6. The Solovetsky Monastery Siege, 1668-1676
The Solovetsky Monastery, founded by Russian monks in 1436, occupied a strategically important position on Onega Bay in the White Sea region. In 1668, during a period of dissent and upheaval within the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church in which the Tsarist government-enforced centralization, about 500 monks rebelled. The tsarist desire to enforce feudalism within the church and throughout Russia led to troops, known as Streltsy, arriving in June of 1668 to suppress the rebellious monks, who had the support of local peasants. The monks simply locked themselves into the fortified monastery, refusing to allow the Streltsy to enter. Local peasants and even some of the Tsarist troops kept the monks supplied with food.
For eight years the monks withstood the bombardment of the monastery, even expanding its defenses while besieged. In late 1675 a monk betrayed his fellow rebels, revealing a means of entering the monastery previously unknown to the besiegers, and the Tsarist troops entered the vast complex, butchering most of the occupants. Of the 500 or so monks and their families within, only about 60 survived. The monastery was later used by the communists as a part of the Soviet prison archipelago. Today, it is once again a monastery, re-established as such after the collapse of the Soviet Union, though it houses less than a dozen monks as of this writing, and serves primarily as a historical site and museum.