvrashchenie iz Anglii plennogo monastyrskogo kolokola v Solovetskuiu obitel’ 4 avgusta 1912 g. (Moscow: Izdanie Solovetskoi Obiteli, 1913). See also Archimandrite Ioanikii, ‘‘Vstrecha plennogo kolokola v Solovetskom monastyre,’’ Arkhangelskie eparkhial’nye vedomosti (1912): 23.


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14. Vozvrashchenie, 14. 15. Vozvrashchenie, 15–17, 9. 16. See Poseshchenie Solovetskogo monastyria e. i. v. velikoi kniaginei Elisavetoi Feodorovnoi v iiule 1913 goda (Moscow: Solovetskii Monastyr’, 1915). 17. Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’,’’ 68. 18. Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’,’’ 69–70. 19. Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’,’’ 82. 20. Benjamin D. Rhodes, The Anglo-American Winter War with Russia, 1918–1919: A Diplomatic and Military Tragicomedy (New York: Greenwood, 1988), 23. 21. Rhodes, Anglo-American Winter War, 36–37. 22. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, 3 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1974–78), vol. 2, 30 (hereinafter Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago). 23. These icons were returned to Solovki in 2001. See Marcus Warren, ‘‘Icons Returned to Russia After 83 Years in Exile,’’ Daily Telegraph (London), 26 July 2001. 24. Irina Reznikova, Pravoslavie na Solovkakh: Materialy po istorii Solovetskogo lageria (St. Petersburg: Nauchno-informatsionnyi tsentr ‘‘Memorial,’’ 1994), 9–10. 25. Kuziakina, Theatre, 11. 26. Reznikova, Pravoslavie na Solovkakh, 9.

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fiftee n Gulag 1. Burov and Chernovol, Solovetskii monastyr’, 9. 2. Burov and Chernovol, Solovetskii monastyr’, 41. 3. Burov and Chernovol, Solovetskii monastyr’, 43. 4. Each of these men wrote down their stories. Cederholm published his account in 1923, Likhachev in 1995. Solovieff’s memories lay in a pile of documents, a hundred pages densely typed in Russian. They were finally found by his daughter, who gave them to the Latvian Former Railroadmen Organization in Exile, which photocopied their translation in 1987. There are inherent risks in using memoirs to reconstruct the past. As Likhachev himself said, he could remember many things about his time in Solovki, ‘‘but to arrange them all in chronological order is most difficult. As if my memory keeps photographic and audio records of events and conversations, but all in disarray. . . . The most imprecise in memoir literature are conversations written down from memory. Unless the writer kept a diary, all that appears in inverted commas as direct speech is largely fantasy.’’ Quoted in Kuziakina, Theatre in Solovki, xv. That being the case, the various memoir accounts of Solovki’s Gulag period are remarkable in their agreement on both big and small issues—from the


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rituals of roll call at the Kem Transfer Point to the variations in work meted out to various companies in the Kremlin. This account relies heavily on English translations and easily accessible texts, but there are more available in Russian and French. 5. Michael Jakobson, Origins of the Gulag: The Soviet Prison System, 1917–1934 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 112–13. Jakobson notes that, by 1923, the Cheka had a new acronym, NKVD, though the term ‘‘Chekist’’ was still generally used for ‘‘member of the secret police.’’ 6. Jakobson, Origins of the Gulag, 115. 7. Jakobson, Origins of the Gulag, 115. 8. John Rossi, The Gulag Handbook/Spravochnik po Gulagu (London: Overseas Publications Interchange, 1987), 404–5. 9. S. Pidhainy, Islands of Death (n.p.: Burns & MacEachern, 1953), 49–50 (hereinafter Pidhainy, Islands of Death). 10. ‘‘Zdes’ vlast’ ne Sovetskaia, zdes’ vlast’ Solovetskaia!’’ Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul: A Memoir (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000), 87 (hereinafter Likhachev, Reflections). 11. Pidhainy, Islands of Death, 71–72. For the first extensive description of Solovki’s transformation into a prison camp, written in 1926, see A. Klinger, ‘‘Solovetskaia katorga: Zapiski bezhavshego,’’ Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii 19 (1926): 157–211. 12. Likhachev, Reflections, esp. 87–90. 13. Boris Cederholm, In the Clutches of the Tcheka (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1929), 269 (hereinafter Cederholm, In the Clutches). 14. Klinger, ‘‘Solovetskaia Katorga,’’ 206. Other good descriptions of Kem can be found in Pidhainy, Islands of Death; E. I. Solovieff, School for Tchekists (Sanford, Fla.: Center of Former Latvian Railroadmen, 1983), 10–12 (hereinafter Solovieff, School for Tchekists); and N. I. Kiselev-Gromov, Lageria smerti v SSSR (Shanghai: Knigoizdatel’stvo N. P. Malinovskogo, 1936), 36–51. 15. Cederholm, In the Clutches, 289. 16. Cederholm, In the Clutches, 293. 17. Likhachev, Reflections, 90. 18. Likhachev, Reflections, 95. 19. Cederholm, In the Clutches, 297–98. 20. Likhachev named a chapter of his memoir ‘‘The Diagonal of a Child’s Blanket.’’ See Likhachev, Reflections, 109–10. 21. Likhachev, Reflections, 91. 22. This picture of the KAN comes from Likhachev, Reflections, 78–81. 23. Cederholm, In the Clutches, 262. 24. Pidhainy, Islands of Death, 17. 25. Likhachev, Reflections, 84–85.


