THE JOURNALS OF A WHITE SEA WOLF

In 1991, Mariusz Wilk, a Polish journalist long fascinated by the mysteriesof the Russian soul, decided to take up residence in the Solovki islands, alonely archipelago lost amid the far northern reaches of Russia's WhiteSea. For Wilk, these islands represented the quintessence ofRussia—a place of exile and a microcosm of the crumbling Sovietempire. On the one hand, they were a cradle of the Orthodox faith and hometo an important monastery; on the other, it was here that the firstexperimental gulag was built after the 1917 revolution. Over the course ofthe years, Wilk came to know every single one of the island's 1,000 or soresidents. From his remote home, from which he sent regular dispatches tothe Paris-based Polish newspaper, Kultura, he attempted to observe andcome to terms with the complexities and contradictions of Russian history,its glorious past and the cruelty of Soviet Communism