The Solovki special camp (later the Solovki special prison), was set up in 1923 on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea as a remote and inaccessible place of detention, primarily intended for socialist opponents of Soviet Russia's new Bolshevik regime. Its remote situation made escape almost impossible. The treatment of the prisoners in the Soviet-era camp attracted much criticism in Western Europe and the USA. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called Solovki the "mother of GULAG" (Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camp). The Solovki "special" camp served as a testing ground where security measures were developed and tried, as were innovations in "living conditions", work production norms, and other forms of repression.