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26. Solovieff, School for Tchekists, 27. 27. Solovieff, School for Tchekists, 12. 28. Solovieff, School for Tchekists, 28. The translation, which has problems of English grammar, has been changed slightly for ease of reading. 29. Likhachev, Reflections, 94, uses the term ‘‘camp topography’’ when describing the companies. 30. Cederholm, In the Clutches, 283. Likhachev, Pidhainy, and Solovieff all describe essentially the same work routines and companies. 31. I. M. Zaitsev, Solovki: Kommunisticheskaia katorga, ili mesto pytok i smerti (Shanghai: Tipografiia Izdatel’stva ‘‘Slovo,’’ 1931), 21. 32. Solovieff, School for Tchekists, 31–33. See also Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, vol. 3, 54, and Jakobson, Origins of the Gulag. 33. Likhachev, personal correspondence, 31 March 1999; Cederholm, In the Clutches, 304.

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sixteen Life 1. Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, 52. 2. Solovieff, School for Tchekists, 50. Jakobson, Origins of the Gulag, 114, says that the Sekirka penal company was ‘‘perhaps the most infamous in history for its tortures.’’ 3. Solovieff, School for Tchekists, 51. 4. Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, 43. 5. Cederholm, In the Clutches, 309–10. 6. Likhachev, Reflections, 20. 7. A. Ivanov, Solovetskaia monastyrsk. tiur’ma (Solovki: Solovetskoe Obshchestvo Kraevedeniia, 1927). Likhachev, Reflections, 122, and Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, 29, both described Ivanov the same way, as the ‘‘antireligious bug.’’ 8. Likhachev, Reflections, 122. 9. Likhachev, Reflections, 126. 10. Kuziakina, Theatre in Solovki, chap. 3, analyzes these publications in detail. 11. Quoted in Kuziakina, Theatre in Solovki, 26. She continues: ‘‘A tendency towards simplification marked Tverie himself, and the editorial board sighed with relief when its secretary was transferred to Kem, where he took up guard duty.’’ 12. ‘‘Proletarka,’’ ‘‘Zhizn’ zhenskikh zakliuchennykh na Solovetskikh ostrovakh,’’ SLON 4, no. 3 (1924), unpaginated. 13. ‘‘Tiberii,’’ ‘‘Solovetskii iumor: Solovetskaia entsiklopediia,’’ SLON 4, no. 3 (1924), unpaginated.


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14. Kuziakina, Theatre in Solovki, 28. 15. Kuziakina, Theatre in Solovki, 28. 16. Kuziakina, Theatre in Solovki, 29. 17. Likhachev, Reflections, 127. 18. Kuziakina, Theatre in Solovki, Illustration 10. 19. Kuziakina, Theatre in Solovki, 64. 20. Solovieff, School for Tchekists, 40. 21. Cederholm, In the Clutches, 322. 22. Cederholm, In the Clutches, 316. 23. Likhachev, Reflections, 100. 24. Cederholm, In the Clutches, 307. 25. Kuziakina, Theatre in Solovki, 95. 26. V. Ia. Generozov, Ondatra: Amerikanskaia vykhukhol’ i ee akklimatizatsiia na Solovetskikh ostrovakh (Solovki: Solovetskoe Obshchestvo Kraevedeniia, 1927). 27. Pidhainy, Islands of Death, 143–44. Proving the importance of these animals to the life of SLON, the camp published a guide to the birds of Solovki as part of its academic series. See G. I. Poliakov, K Poznaniiu ornitofauny Solovetskikh ostrovov (Solovki: Solovetskoe Obshchestvo Kraevedeniia, 1929).

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seventeen Denouement 1. To the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) (Library of Congress, 11/13/95 1926), http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/ archives/d2presid.html (retrieved 27 October 2002). 2. Likhachev, Reflections, 112. The episode is recounted in Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, 62, and most of the other memoirs of the period. 3. Likhachev, Reflections, 112. 4. Likhachev’s memory of a plot in late October 1929 does not fit with the evidence of other memoirists or of archival documents. See Likhachev, Reflections, 117–20. A recent scholar has re-created the incident from documents. See Kuziakina, Theatre in Solovki, xv, 147 n. 9, and I. I. Chukhina, ‘‘Dva dokumenta komissii A. M. Shanina na solovkakh,’’ Zven’ia: Istoricheskii al’manakh 1 (1991): 357. 5. Sistema ispravitel’no-trudovykh lagerei v SSSR, 1923–1960 (Moscow: Zven’ia, 1998), 35. 6. Chukhina, ‘‘Dva dokumenta,’’ 361. The Shanin report documented widespread deprivation and murder on each of Solovki’s islands in graphic language. 7. Likhachev, Reflections, 178–81. Even the Solovki theater was reassembled, both in Kem and along the canal: Kuziakina, Theatre in Solovki, 95–129. See also Cynthia A. Ruder, Making History for Stalin: The Story of the Belomor Canal (Gaines-


N O T E S T O P A G E S 2 4 5 – 2 5 9

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ville: University of Florida Press, 1998); and Belomor: An Account of the Construction of the New Canal Between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea (New York: H. Smith and R. Hans, 1935). 8. Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, 66. 9. Simeon Vilensky, ed., Till My Tale Is Told: Women’s Memoirs of the Gulag (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 29. Letters published by women prisoners can also be read in Veronica Shapovalov, ed., Remembering the Darkness: Women in Soviet Prisons (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 270–75. 10. Pidhainy, Islands of Death, 104. John Rossi also believes that cannibalism tended to happen during prison breaks and agrees with Pidhainy that it was prosecuted as ‘‘premeditated murder’’; the person picked out to be eaten by his comrades was known as a ‘‘cow.’’ John Rossi, The Gulag Handbook/Spravochnik po Gulagu (London: Overseas Publications Interchange, 1987), 176, 207. 11. Cederholm, In the Clutches, 330. 12. Cederholm, In the Clutches, 314–15. 13. Written Address of the Bishops in Solovki to Metropolitan Sergi, Web site (Keston Institute, 2000), http://www.keston.org/solovki2.htm (retrieved 31 August 2002). See also ‘‘To the Government of the USSR’’—Appeal of Orthodox Bishops from the Solovetsky Islands, Web site (Keston Institute, 2000), http://www.keston.org/so lovki3.htm (retrieved 31 August 2002). 14. Boris Shiriaev, Neugasimaia lampada (New York: Izdatel’stvo Imeni Chekhova, 1954). An English version of Shiriaev’s story of Nikodim is available online: Gregory Dobrov, New Martyr Nikodim of Solovki: The Comforting Priest, Web site (Orthodox America, n.d.), http://www.roca.org/OA/163-164/163f.htm (retrieved 30 October 2002). 15. Shapovalov, Remembering the Darkness, 290. 16. Shapovalov, Remembering the Darkness, 62.

