VLADIMIR PUTIN IS WHITEWASHING RUSSIA'S DARK PAST

Putin wants to control the historical narrative in Russia. The Kremlin aims to legitimise its authoritarian practices by imbuing the power of the state with an almost sacred quality.

- JOHN DOBSON LONDON

The Solovetsky Islands in northern Russia's White Sea have played a unique role in the country's history. Almost 600 years ago its fortified monastery was founded and quickly became a stronghold of the Russian Orthodox Church. Following the Bolshevik victory after the 1917 revolution, the monastery was closed down and many of its buildings were turned into a forced labour camp, a prototype of Stalin's Gulag system. More than one million prisoners died in this camp, said by historians to have the hardest regime of all.

Twenty nine years ago I made the first of several visits to the Solovetsky Islands to witness the re-opening of the monastery. The walk through the dark deserted rooms, many still festooned with shackles, sent shivers down my spine, even though it was peak summer and the venomous mosquitoes, whose bites literally killed tethered and naked prisoners all those years before, were using my follically challenged head as a landing strip. In winter the temperatures hover around -20 degrees C, (the lowest recorded is -36 degrees C). Solovetsky prisoners who weren't bitten to death in the summer, froze to death in winter.

With so much suffering and death in the gulags, it's no wonder that those Russians who wanted to keep the memory of the victims alive, chose to transport a huge granite boulder from the Solovetsky islands to Moscow, where it is set in the middle of Lubyanka Square, opposite the infamous KGB (now FSB) building. The Solovetsky stone was one of the first and perhaps the most important monument of its kind in the former Soviet Union. The inscription at the foot of the pedestal reads: This stone is delivered by the 'Memorial' members from the Solovetsky Camp and established in memory of the victims of the totalitarian regime. Some wanted to use the word Stalinist”, as the dictator was responsible directly or indirectly for the deaths of some 20 million victims.