The Gulag Archipelago Vol. 2 An Experiment in Literary Investigation - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Archipelago Rises from the Sea
ISS
or whether it was only "external" work. At any rate, work at
servicing and maintaining the camp itself would not have been
enough to occupy all the remaining 60 to 65 percent of the camp
prisoners. This proportion found its expression at Solovki as well.
Clearly throughout the twenties there were no few prisoners without
permanent work (partly because of -the lack of anything to
wear outdoors) or else performing purely formal duties.
That first year of the First Five-Year Plan, which shook up the
entire country"shook up Solovki as well. The new Chief of SLON,
appointed in 1930, Nogtev (the same Chief of the Savvatyevsky
Monastery who had shot down the socialists), reported, to the
accompaniment of a "whisper of astonishment in an astounded
hall," to the free inhabitants of the city of Kem, these figures:
"Not counting its logging operations for its own use, which had
grown at quite exceptional tempos," USLON had filled "external"
orders alone for the Railroad Timber Trust and the Karelian
Timber Trust: in 1926-63,000 rubles; in 1929-2,355,000
rubles (thirty-seven times greater!); and in 1930, the total had
jumped another three times .. Road construction for the KareIian­
Murmansk rt:g!on had been carried out in 1926 in the amount of
105,000 rubles, and, in 1930, six million-increased by fi#yseven
times!20
And that is how the once remote Solovki, where they didn't
know how to make full use of the prisoners, came to an end. The·
miracle-worker work rushed in to assist.
Solovki was created via Kem Transit Camp. And via Kem
Transit Camp Solovki, in its maturity, began, at the end of tb.e
twenties, to spread back to the mainland. And the worst thing
that could now befall a prisoner was to be sent ol!t on .these work
parties on the mainland; Previo~y the sole lhainland points
belonging to Solovki were Soroka .and Sumsky Posad--coastal
appurtenances of the monasteries. But now th~,a.