ARKHANGELSK, September 11. /TASS/. The summer school on the Solovetsky (Solovki) Islands finished its work on the archipelago. The students’ key task was to analyze water in lakes and rivers, the project’s leader Svetlana Tyukina told TASS, adding water in lakes on the Bolshoy Solovetsky Island was cleaner year-on-year.
"A group of ecologists has reported that even at the level of initial tests they could see the water quality in Svyatoye Lake has improved," she said. "They believe this result was due to fewer pilgrims and tourists and thus less man-made contamination. We know that earlier, including last year, there were illegal disposals into Svyatoye Lake, and thus this year has been favorable for water reservoirs."
The students sampled water in lakes and in the sea. Samples were frozen and sent immediately to Arkhangelsk for further tests at the University laboratories.
"The students will later on present results of chemical water tests," she continued. "The results will be sent to local officials, and the presentation will contain biotechnology solutions to improve water conditions until purification equipment is put operational."
The pandemic
In the current pandemic, the Solovki were closed for visitors until July 15. Any tourists planning a trip to the archipelago have to pass a coronavirus test. The summer school’s sociologists studied how the archipelago’s youth lives through the pandemic. "Sociologists say about different moods among the youth on the mainland and on the island. They picked a few focus groups to survey them," the school leader said. "In Arkhangelsk, they will work with groups of young people, who remained in the city, and later on will compare their answers."
The IT group worked with specialists from the Solovki Monastery to improve and optimize the monastery’s website and to make an application. "They have agreed the design," the leader said. "For the students, it would be a long project, or even topics for course papers." A year earlier, she continued, the summer school students made a virtual tour of an exhibition about the Solovki’s sea cadets. "This year, this tour has been very popular, and this year, the museum has employed our student - she has been working on virtual tours," she added.
Physicists and poets
The engineering unit was devoted to the monastery’s hydropower plant and the dry dock. A museum exposition will appear there by 2023. Some lakes on the Bolshoy Solovetsky Island are connected with canals. In 1801, a dry water-filled dock was built on the Solovki. It was one of the first dry docks in Russia. The dock was used to repair the monastery’s ships and the ships that called on the Solovki for commercial purposes. The Solovetsky Monastery had its own hydroelectric power plant on the canal between Lake Svyatoye and the dry dock. It was made in 1911.
Physics have been working on an exposition about the Solovki Monastery’s engineering history. "Our students have picked objects, discussed how to present them and what interactive models could be used," the project’s leader said. "They will make a few 3D models to demonstrate the former system of canals, the dry dock and the power plant."
A group of students in culture has been working on music for the exposition devoted to the Solovki prison. The exhibition will be virtual, and thus the music will be used also on the website. The students have collected great material and want to make a cycle of lectures, devoted to music in the 1930s, including to musicians, imprisoned on the island. "The students will make a media resource, they have presented a promotional video, which will contain sounds of the forest, of the bells, Shostakovich’s music, and a video of the prison," the school leader said.
Games and quests
The historical part was devoted to making games and quests. The students organized a game for local school students and then invited them to master classes to learn how to make games. The students made an ecology game, a game for physics and a history quest. "The history game will be presented in November, most likely it will have been tested at the Solovki school, at Arkhangelsk’s school and at a school in Moscow, and we may test it at the University as well."
The game is on the so-called Solovetsky sitting in 1668-1676. This was the armed resistance of the monks, fugitive peasants, townspeople, archers, and soldiers against Patriarch Nikon’s church reforms. The monastery rejected the reforms and the government ordered to confiscate its estates and property. In 1668, the tsar’s regiments began to siege the monastery. The fighting continued for a few years and finished in 1676, when the monastery gave in. Additionally, the summer school students will make a table game, devoted to the islands’ history.
The summer school students visited the Botanical Garden, the Muksalma Island, connected with the Bolshoi Solovetsky Island by a 19th-century boulder dam, which is more than one kilometer long. Due to the pandemic-related restrictions, any sightseeing was allowed in the open air only. The group was lucky to have good weather. "Every day was sunny, and it rained only once, right on the day we did not have any trips," the project’s leader said.
For one week, the students worked jointly with the Da studio musicians from St. Petersburg. "Our students walked the village, wrote poems which they later on recited as rap or hip-hop compositions," the school leader said, adding this experience would be used in work on historical quests. "This year, we mostly communicated with each other, which was interesting, and the students have received maximum information from teachers," Tyukina said.