Gulag

At the same time, random cruelty was becoming less common. In 1930, the Shanin Commission, a special delegation of the OGPU, arrived on the island to investigate rumors of ill-treatment of prisoners. Their reports confirmed the stories of excessive beating and torture on the island. In a stunning reversal of previous policy, the commission sentenced and executed nineteen of the OGPU perpetrators.⁸⁰ Such behavior was now considered out of place in an institution that valued trudosposobnost—“work capability”—above all else.

Finally, under Frenkel’s leadership, the concept of “political prisoner” changed for good. In the autumn of 1925, the artificial lines that had been drawn between those with criminal sentences and those convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes were dropped as both groups were sent together to the mainland to work in the huge forestry projects and wood-processing plants of Karelia. SLON no longer recognized privileged prisoners, but rather saw all prisoners as potential laborers.⁸¹

The socialist residents of the Savvatyevo barracks presented a larger problem. Clearly, the socialist politicals did not fit into anyone’s idea of economic efficiency since they refused, on principle, to do any form of forced labor whatsoever. They even refused to cut their own firewood. “We have been exiled administratively,” one complained, “and the administration must provide us with all the necessities.”⁸² Not surprisingly, that position began to inspire resentment in the camp administration. Although he had personally negotiated with the politicals in Petrominsk in the spring of 1923, and had personally promised them a freer regime on Solovetsky if they would agree to go there peacefully, Commander Nogtev in particular appears to have resented their endless demands. He argued with the politicals about their freedom of movement, about their access to doctors, and about their right to correspond with the outside world. Finally, on December 19, 1923, at the height of a particularly bitter argument over prisoner curfews, the soldiers guarding the Savvatayevo barracks opened fire on a group of politicals, killing six of them.

The incident caused an uproar abroad. The Political Red Cross smuggled reports of the shooting across the border. Accounts appeared in the Western press even before they had appeared in Russia. Telegrams between the island and the Communist Party leadership went swiftly back and forth. At first, the camp authorities defended the shootings, claiming that the prisoners had broken the curfew and that the soldiers had given three warnings before firing.

Later, in April 1924, while not quite admitting that the soldiers had failed to give any warnings—and prisoners agree they did not—the camp administration provided a more elaborate analysis of what had happened. The politicals, their report explained, were of a “different class” from the soldiers assigned to guard them. The prisoners spent their time reading books and newspapers; the soldiers had no books and newspapers. The prisoners ate white bread, butter, and milk; the soldiers had none of these. It was an “abnormal situation.” Natural resentment had built up, the workers resenting the nonworkers, and when prisoners had defied the curfew, blood was inevitably spilled.⁸³ To back up their conclusions, camp administrators read letters from prisoners aloud at a meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee in Moscow: “I am feeling well, I am eating well . . . it isn’t necessary to send me clothes and food now.” Other letters described the beautiful views.⁸⁴ When some of these letters later appeared in the Soviet press, prisoners insisted they had written these idyllic descriptions of life on the island only in order to calm the fears of their relatives.⁸⁵

Indignant, the Central Committee took action. A committee led by Gleb Boky, the OGPU boss in charge of concentration camps, paid a visit to the Solovetsky camps and the transit prison in Kem. A series of articles in Izvestiya followed in October 1924. “Those who believe Solovetsky is a depressing, gloomy prison, where people sit and waste time in crowded cells, are deeply mistaken,” wrote N. Krasikov. “The whole camp consists of a huge economic organization of 3,000 laborers, working at the most varied types of production.” Singing the praises of Solovetsky’s industry and agriculture, Krasikov then went on to describe life in the socialists Savvatyevo barracks: