The Solovetsky Islands, or Solovki, is a group of six large islands located in the White Sea. Solovki are well-known for their exceptional nature as if completely intact. And moreover it’s famous for the historical events that took place here.
The site is 2h flight from Moscow and 1h 40 min flight from Saint-Petersburg. However, the small airfield accepts only small planes and helicopters. So most probably you’ll need a connection in Arkhangelsk. In summer there’s a ferry from the city of Kem.
With the advent of the Bolsheviks to power, the monastery turned into a concentration camp. To send monks to other forced labor camps or to kill them was a common practice. The so-called Northern Solovki camps of OGPU resulted to be a prototype for the labor camps of GULAG.
However, the Solovetsky camp did not last long: in 1933 it was disbanded, and its property was transferred to the ‘White Sea-Baltic Canal’ camp. In the late 1930s, the former Solovetsky monastery became the Solovetsky Special prison.
In the 1990s, the Orthodox church got back the monastery. Now this place is popular among tourists and pilgrims. FilmSPbTV can provide you all the required permits for filming in the monastery as well as in the Solovetsky Museum-Reserve.
Today, in the Solovetsky Museum-Reserve you can film the vessels made by the camps’ prisoners. Visiting for filming purposes the GULAG museum situated inside an old barrack, or filming the Sekirnaya Hill. Here you will find a chapel where prisoners were tortured and more than 300 of them were executed. There is also the former monastery berry orchard where the executed were buried. There are still empty graves reminding of the terrible events.
On Big Solovetsky Island, there is a great Botanical garden. Monks used to work there, then they were replaced by the labor camps’ prisoners. Now, the garden belongs to the Museum.
Our fixers can help you filming this incredible place with the rarest plants of the region, as well as the famous White Sea Biological station that is still working since it was first established in the 1880s. Access is possible all year round, but in winter it’s impossible to bring heavy filming equipment unless you hire a chopper to get you to the island. The regular flight that flies from Arkhangelsk twice a week has very strict limits on the baggage and hand luggage weights.
