author
S. A. (Sozerko Artaganovich) Malʹsagov
1893–1976
Remembered for one of the earliest firsthand accounts of the Soviet camp system, this former Imperial Russian Army officer escaped from the Solovki prison camp and turned that experience into a stark memoir. His writing carries the urgency of someone who had seen the system from the inside and survived it.
1 Audiobook
An island hell: A Soviet prison in the far north
by S. A. (Sozerko Artaganovich) Malʹsagov
About the author
Born in 1895 in Altievo in the Terek region, Sozerko Artaganovich Malʹsagov was an Ingush officer in the Imperial Russian Army. After the Russian Revolution and Civil War, he was captured by the Bolsheviks and sent to the Solovki prison camp in the far north.
Malʹsagov became known for escaping from Solovki with a small group of fellow prisoners. He later published An Island Hell: A Soviet Prison in the Far North, an early memoir describing camp life, forced labor, hunger, violence, and the arbitrary power of the authorities. The book helped bring outside attention to conditions in one of the Soviet system’s most notorious early camps.
He spent the rest of his life in exile and died in 1976. Because his memoir is both personal testimony and historical evidence, it remains important for readers interested in the origins of the Gulag and in survivor accounts from the early Soviet period.