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epilogue Memory 1. A Finnish student and whale-watcher first published the linkage between the white horse and a beluga whale. See On the Founding of Solovetskij Monastery in the White Sea, http://www.physics.helsinki.fi/whale/petroglyph/whitesea/white hor.html (retrieved 1 September 2002). 2. Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, 43. 3. Fen Montaigne, Reeling in Russia (New York: St. Martins, 1998), 21. 4. V. V. Skopin, Na Solovetskikh ostrovakh (Moscow: ‘‘Iskusstvo,’’ 1990). 5. This spiritual song was recorded by S. E. Nikitina, author of ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’ i narodnaia vera,’’ in Sviatye i sviatyni severorusskikh zemel’, ed. N. Reshetnikov (Kargopol’, 2002).



E S S AY O N S O U R C E S

Since the notes to each chapter contain complete bibliographic information, this essay is not designed as a full treatment of sources pertaining to Solovki. Rather, I would like to guide readers toward further possibilities for research and study and to explain how and why I used the sources listed in the notes.

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Archives With such a long and distinguished past, Solovki has a huge archival record. Unfortunately, the vagaries of history mean that much has been lost, moved, or sealed. There is no single place to study the islands’ archival record. Rather, materials are spread across a number of central and regional archives in Russia (in addition to foreign holdings). Luckily, scholars have regularly published material from the archives on Solovki, especially for the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, as described below. Building on the published archival sources, I have used material from three major Russian repositories—the Manuscript Division at the National Library of Russia (RNB); the Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA); and the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA). The first of these holds scores of manuscripts originally found in Solovki’s library. From there, for example, came the versions of Solovki’s Rule that I used extensively. A good resource for studying that collection is Opisanie rukopisei Solovetskogo monastyria, nakhodiashchikhsia v biblioteke Kazanskoi Dukhovnoi Akademii, 3 vols. (Kazan’, 1881–98). Records of the monastery’s interaction with central authorities, especially in the imperial period, have been maintained at RGIA, mostly in the files of the Holy Synod (f. 796 and f. 797). Much of the documentation on the internal workings of the monastery can be found in holdings at RGADA, the archive from which most published sources have been culled.

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A few other repositories gave up nuggets of information, though not in the quantities available in the central archives. Solovki’s own museum has relatively few documents but significant card indexes and the huge bibliography I described in my preface. The British Public Records Office, London, has a small number of important papers relating to Solovki’s relationship to the British. Finally, the UNESCO archive and its sister institution, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) hold valuable material related to Solovki’s enrollment in the list of World Heritage Sites by the United Nations. Both of these repositories are in Paris. Notably absent from this list are archives pertaining to the Soviet period. Unfortunately, much of the Solovki Gulag archive has been destroyed or lost. Archival documents still extant are probably housed in the former KGB archives in Moscow, but I did not have access to that collection. Such material would have helped to corroborate memoir accounts, which I have used extensively for the final chapters of the book.

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Published Primary and Secondary Sources Solovki’s prehistory has not been well researched. A few scholars during the Soviet period studied the labyrinths and other prehistoric monuments scattered across the archipelago but little has been published recently about the first inhabitants of Solovki. As with other Russian monasteries, Solovki’s early years have been documented through saints’ lives. In Solovki’s case, the standard stories of suffering and redemption have been embroidered with highly specific descriptions of Solovki and the men who lived there. During the nineteenth century, Russian historians debated the usefulness of these stories. I. Iakhontov, Zhitiia sv. severnorusskikh podvizhnikov Pomorskogo kraia, kak istoricheskii istochnik (Kazan’: Typ. Imp. Universiteta, 1882) is the most thorough, though the great V. I. Kliuchevskii also investigated the hagiography and economy of north Russia. Present-day literary and historical scholars have continued that trend: Paul Bushkovitch and Jennifer Spock have both researched the tales of Solovki’s saints, as described in the notes to chapters 2, 3, and 4. I believe that, used judiciously, hagiography can be a useful source for historians when reconstructing the story of Solovki. Unfortunately, however, English editions of Russian saints’ lives can be hard to find. Solovki also had its own chronicle, a mixture of economic, social, and religious data. The Letopisets Solovetskii was kept in manuscript form until the nineteenth century, when Archimandrite Dosifei edited it for publication. I have primarily used his version in this book. Although Dosifei left out important events, especially when they could embarrass the institution, the Letopisets (like



