Book by native of Ingushetia on Solovki concentration camp published in Paris

The State Museum of GULAG History, located in Petrovka Street in Moscow, has hosted the presentation of the French version of the book, written by Sozryko Malsagova (1895-1976), a native of Ingushetia and an officer of the Russian Tsarist Army, and entitled "The Hell Island". The book was released in April this year in Paris by the publisher Francois Bourin Editeur. The book tells about the Soviet concentration camp, known as SLON (Special-Purpose Solovki Camp).

The presentation was prepared by the Ingush branch of the "Memorial" jointly with the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Ingushetia under the President of the Russian Federation. The French edition was published by the well-known publisher Pierre Berge, a specialist in the history of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union Nicolas Werth and a journalist and a human rights activist Galina Ackerman.

Being an officer of the Tsarist Army, Malsagov fought in the Volunteer Army in Southern Russia; and in 1923 he found himself in the dungeons of the Transcaucasian Cheka (Division of Soviet Interior) and was brought to Solovki in January 1924 under the articles of "organization of terror acts and collaboration with foreigners" and "espionage in favour of international bourgeoisie."

In May-June 1925, a group of Russian officers and the Poles under Malsagov's command escaped from Solovki. The situation in the SLON was described by Sozryko Malsagov in his essays "Solovki. Island of Torture and Death (Notes of Officer S. A. Malsagov, Who Fled from Solovki)" that appeared in 1925 in the emigrants' newspaper "Today", which was published in Riga. A year later in London a book in English was published: S. Malsagov. "An Island Hell: A Soviet Prison in the Far North", AM PHILPOT LTD, 1926.

In 1990s, the S. Malsagov's book "The Hell Island" was several times published in Russian in Moscow and Ingushetia.