The past centuary was a period of considerable historical changes that caused the transformation of most conventional conceptions and symbols. This process, often tragic and irreversible, affected the comprehension of the Solovki as a sociocultural sign. The profoundness of the consequences of the turn might be estimated by a comparison of associations released by references to the toponym by authors of the memoirs about the Solovetsky concentration camp and the jail operated at the territory of the Russian North in1923–1939 and those arised at our contemporaries.