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the hagiographies) affords a glimpse into the minds of Solovki’s monks—how did they view the world? What did they find important? Archimandrite Dosifei, not known for responsible management of Solovki, did provide a service to historians by compiling his three-volume Geograficheskoe, istoricheskoe i statisticheskoe opisanie stavropigial’nogo pervoklassnogo Solovetskogo Monastyria, first published in 1836. Though scholars must use this source with an eye toward Dosifei’s bias, he made a huge number of documents easily accessible, including famous letters sent by tsars, metropolitans, and patriarchs. Additionally, the work describes flora and fauna, even weather conditions for mid-nineteenth century Solovki. Economic data and institutional inventories complement religious sources. I. A. Liberzon has published two large volumes of economic documents on Solovki culled from the archives, the first covering the years 1479–1571 and the second 1572–84. Taken together, the volumes show how Solovki received both the blessing of those who bestowed gifts and the ire of those who saw the monastery as competition for land and resources in the Russian north. A very recent edition of Solovki’s sixteenth-century holdings, M. I. Mil’chik, ed., Opisanie Solovetskogo monastyria xvi veka: Kommentirovannoe izdanie (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2003), unfortunately arrived too late to be used extensively in this study. The most thorough study of Solovki’s early economy and culture, especially relating hagiographic and economic sources, is Jennifer Baylee Spock’s dissertation, ‘‘The Solovki Monastery, 1460–1645: Piety and Patronage in the Early Modern Russian North’’ (Ph.D. diss.,Yale University, 1999), which I have used liberally. In Russian, the magisterial work by A. A. Savich, Solovetskaia votchina, xv–xvii v.: Opyt izucheniia khoziaistva i sotsial’nykh otnoshenii na krainem russkom severe v drevnei Rusi (Perm’: Izd. O-va istoricheskikh filosofskikh i sots. nauk pri Permskom gos. universitete, 1927), retains its early Soviet methodology and interpretation but still provides a wealth of economic data. Perhaps the richest source to combine religious, cultural, and social information on Solovki is the collection of monastic Rules, handed down by generations of monks in manuscript form. Solovki’s early monks created structures typical to Russian monasteries. Solovki’s peculiar geography, however, made it necessary for the monastery to develop some traditions of its own. The Ustav (Rule) provided a model for behavior, though figuring out how closely the Rule was to be followed is a harder job than just reading a manuscript. Even so, nothing so closely describes the organization and life of Solovki than its own Ustav—when to eat fish and cheese, when to light candles and to ring bells. Solovki’s buildings and walls have long inspired scholars. Though studies in English are lacking, there is no dearth of works in Russian relating to the architecture of the Russian north, especially as found in Solovki. During the early


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Soviet period, P. D. Baranovskii’s fieldwork preserved drawings of the major monastery buildings before they were ravaged by fire in 1923. Long kept in archives, his pictures and correspondence have been published (in part) in A. Kazus, ed., Solovetskii monastyr’: Iz arkhiva arkhitektora-restavratora P. D. Baranovskogo, vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress-Traditsiia, 2000). D. S. Likhachev’s well-known volume on Solovki, Arkhitekturno-khudozhestvennye pamiatniki Solovetskikh ostrovov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1980), jump-started the scholarly tradition begun by Baranovskii. In addition, the works of A. G. Mel’nik, Ansambl’ Solovetskogo monastyria v xv-xvii vekakh: Istoriia, arkhitektura, oformlenie khramovykh inter’erov (Iaroslavl’: n.p., 2000); L. D. Popova, ed., Pamiatniki arkhitektury russkogo severa: Sbornik statei (Archangel: Izdatel’stvo Pomorskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta Imeni M. V. Lomonosova, 1998); and V. V. Skopin, A. A. Zakharchenko, and I. I. Leitsinger, Solovki—istoriia, arkhitektura, priroda (Moscow: Iskusstvo, Terra, 1994), have been invaluable for the present study. Most recently,William Craft Brumfield’s work on northern Russian architecture, with some photographs available on the Internet, has received much-deserved acclaim. I am indebted to him for pictures used in this volume. Brumfield’s most notable work is the encyclopedic volume A History of Russian Architecture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993). His most recent article is an excellent overview and synthesis: ‘‘Tradition and Innovation in the Sixteenth-Century Architecture of Solovetskii Transfiguration Monastery,’’ Russian Review 62 (July 2003): 333–65. Before it became a labor camp, Solovki was perhaps best known for its uprising in the late seventeenth century. There is no dearth of articles and books in Russian on that period of the islands’ history. The work of I. Ia. Syrtsov, Vozmushchenie Solovetskikh monakhov-staroobriadtsev v XVII veke, 2d ed. (Kostroma: Tipolit. F. A. Fal’k, 1888), has been reprinted many times, for example. Likewise, the six-volume compilation of documents published by N. Subbotin, Materialy dlia istorii raskola za pervoe vremia ego sushchestvovaniia, the third volume of which (Moscow: Bratskoe Slovo, 1878) is devoted to Solovki, is legendary among scholars of the Old Belief. The Dopolneniia k aktam istoricheskim, 12 vols. (St. Petersburg: V Tip. II. Otd-niia Sobstvennoi E. I. V. Kantseliarii, 1846–72), in its many volumes, provided much of the primary source material used here. In recent time, there has been a renaissance of interest in the Old Believers, spurred on by path-breaking research by Robert O. Crummey, The Old Believers and the World of Antichrist: The Vyg Community and the Russian State, 1694–1855 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970), and N. N. Pokrovskii. See, for example, his recent book with N. D. Zol’nikova, Starovery-chasovennye na vostoke Rossii v XVIII–XX vv: Problemy tvorchestva i obshchestvennogo soznaniia (Moscow: Pamiatniki istoricheskoi mysli, 2002). Among Western scholars, however, no one has surveyed the Solovki rebellion more thoroughly than Georg Bernhard Michels, especially in his recent monograph At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-



