View of the Solovetsky Monastery from land, Solovetski Islands, 1915. View of the Solovetskii Monastery, founded in the early fifteenth century on an island in the White Sea in the far north of European Russia, was for centuries one of the most important monastic and cultural institutions in Russia. The thick walls shown in this photo protected the monastery from foreign invaders on several occasions. The monastery was partially destroyed in the early Soviet period and became the site of the first major concentration camp of the Gulag system. In the post-Soviet era it was returned to the Orthodox Church and is once again a functioning monastery.