A stunning and beautiful nightview...now a peaceful looking site...but a place with a dark history...between 1926 and 1939 the monastery was turned into a special Soviet prison and labor camp, which served as a prototype for the Gulag system... also know as "Silovki" Gulag...
The back of the card is almost as beautiful as its front... Thanks a lot CharlesLing!!
Wonderful matching stamps:
World Cultural Heritage in Russia
Solovetsky Islands
(Issued 17-07-2009) and
The 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Aram Khachaturyan (composer) stamp.
(24-04-2003)
The Solovetsky Monastery is one of the most significant monastic institutions in Russia. The monastery is located on the large island of Solovetsky and became one of the richest and best known monasteries in Russia.It was founded in the second quarter of the 15th century by tree monks from the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery.
The Solovetsky archipelago comprises six islands in the western part of the White Sea, near the Arctic Circle. They have been inhabited since the 5th century B.C. and important traces of a human presence from as far back as the 5th millennium B.C. can be found there. The archipelago has been the site of fervent monastic activity since the 15th century, and there are several churches dating from the 16th to the 19th century.
The USSR recognized the beauty and importance of the islands and in 1974 were designated both a historical/architectural museum and a nature reserve. In 1992 it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list.