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Century Russia (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999). A recent Russian study of the uprising is O. V. Chumicheva, Solovetskoe vosstanie 1667–1676 gg. (Novosibirsk: Izdatel’stvo SO RAN, 1998), which I have used extensively. Solovki’s transformation from citadel of dissent to imperial jail has also long inspired Russian historians, especially those of a populist bent. A. S. Prugavin’s book, Monastyrskiie tiur’my v bor’be s sektantstvom (K voprosu o vieroterpimosti) (St. Petersburg, 1904; reprint, The Hague: Mouton, 1970), continues to be available and includes a long description of Solovki’s prison. That volume built on the extensive research by M. A. Kolchin, ‘‘Ssyl’nye i zatochennye v ostroge Solovetskogo monastyria v xvi–xix vv.: Istoricheskii ocherk,’’ Russkaia starina 56 (1887). The recent dissertation by T. V. Kokoreva, ‘‘Monastyrskie tiur’my kak mesto zatocheniia staroobriadtsev i sektantov v xix veke’’ (Moscow State University, 2000), puts the Solovki experience into the context of all monasteries that incarcerated Old Believers and sectarians. A tremendous amount of information on all aspects of Solovki’s history can be found in the published guide to Holy Synod archival materials from the eighteenth century, the Opisanie dokumentov i del khraniashchikhsia v arkhive Sviateshego Pravitel’stvuiushchego Sinoda, 50 vols. (St. Petersburg: Sinodal’naia Tipografiia, 1868–1916). More than just a listing, the Opisanie describes and often quotes verbatim from the archival files. The pilgrim experience at Solovki created the demand for books, pamphlets, guides, and memoirs. In addition to the literature used extensively in chapters 12 and 13, the most famous descriptions of Solovki from this period are V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, Solovki: Vospominaniia i rasskazy iz poezdki s bogomol’tsami (St. Petersburg: Tip. P. P. Soikina, 1884), and S. Maksimov’s God na severe (Archangel: Severo-Zapadnoe knizhnoe izd-vo, 1984), which has been reprinted many times in the past century. Guides, such as the Putevoditel’ po Solovetskim ostrovam (St. Petersburg: Tip. Spb. Akts. Obshch. Pech. Dela E. Evdokimov, 1900), provided short histories, preferred routes of travel, and particulars regarding a traveler’s stay on the islands. Solovki’s battle to survive in a rapidly changing world has received little scholarly notice. Regional newspapers and diocesan periodicals hinted at Solovki’s situation at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but the topic has yet to find a large scholarly audience. The exception is the economic and social study of the monastery by T. Iu. Samsonova, ‘‘Solovetskii monastyr’: Khoziaistvennaia deiatel’nost’, sotsial’nyi sostav i upravlenie, vtoraia polovina 19–nachalo 20 veka’’ (Diss., Moscow State University, 1997). Of all the periods in Solovki’s story, that of the Gulag has been the most thoroughly described, mainly in the large number of memoirs written in the 1920s and 1930s, far more than I have quoted in the present work. Many of these are considered in M. Rozanov’s Solovetskii kontslager’ v monastyre, 1922–1939


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gody: Fakty, domysly, ‘‘parashi’’: Obzor vospominanii solovchan solovchanami (samizdat volume, 1979). A few, such as Iu. D. Bezsonoff’s My Twenty-six Prisons and My Escape from Solovetski (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928), were translated into many languages and received some real notoriety. By far the most important work on SLON, however, came in the form of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s chilling descriptions in The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, 3 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1974–78), in which many readers first saw the word ‘‘Solovki.’’ In more recent times, the staff of the society ‘‘Memorial’’ has gathered stories and documents on Solovki; it was that group which placed the Solovki stone in Lubianka Square. One of the leading scholars from Memorial is I. Reznikova, author of Pravoslavie na Solovkakh: materialy po istorii Solovetskogo lageria (St. Petersburg: Nauchno-informatsionnyi tsentr ‘‘Memorial,’’ 1994). Specialized works, such as N. Kuziakina’s Theatre in the Solovki Prison Camp (London: Routledge, 1995) often provide tantalizing stories beyond their stated thesis. Finally, as I mentioned in the epilogue, Solovki seems to be reinserting itself, little by little, into the public consciousness. When Dmitrii Likhachev died, his obituaries mentioned Solovki. When Vladimir Putin traveled there as president of the Russian Federation, journalists tagged along. See, for example, ‘‘An Ambiguous Presidential Visit,’’ Economist, 8 September 2001, and ‘‘Putin Says Russia Is the ‘Guardian of Christianity,’ ’’ Agence France Presse, 20 August 2001. When USA Today featured the islands in its travel pages (‘‘Exploring the Dark Side of Russia,’’ 19 January 1999), it concluded that Solovki ‘‘is for the traveler with a frayed passport, who thinks he or she has seen it all. This is a haven for the spiritually jaded.’’


INDEX

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Aleksandr, Archimandrite, 155, 156, 158, 160–61 Aleksandr, Saint, 28 Aleksei, Father Superior, 27, 29, 31, 34 Aleksei Mikhailovich, Tsar, 89, 92, 94, 99, 101, 105–6, 108, 111, 115, 260 Alexander II, Emperor, 161, 163, 195 Animals, 1, 237–39 Anisimov, A. I., 230 Anzer, 87–92, 99, 118, 120, 181–83, 189, 199, 257, 272n, 283n Archangel, city of, 59, 63, 64, 67, 109, 117–18, 124–26, 128, 130, 134, 136, 144–45, 147, 149–52, 155, 159, 163, 165, 171, 174–75, 177, 185, 194–95, 198–99, 204, 206, 231 Artemii, 42–43, 267n Athanasius, Saint, 261n Avvakum Petrovich, Archpriest, 98, 101, 273n Baranovskii, P. D., 204–5, 229, 266n Bells, 34, 35, 71, 73, 120, 124, 127, 130, 156, 161, 179, 194, 195 Black Council, 70, 99–100, 102–5, 112, 147–48, 189, 274n Boddy, Alexander, Reverend, 172–73, 175, 176–80, 183, 264n, 280n, 281n, 282n, 283n

