ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The transformation of a monastery into a prison camp an unheard of sacrilege to believers befell many large and, before the revolution, rich cloisters at that time. When one is acclimatized to the Solovki, the extremes of northern nature are quite tolerable: winter is relatively mild, without excessively severe frosts. The monastery was granted an independent and full title to the Solovetsky Islands by the Novgorodian Burgomistress Martha Boretskaya. At the beginning of the twentieth century the Solovetsky Monastery, with its strong peasant element, could boast of a rich and diversified economy, which had developed. The fire raged for three days. The monastery's main buildings were connected by galleries, so that, apart from the domes, the interiors of nearly all the churches were burned out as well. Luckily, the Cathedral of the Transfiguration suffered least and its iconostasis survived.
