SolovkiSOLOVKI, 2019 by Juan Manuel Castro Prieto, Rafael Trapiello (photographers) and Antonio Muoz Molina (text) Solovki is the main island of the Solovetsky archipelago (Russia), located in the middle of the White Sea, known as such because it is frozen over for nearly half the year. Solovki was the mother Gulag, the terrible Soviet penitentiary system of forced labour camps. Active from 1924 to 1939, it served as a model for all the subsequent prisons.