Boretskaia, Marfa, 23, 27, 32, 262n Boyars, 23–24, 43–48, 54, 124 Boys at Solovki, 85–86, 91, 166–67, 169 Bread, 19, 21, 35, 38, 73, 75–77, 86, 90– 91, 107, 109, 120, 130, 133–34, 137, 139, 152, 153, 160, 164–65, 167, 179, 183, 185, 196, 215, 231 Brisk, 155, 157–58 Britain. See England and Britain Brodskii, Iurii, 255–56 Bronze Age, 2 Budilnik, 70–73, 101, 179, 283n Canals, 33, 41, 60, 164, 183, 186, 196. See also White Sea–Baltic Sea canal Cannibalism, 246–47, 289n Catherine I, Empress, 130, 136, 139 Catherine II, Empress, 143–44 Cederholm, Boris, 205–8, 210, 212–13, 215–17, 221, 225, 229, 237–38, 240–41, 247–48, 285n, 286n, 287n, 288n, 289n Cellarer, 21, 34–35, 39, 70, 73, 84–85, 89, 101, 116, 130, 147, 150, 205 Chaikovskii, N. V., 198 Chamberlain, John, 64 Chaplin, G. E., 198 Children on Solovki, 14, 23, 28, 40, 51, 54, 74, 91, 109, 138, 140–41, 148, 165–66, 178, 215, 242, 245, 250

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Chren, 30, 79 Chudov monastery, 89, 122 Climate of Solovki, described, 2, 10 Clocks, 34, 70–71, 91, 127, 183, 185, 194, 207, 223, 266n Commissions to investigate SLON, 230, 240, 244–45 Companies of SLON, described, 213, 220–21 Concentration camp, opening at Solovki of, 205 Cossacks, 74, 143–44, 265n Counterrevolutionaries, defined, 207–8 Crimean War, 155, 193, 197

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Danes and Denmark, 75–76 Decembrists, 153 Demons, 15, 19, 86–87, 251, 272n Denisov, Semen, 127, 274n Diet, of monks, 38–40, 72–73, 92 Dolgorukii, V. L., 136 Donations. See Gifts to Solovki Dora. See Prosphora Dormition, Church of, 21, 34, 35–36, 44, 50, 52, 59, 121–22, 134, 178, 204, 265n, 266n Dosifei I, Archimandrite, 146–47 Dosifei II, Archimandrite, 149–50, 152– 54, 170, 262n, 263n, 265n, 267n, 269n, 270n, 271n, 272n, 273n, 279n, 280n, 293 Dvina, river, 63–64, 69, 111, 173 Earthen prison. See Underground prison Eikhmans, F. I., 229 Eleazar, Saint, 69, 87–90, 180, 182, 268n, 272n, 273n Electrification, 191 Elizabeth, Empress, 63 Elizabeth, Grand Duchess, 195–96 England and Britain, 7, 63–64, 67, 76, 153, 155–61, 163–64, 171, 175–76, 179, 183, 185, 193–95, 197–200, 204, 270n, 280n

I N D E X

Evdokim Meshcherskii, Bishop, 171–72, 176, 180, 182, 281n, 283n Fedor Alekseevich, Tsar, 116, 140 Fedor Ivanovich, Tsar, 54, 56, 61–62 Female animals, 39, 85, 183, 237, 280n Feodosii, Archimandrite, 190 Feoktist, 113, 275n Filaret, Patriarch, 83, 88–89 Filipp, Father Superior, Metropolitan, and Saint, 28–29, 31–36, 38–44, 49–53, 55–61, 68, 70–72, 75, 82, 87, 92–94, 97, 104, 106, 127, 160, 182, 183, 202, 215, 263n, 264n, 265n, 266n, 267n, 268n, 269n, 273n Finland, 1, 5, 243, 252, 261n Fire, 17, 20–21, 25, 27, 31, 33, 57, 59, 63, 105, 110, 113, 157, 158, 202–4, 214, 224, 238, 245 Firsov, Gerasim, 102, 274n Fish and fishing, 2–5, 9, 11, 14, 17–20, 23–24, 27, 32–33, 38–40, 42, 44, 64, 72–73, 78, 80–81, 86, 88, 90, 92, 107, 109–11, 115, 120–23, 126, 129, 133–34, 142, 149–50, 152, 154, 164, 178–79, 185, 187, 190–91, 199–200, 215, 223, 228, 237–38, 247, 265n, 266n, 271n Fortress, building of, 56–61 Gennadii, Archimandrite, 130–31 Geography of Solovki, described, 1–2 German, Saint, 6, 8–21, 75, 82, 87 Gifts to Solovki, 12–14, 31–32, 41, 55, 62, 64, 71, 118, 123–24, 167, 180, 263n, 264n, 265n, 269n, 278n Gleb Bokii, 212–13, 215, 219, 241, 243, 246 Godunov, Boris, 62 Goldovskaia, Marina, 256 Golgotha Skete and Gulag Hospital, 182, 199, 226–27, 246, 256 Gorky, Maxim, 241–43 Greek and Greeks, 95–97, 102–3, 122, 135, 269n


I N D E X

Guest houses, 121–22, 159, 161, 174, 177–79, 195, 198, 219, 283n Gulag, defined, 205 Gulls. See Seagulls Hermitages, 6, 9, 15, 18, 20, 29, 86, 88, 91, 115, 127, 190 Holy Gate, 59–60, 101, 103, 113, 120, 159–61, 177, 230 Holy Synod. See Synod Iconostasis, 34, 36, 76, 148, 203, 266n Icons, 11, 31, 34, 36, 59, 72, 76–77, 89, 97, 117, 131, 148, 156, 160–62, 180, 203, 230, 271n Ievlev, Kliment Alekseevich, Commander, 108–9, 111 Ilia, Archimandrite, 100, 122 Investigations, 108, 128, 141, 148, 190 Ioanniki, Archimandrite, 191–93, 195–96 Ion, Archbishop, 20–21, 23 Iosaf, Patriarch, 84 Iosif, Archimandrite, 103–4, 107–10, 112 Irinarkh, Archimandrite and Saint, 68– 69, 73–76, 79, 81, 84, 87–90, 272n, 273n Ivan III, Tsar, 25, 263n Ivan IV, Tsar (The Terrible), 26–27, 29, 31–32, 41–55, 57, 62–63, 71, 264n, 265n, 267n, 268n, 269n

