|
|
Article: Devil's islands.(cruel history of Russia's Solovetsky Islands)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- November 11, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
IT may have voted for Yeltsin, but Archangel is still a very Soviet sort of place. There's a Lenin in the main square and another on the way out of town, just to make sure. Seven hundred miles north of Moscow, this once rich port city of 400,000 seems, at a glance, trapped in Brezhnev's dereliction -- though there are hints of a commercial revival. There is plenty in the shops, and someone is buying all those Western cars.
History too is making a comeback. Gingerly at first, like the small boys passing their arms through the eternal flame at its World War II Memorial, Archangel is beginning to confront its Soviet past. A local cemetery finally acknowledges, and ...