Focus on this artwork and explain the Design and symbolism.
The monument comprises the Solovki Stone, a massive granite slab from the Solovetsky Islands, where the Solovki concentration camp operated in the 1920s and 1930s. The prison camp's diminutive name "Solovki" became shorthand in Russian for a punitive network of camps that already held more than 100,000 inmates in the 1920s. Between the 1930s and 1950, it has been estimated, the number of people who passed through the Gulag (as it later became known) reached 18 million, at least 1,500,000 of whom died in the camps. The Gulag traumatized the population and had a lasting impact on several generations; it left its imprint on many aspects of society and culture.The granite slab was selected from among the boulders near the Savvatiyev Skethe (hermitage), which was used to house political prisoners in the 1920s. There on 19 December 1923, guards and a special firing squad shot and killed protesting prisoners. The massacre marked a new stage in the repressive measures employed by the Soviet regime, and set an important precedent for resistance. Some sources assert that the stone was taken from Mount Sekirna, a hill in the vicinity of the Skethe. The Voznesensky Skethe  (hermitage) on Mount Sekirna was used as a punishment block and execution yard.As an artefact from "that very place", keeping in touch with "the spirit of our ancestors", the Solovki Stone symbolizes a pre-Christian idea of continuity and the hereditivity of existence. In its designers conception, the stone's rough aesthetics endow it with a "backbone of personality that endures despite confronting faceless evil".The monument design is minimalist and it has a non-religious, secular character. It features a crude granite slab, 1.7 m (5 ft 7 in) high, mounted on a square granite pedestal (0.35 m × 2.35 m × 2.3 m [1 ft 2 in × 7 ft 9 in × 7 ft 7 in]), itself based on a concrete impost surrounded by granite footings.0.2 m (7.9 in) high. The edges are oriented on the four cardinal points of the compass. From a certain angle, the stone resembles an elephant, which in Russian ('слон', 'slon') sounds like the abbreviation S.L.O.N. [Соловецкий лагерь особого назначения], the formal title of the "Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp".
Russian Gulag Solovki concentration camp Solovetsky Islands