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James I of England, 64, 67, 267n, 270n Jesus (Iisus) Hermitage, 181 Jews on Solovki, 137, 223, 277n Kalnishevskii, Petr, ataman, 143–45, 278n Kankrin, Igor Frantsovich, Minister of Finance, 150 Karbas, 11, 14, 16, 18–19, 22, 33, 175 Karelians, 10, 14–15, 21, 168 Kem, 56, 75, 110, 124–25, 175, 198, 200, 205, 209, 211–12, 219, 237, 241, 244, 245, 256, 286n, 287n, 288n

2 9 9

Kem Transfer Point, 209–12 Kholmogory, 100, 107–10, 116–17, 128–29, 136, 140, 147, 276n Khristosiki, 250–51 Kiril, Saint, 7–8, 13, 137 Kirillo-Belozerskii monastery, 7–8 Klobuk, 97, 103–4, 130 Kolychev family, 26–27 ‘‘Kremlin Plot,’’ 243 Kurbskii, Andrei, Prince, 50, 52 Kvass, 35, 40, 73, 75, 81, 130, 179, 284n Labyrinths, 4–6, 122, 125, 261n, 276n Lapps, 3. See also Saami Leksa Convent, 126, 142 Lent, 42–43, 71–72, 92 Library, 31, 63, 202, 204, 246 Likhachev, Dmitrii, 206–19, 221, 225, 229–30, 235, 237, 242, 245, 254–56, 258–59, 265n, 267n, 269n, 270n, 271n, 272n, 279n, 285n, 286n, 287n, 288n, 295 Literacy and illiteracy, 188 Lithuania and Lithuanians, 24, 42, 50 Liturgy, importance to monks, 11 Livonia, 55 Logging crews in SLON, 221–25, 227 Looting, 54, 199 Makarii, Metropolitan, 29, 42–43, 47, 268n Maksimov, S. V., 171–72 Marfa Boretskaia. See Boretskaia, Marfa Mark, early monk of Solovki, 19, 21 Meletii, Archimandrite, 190–91, 264n, 269n Memoirs, use of, 241, 256, 285n, 288n Meshcherinov, Ivan Alekseevich, Commander, 111–16, 275n Meshcherskii, Evdokim. See Evdokim Meshcherskii, Bishop Metropolitan of Moscow, duties described, 44–47, 50 Mica, 110–11


3 0 0

Mikhail Fedorovich, Tsar, 55, 67, 75, 81–84, 88–89, 99, 198, 273n Miracles of Zosima and Savvatii, described, 30–31 Miranda, 155, 157–58 Moleben, 120, 181n Morozova, Boyarina, 98, 273n Moscow, 23–27, 29, 31, 40, 41, 43, 44– 47, 49–54, 56, 61–64, 69, 79, 82–84, 88–95, 98–104, 106, 108–11, 113, 117, 139–40, 187, 191, 219, 239, 241, 243, 249, 259, 267n, 269n, 275n, 293n Muksalma Island, 39, 120, 153, 206 Museum at Solovki, 204, 229–30, 233, 245, 271n, 293 Muskrats, 238 Muslims on Solovki, 137, 211, 274n

Tseng 2004.1.29 13:34

Nadezhda, 171, 186 Nemirovich-Danchenko, V. I., 168, 171–72, 281n, 296 Neronov, Ivan, priest, 98, 100 Newspapers in SLON, 231–34 Nicholas, Saint, 22, 23, 34, 56, 67, 74, 75, 76, 264n Nicholas I, Emperor, 153, 161 Nikanor, Archimandrite, 101, 103–4, 112, 114 Nikifor, Saint, 69, 85–87, 90–91, 137, 272n Nikodim, Father, 250 Nikon, Patriarch, 90–99, 101–2, 112, 166, 196, 273n, 275n Novgorod, 20–27, 29, 34, 36, 42–44, 49, 52–54, 62–63, 68, 83–85, 89–91, 100– 101, 110, 116, 124, 126, 138–39, 163, 166, 174, 262n, 266n Odigitria icon, 34, 36 Old Belief and Old Believers, 98, 101– 2, 116, 118, 126–28, 139–42, 153–54, 163–64, 257, 274n, 275n, 290–91, 295–96 Ommaney, Erasmus, Captain, 155, 158

I N D E X

Oprichnina and oprichniki, 44, 47–52, 54–55, 268n Order of St. Andrew, 259 Paisi, Archimandrite, 148–49, 279n Palitsyn, Avraamii, 84, 272n Palm Sunday, 45, 268n Panikhida, 181 Parashi, 240 Patriarch of Moscow, created, 82–83 Peter I, Emperor (The Great), 117–30, 132, 134–35, 139, 143, 180, 189, 195, 207, 258, 276n, 279n Peter III, Emperor, 146 Pidhainy, S. I., 216, 218, 239, 286n, 287n, 288n, 289n Pilgrims, 38, 69, 74, 76, 85, 110, 117, 129, 147, 150–53, 155–56, 159, 161, 163–65, 170–87, 192, 196, 200, 205, 209, 213, 251, 259, 276n, 280n, 282n, 283n, 284n Podvig, 7, 20, 28–29, 69, 76, 82, 85, 97, 172, 182, 189, 227, 263n Poland and Poles, 55, 62–63, 83, 120 ‘‘Politicals,’’ 207 Population of Solovki, in Gulag period, 243 Porfirii, Archimandrite, 167, 188–89 Potapov, 224–25 Povenets, 126 Prosphora, 21, 35, 73, 86, 91, 117, 164–65, 183, 186, 189 Pskov, 53–54, 84, 117 Pustyn, defined, 15 Refectory, 20–21, 24, 34–35, 38–39, 70, 72–73, 81, 89, 112, 114, 120–21, 125, 130, 164, 178, 189 Reforms of Patriarch Nikon, 43, 96–103, 105, 110, 273n, 275n Reorganization of SLON, 244 Roman Catholics and Catholicism, 24, 50, 62, 83, 95, 247 Routes to Solovki, 117, 172–75, 209–10, 282n


