The book of a well-known researcher of the Russian Old Believers and Sectarianism, A. S. Prugavin, is a collection of articles previously published by the author in the newspaper ‘Pravo’ in 1902-1904. In 1905, in the situation of the growing social-political crisis, P. published them in a separate booklet to highlight the importance of the reform of religious and criminal legislation on religious crimes in order to achieve political stability and civil accord in Russia. Defending the ideals of religious tolerance and religious equality, the author offered a critical review of such a specific phenomenon of Russian religious and political life as monastic prisons, and also presented stories of their most prominent prisoners – ‘those, who had misfortune for certain offenses or crimes against Church and religion to be imprisoned in the monastery prison’. The work consists of three essays: ‘Monastic prisons and their prisoners’, ‘The end of the Solovki prison’, ‘Monastic imprisonment of the latest time’. According to the author, the monastic prisons were ‘a sad and gloomy anomaly that has survived in our State – Church life from distant, long past centuries of religious persecution and intolerance’. Monasteries served as places of exile and imprisonment: such as Solovetsky, Savior-St Euthymius, Intercession, and Deposition of the Robe in Suzdal, Sinai on Northern Dvina, Saviour-Prilutsky, and St Cyrill of Beloe Lake near Vologda, Valaam, Dormition and Presentation in Dolmatovo, Holy Trinity in Selenginsk, Assumption in Nerchinsk, Kashinsky in the Tver Province and many others.
The author dwells in detail on the history of establishment of the institution of monastic prisons, on the description of the conditions of exile and imprisonment, as well as on those goals that were pursued by such punishment: punishment, deprivation of the opportunity to spread his delusion, instruction in the true faith and correction of moral. The work was based on the sources and rich with factual and statistical material; it contained excerpts from various instructions and other written documents. The second essay was brought to life with the closure of a prison in the Solovetsky Monastery in 1903, and influenced with personal impressions got by the author during his trip to the Arkhangelsk Region the same year. He noted that the crimes which brought prisons to Solovki differed much, and the topic of monastic prisons was not available for public discussions.