For centuries the remote Solovetsky Islands in Russia's Far North could only be reached by boat.

The islands are dominated by the Solovetsky Monastery, founded in the 15th century. For hundreds of years it was one of Russia's holiest sites, a place of pilgrimage and solitude.

But the victorious Bolsheviks had another use for the islands. Beginning in the early 1920's they used the Monastery as a prison for their enemies - Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, Anarchists and the clergy. A propaganda film was shot in 1927 on the orders of the state security service to show the re-education of the enemies of the state.

In the early years the political prisoners were treated relatively well. They were allowed to move freely around the camp. 

But that changed in 1929, the first year of Stalin's all-out drive for industrial growth. Solovki, as the camp became known, was to provide the blueprint for Stalin's system of forced labour camps - the Gulag.

Prisoners at Solovki were used as slaves, working on forestry projects and building roads. It was here that a system was established of feeding prisoners according to their work output, insuring that the weak died of hunger while the strong helped build the industrial infrastructure of the state.

And with the Gulag came torture.

Sekirny hill is the highest point on the islands. For centuries it was used by hermits as a place to worship in solitude. Under the Soviets it became the penal barracks. On the ground floor were prisoners sentenced to terms of punishment for breaking the rules. On the top floor were prisoners awaiting execution.

Many of those who made it back to the camp from Sekirny had undergone one of the harshest forms of torture, called "the perch". Prisoners were forced to sit on a pole for up to 18 hours a day, without moving. When they fell, they were beaten with sticks. Others were thrown down 375 steps to the bottom of the hill and buried in a pit.

Sometimes guards told prisoners due to be executed that they would survive if they could stay on the perch. None did.

As historian Yuri Brodsky explains, this was probably done to make the prisoners blame themselves for their own death. Brodsky says he feels it is pointless trying to understand what happened at the camp. "There was no logic, because the people who did the shooting today became tomorrow's victims," he says. 

By 1930 more than 50,000 prisoners were herded into the former monastery. In all, over 400,000 people would be sentenced to imprisonment on the islands.

Although the prisoners performed construction work and helped build the Stalin White Sea Canal, the real function of the camp was as a place of punishment. Those prisoners who did not meet their work norms would be left outside and tied naked to the trees.

In the arctic winter, prisoners slept in layers on top of one other to keep warm, covering the top layer with their rags. In the morning they removed all those that had died from the bottom layer.

The monastery now functions partly as a place of worship as well as a historical and architectural museum. 

Museum director Oleg Volkov says the majority of the prisoners who came to Solovki in the mid-30's either died on the island or were executed on the mainland.

With the second world war imminent, the camp was closed in 1939.

Yuri Brodsky has painstaking assembled documents, collected photographs and travelled the country recording memoirs about the history of the camp for almost forty years.

In the Soviet era, he was interrogated by the KGB many times about his activities, but he managed to outsmart them each time. 

After his first arrest in the early 1970's, he made the mistake of boasting about outwitting his interrogators. He would not make the same mistake again.

Brodsky finally published his history of Solovki abroad. A Russian edition was released in the 90's, but only 5,000 books were ever printed.

He says the current Russian leadership gives him little hope that the country will ever come to terms with its Stalinist past. 

Brodsky says that if Russia is ever to move on, it must first repent the sins of the past. And that repentance should begin at Solovki.