I N D E X

Rule (Ustav) of the monastery, 39, 71–74, 82, 85, 121–22, 130, 150, 151, 178, 179, 266n, 270n, 292 Rye, 4, 39, 44, 77, 79, 91, 183 Saami, 3, 15, 168, 261 Salt and saltworks, 23, 30, 32, 41, 44, 56, 64, 68–69, 73, 78–80, 87, 109–10, 117, 123, 125, 130, 147, 178, 186, 196, 264n, 271n Saltykov, P. V., Prince, 138 Savvatii, Saint, 6–19, 22, 25, 27–31, 34, 38, 44, 63, 74–79, 82, 87, 102, 106, 110, 117–18, 120, 123, 125, 148, 156, 159, 161, 166, 170, 180, 181, 200–202, 251, 254, 256, 261n, 262n, 264n, 271n School at Solovki, 167–69 Seagulls, 159, 183, 213, 238–39, 283n Secularization of monasteries, 146–47 Sekirka (Sekirna), 13, 181, 226–28, 234, 242–43, 250–51, 287n Senate, 135 Serafim, Archimandrite, 151–52 Serafim, Father, 189–90, 281n Serfs and serfdom, 24, 27, 167 Sevriukov family, 87 Sign of the Cross, 96–97 Silvestr, Priest, 42, 43, 267n Skopin, V. V., 257 SLON, 206, 219–20, 231, 233, 245, 254, 288n Sobinskii, Matvei, 141–43 Soldiers, 64, 66–67, 69, 74–76, 82, 84, 87, 89, 92, 104, 107–9, 111, 114, 116, 122, 124–25, 129, 132, 134–36, 138, 150–51, 153, 156–58 Solovetskii Historical and Architectural Museum-Preserve, 255 Solovieff, E. I., 206–7, 215, 219, 221, 236, 285n, 286n, 287n, 288n Solovki bishops, 248–49 Solovki Theater, 234–37 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 1, 205, 245, 255, 285n, 287n, 288n, 296

3 0 1

Songs about Solovki, 252, 257 Stavropigialnyi, designation of, 146 Steamships, 171, 174–77, 186–87, 195–97. See also Vera Stoglav Council, 41, 97, 267nn Stolypin cars, 210 STON, 246, 254 Sumskii Ostrog. See Sumskii Posad Sumskii Posad (or Sumskii Ostrog), 56, 75, 104, 106–9, 111–13, 124–25, 141, 175, 275n Sweden and Swedes, 5, 55–56, 61–64, 68–69, 75–76, 104, 111, 118, 124, 126, 130, 132, 269n Synod, 128–30, 135, 137–42, 146–53, 161, 165, 189–91, 193, 196, 291, 295 Theater in SLON, 235–37 ‘‘Third Rome’’ philosophy, 41, 47, 95, 98, 267n Time of Troubles, 62–64, 84, 272n Tolstoy, P. A., Count, 136, 139 Tourists, 172, 255 Towers, 29, 34–35, 57, 59, 71, 127, 130, 132, 156 Trains, 209–10, 212–14, 216, 218, 227 Transfiguration Church and Cathedral, 20, 34, 36, 38, 44, 59, 68, 75–76, 103, 118, 144, 160–61, 177–78, 202, 204, 213, 220, 256, 266n Treasurer, 70, 100, 106, 109, 147–48 Trudniki, 74–75, 147, 150, 161, 163–68, 178, 183, 193–94, 196, 199–200, 202, 206 Tver, 53, 54, 60 Underground prison, 132–33, 136, 139 UNESCO, 256 Urok, 221–24 Uspenskii, D. V., 249–51 Ustav. See Rule (Ustav) of the monastery Valaam monastery, 8–9, 262n, 281n, 282n, 283n, 284n Varfolomei, Archimandrite, 100–104


3 0 2

Varlaam, Metropolitan, 94, 95 Varsonofii, Archimandrite, 128–31, 136, 140–42, 277n Veniamin, Archimandrite, 196, 199–200 Vera, 171, 185, 187, 194–96, 278n Vinogradov, N. N., 229–30, 276n Volkhov, Commander Ignatii Andreevich, 104–8 Vyg, Old Believer community, 126–27, 141–42, 276n

Tseng 2004.1.29 13:34

Walls, 34, 38, 56–57, 59–61, 63, 65, 68– 69, 75–77, 80, 87, 104, 107, 112–13, 115, 120, 132–34, 137, 147, 155–57, 159, 161, 167, 176–77, 181, 199, 202–4, 211, 214, 229 White Sea–Baltic Sea canal, 245 Women on Solovki, 12, 22, 62, 69, 74, 98, 109, 126–27, 136, 150, 167, 171, 173,

I N D E X

175, 177–78, 181, 184, 205, 207, 213, 218–20, 232–33, 236–37, 245–46, 250, 289n Youths. See Boys at Solovki Zaetsev, I. M., 238, 242 Zaetskii Island, 103–4, 106, 120, 122, 125, 160, 220, 254, 258 Zamaraev, A. A., 172–74, 178, 185, 282n, 283n, 284n Zealots of Piety, 95, 98 Zosima, Saint, 17–31, 34, 38–39, 44, 51, 63, 68, 70, 72, 74–76, 78–79, 82, 86, 102, 106, 110, 117, 118, 120, 123, 125, 148, 156, 159, 161, 166, 173, 180, 200, 202, 251, 254, 257, 264n, 271n Zyrians, 15, 168

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