Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn called it the "mother of the Gulag" -- the spot near the Arctic Circle where the Soviet Union built one of its first camps for political prisoners.
Now the site has gone back to its pre-revolutionary use as a monastery, and part of it has been turned into a museum that pays homage to the camp's inmates, and the unknown millions killed nation-wide in Soviet purges.
Few of those, mainly Russians, who visit this island in Russia's White Sea come to see the gulag. Most are attracted instead by its religious history, wildlife and white summer nights. That may be because Russians are still deeply ambivalent about Soviet repression, which turned them into victims but which was also done in their name.
Historians estimate that, at the height of the purge, up to one in 10 Russians may have been imprisoned in the thousands of Gulags -- a Soviet acronym for its prison camp system -- across the vast country. Many died.
"There is an attempt to suppress the interest in this topic and this is the state policy, to put it in shadow," said museum curator Olga Bochkaryova, standing in front of a display of photographs of people who died in the camp.
"The authorities in Russia are not interested in revealing the terrific scale of what happened here in this country. This was the destruction of its people by the state," she said.
"It's impossible to ignore this history, though, especially amongst the Russian citizens who lost their relatives, who search for those who died here," said Bochkaryova.
DARK HISTORY The island now is a tranquil beauty spot but it has a dark history. Thousands of Stalin's enemies and others caught up in the purges -- some as young as 15 -- were incarcerated and died there between 1923 and 1939.
Many inmates were literally worked to death, with little protection against the winter cold. Troublesome inmates were tied to a stake during long, hot summer days, so mosquitoes could feed on them as punishment.
"Many of the deaths were registered as 'death by illness' in thousands of cases so we do not know how some they really died," Bochkaryova said. The island was first used as a political camp when White Army officers were held in a Tsarist-era jail there after the Russian revolution.
The regime was not harsh at first, but the worst time was 1937-39 when it became a formal prison camp, Bochkaryova said. Prisoners were not allowed talk to each other -- even though there were often six to a room -- to try to prevent information spreading between the inmates. The island even used its own currency to prevent prisoners bribing the guards.
Elsewhere on the site, there are other reminders of its darker legacy: in one remote corner of the complex is a prison doorway, and next to it a heavily-barred window. Guards forced inmates to build their own cells.
In recognition of the island's place in the grim history of the Gulag, a boulder was shipped from here to the square outside the former headquarters of the Soviet secret police in Moscow as a memorial to the victims. A few times a year, small groups of people gather next to the rock with candles to hold a vigil.
Today, Bolshoi Solovetsky island does not dwell on its grim past. The site is now home to 40 Russian Orthodox monks who have resettled the pre-revolutionary monastery. On a sunny morning last month, many visiting tourists appeared to be religious pilgrims, with a small fraction choosing to look inside the gulag museum.
The museum's director, Mikhail Lopatkin, says the island is more closely associated with the gulag system in the minds of foreigners than among Russians.
"Most of the Western people accept it as a gulag museum and Russians think of it as a spiritual, holy place. "Young people come here in search of something spiritual -- to find something for their soul and not necessarily this monastery," he said. "Instead, they want to escape from modern life, like the hippies did."
Sergei Oyama, from St Petersburg, was making his third trip to the island. He and two friends rented a boat to cruise through the island's network of canals and lakes. "(We come) for all the reasons, including its time as a prison camp, its religious history," he said. "But now mostly for its nature.
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