Solovetsky Stone (Saint Petersburg)

The Solovetsky Stone
A monument to the Victims of Political Repression, Russian: Соловецкий камень
Artist	Yuly Rybakov, Yevgeny Ukhnalyov
Completion date	4 September 1990 (4 September 1990): Pedestal 4 September 2002 (4 September 2002): Solovki Stone
Medium	Granite
Movement	Minimalism
Dimensions	225 cm × 230 cm × 235 cm (89 in × 91 in × 93 in)
Weight	10,400 kg
Location	Saint Petersburg
Coordinates	59°57′08″N 30°19′34″E / 59.952313°N 30.326125°E / 59.952313; 30.326125

The Solovetsky Stone is a monument to the victims of political repression in the Soviet Union and to those who have fought and fight for freedom. It stands in Troitskaya (Trinity) Square in Saint Petersburg, near several other buildings directly related to political repression in the Soviet era—the House of Tsarist Political Prisoners; the prison and necropolis of the Peter and Paul Fortress; and the Bolshoy Dom or headquarters of the NKVD, both in the city and the surrounding Leningrad Region. Nowadays, the Stone also serves as a focus for commemorative events and for gatherings related to current human rights issues.

The monument consists of a large boulder brought from the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea, where the Solovki prison camp opened in 1923. The camp was the malignant cell which, in Solzhenitsyn's metaphor,^[1] metastasized to create the entire Gulag network of forced labour camps. The Stone is a fitting symbol of the Gulag and the related practices of political terror. The Memorial society in Petersburg was behind the creation of the monument. It was designed by Yuly Rybakov and Yevgeny Ukhnalyov, both political prisoners during the Soviet period.