Solovki prison camp
After the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War, the Soviet authorities closed down the monastery and incorporated many of the buildings into Solovki prison camp, one of the earliest forced-labor camps of the gulag during the 1920s and 1930s. "In the earliest years of the Soviet prison system, the Solovetsky Special Prison Camp (SLON) was home to a large group of . . . imprisoned writers." The camp main activity was logging, and when most of the surrounding area had been deforested, the camp was closed. Before the Second World War, a naval cadet school was opened on the island.