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

Rating:
Summary: A great read!
Review: Roy Robson's Solovki is a wonderful book. Robson had the inspired idea to write the history of Russia as reflected in the extraordinary past of the White Sea Solovetskii Island. There more than five hundred years ago two saints established a monastery that became legendary for its beauty, wealth and sanctity. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the monastery became a religious battleground between the state-approved Russian Orthodox and the so-called Old Believers, who considered themselves the true bearers of Orthodox piety and ritual in Russia. In the nineteenth century the monastery was a site of war (it was attacked by British warships during the Crimean war) and of pilgrimage (thousands of simple Russians visited it every year). In the twentieth century, from the early 1920s to 1939, it was the location of an infamous prison camp, described by Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag Archipelago. Today the Orthodox Church has re-established the monastic presence on Solovki and the place has been recognized by the United Nations as an international cultural treasure. Robson's history deftly analyzes each stage in the complex history of Solovki in prose that is a clear as the water of the White Sea on a calm day. The book is a deft portrait by a master craftsman. Splendid!