Religious retreat, pilgrimage site, military fortress, tsarist prison camp and gulag, a remarkable amount of Russian history has played out among these remote arctic islands in Russia's White Sea. Robeson traces the story of the Solovetski Archipelago from settlement by early monks, though its 17th-century expansion into one of the largest monasteries in the world and its 20th-century infamy as fortress and prison camp. With 30 illustrations. The islands were declared a natural and historical preserve in 1974 and a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1992. Roy Robson (who has also written about the Old Believers in modern Russia) is an associate professor of history at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.  (SIB41, $30.00)