History of Kronstadt

Kronstadt - city fortress, city port

Rebellious city, the center of scientific inventions. Closed city, military unit. It's all about this city, about Kronstadt. The population of the city in rare pages of history exceeded 50 thousand people. Today Kronstadt is a long-standing athlete-all-rounder, who regretfully looks at the weakened muscles and recalls the past. Kronstadt has something to remember.

Petrovsky doc March 3, 2004

300-year-old Kronstadt is the sacrificial city of the national fleet. The way of life and features of the layout here are explained solely by the needs of the maritime department. An accidental guest, when tries to reach the main sights, in Kronstadt will inevitably rest either into the canal, or into the ravine, or into the lattice of the military warehouse.

The huge dock ravine in the center of Kotlin is part of the canal system conceived by Peter. Glory to Venice, Amsterdam did not give rest to the king-reformer. Kronstadt was destined to become the main ship repair base of the empire. After the death of the emperor, engineer Ludwig von Lyuberas proposed repairing ships at three docks of the so-called Cross. After entering the frigates, the water by gravity fell through a ravine into specially dug giant pit. This solution helped in a matter of hours to drain the docks. The saying was born during the construction: from Pokrov to Pokrov people die on the island.

The hydrotechnical miracle in the heart of Kotlin was accomplished thanks to the efforts of thousands of nameless excavators and the immense energy of Peter. Bloody Kronstadt construction lasted almost half a century. At the first tap, according to the will of the emperor, on the path of the canal they demolished all the buildings built before the development of Peter the island.

The construction of the Kronstadt Canal was completed under the management of Elizaveta Petrovna. The unobserved obelisks with the inscriptions “Why Russia won’t overcome with courage?” were installed at the opening of the discovery. A week after the first ship entered the dock of Peter, the author of the project, engineer Ludwig von Luberas, died.

In 1997, in honor of the construction of the dock, a memorial plaque was installed on one of the canal walls. The memorial sign was soon kidnapped by non-ferrous metal hunters.

Fort Kronslot August 15, 2013

Kronshlot is the castle of the crown.

Kronstadt - the castle of the city on the Neva. And Kranshlot is the key to that lock. The first Kronstadt fleet was built in the winter of 1704. In the history of Kronstadt, this city played a role no less than Rabbit Island in the history of St. Petersburg. In October 1703, Peter the Great personally made a model of the fortress on the bulk of the island. According to the plan of the king, an experienced navigator, Kronshlot had to control the deep-water channel, south of the city of Kotlin Island and not to approach of enemy ships to St. Petersburg under construction. King’s calculations justified. Already in the summer of 1704, the soldiers of Colonel Tolbukhin successfully repulsed the attack of the Swedish landing force on this site.

There is an unrecorded monument forgotten by God and people by the sovereign founder of the first Russian fort in the center of Kronflot. Before World War II, a bronze bust flaunted on the pedestal. The historical inscription, once covered with gilding, and now just red paint - is part of the instructions given by the emperor to the first commandant of the fortress, Colonel Fyodor Treydon: "Keep this citadel with God's help, and if anything happens, even to the last person." Dates 1703-1914 suggest that the destroyed monument was dedicated not only to Peter, but also to all Kronstadt forts. The construction of the latter ended by the First World War.

Memorial granite plaques on the wall of the western bastion of the fortress appeared at the beginning of the 20th century on the bicentennial of Kronstadt. Now the text is barely distinguishable. It is dedicated to engineers who rebuilt the fortress before the Crimean War.

The memorial of two empires crowns the row of young Soviet Russia. Today the fort still belongs to the military. To visit the facility requires the permission of the fleet commander.

Here is a ship demagnetization station. There are collapsing casemates of the Nikolaev battery. The staff of 17 retired sailors with pensions up to 2 thousand rubles per month. Coloring post-Soviet desolation.

The fortress is great, if it has never shot at the enemy. The old artillery proverb justifies the efforts of the tsar government spent on the construction of Kronstadt forts. A well-thought-out system of fortifications, including 19 island and about 10 coastal fortresses, forced the enemy to abandon all attempts to approach St. Petersburg.

The first group of forts, which arose after 1703, closed the island of Kotlin from the south and was designed to protect the city from the Swedish invasion.

The next stage of construction dates back to the middle of the 19th century and is associated with new military threats on the eve of the Eastern Crimean War. Some forts were built for decades, others, like a group of northern ones, in just one winter season. The main positional calculation was to cross the fire of artillery batteries to cover ships, rushing to the city.

There are not many people who wanted to break through. So in the summer of 1854, the Anglo-French squadron approached to Kronstadt, but did not dare to storm.

The forts were re-armed as artillery developed and the firing range increased. The construction of the most powerful coastal fortifications was completed by 1914.

Port city

The golden age of Kronstadt - the 60s, 80s of the XIX century.

The city had a special governor's status. All ships bound for Petersburg stayed in the harbors of Kotlin before the construction of the sea canal. About 3,000 ships visited Kotlin per year. The island consisted of vice consulates of Belgium, Spain, Brazil, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. A clear military leadership made it possible in a short time to turn Kronstadt into a model city of the Empire. The port specificity of the truth made significant adjustments to this naval idyll.

At 50,000 residents in the city had about 200 drinking establishments. According to the descriptions of the historian Peter Nikolaevich Stolpyansky, the sailors managed to lower empty bottles on the ropes from the barracks, and the generous merchants who came out of the establishment took money and immediately sent the dishes filled with a known liquid to the top. In order to prevent such a smuggling method of extracting "living moisture", the authorities ordered that the attendant wings be bricked up with windows.

In parallel with drunkenness, prostitution also flourished on the island. In the 12 houses of tolerance customers expected about a thousand girls.

The enterprising shipowners made additional flights to the island of "love and rage" after the ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages on holidays,

100 years ago, during the celebration of the bicentennial of Kronstadt, the military governor Robert Viren made the following diagnosis to the Russian island of contrasts: “The city, in the true sense of the word, the city of Kronstadt has not yet become. His budget is extremely modest. Almost everything that is in Kronstadt was created at the expense of the fleet. ”

In 1917, Peter Viren, the hero of the Russo-Japanese War, a clever man and unconditionally cruel to the lower ranks, the sailors were brutally killed and the body was thrown into a dock ravine.

Naval Cathedral

March 7, 2004

Naval Cathedral of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker

The main naval cathedral recalls one of the main shrines of Orthodoxy. Since 1998, over a period of several years, a quarter of a percent of the salary of each military sailor has been deducted for the construction of this temple.

The project of the architect Vasil Kosyakov was approved by Nikolai II. The temple on the island of naval glory has become one of the largest places of worship in Russia.

With a length of 83 meters and a height of 70 meters, he contained up to 5,000 believers.

The peculiarity of the cathedral is the combination of church and maritime symbols. Anchors and life safers for sailors mean salvation on the waters. For parishioners, the temple grants hope for salvation in the sea of life. According to Kosyakov’s plan at the beginning of the 20th century, the floor of the church resembled a seabed. Under this ugly wooden flooring, a mosaic depicting starfish, jellyfish and animals has been preserved. The dome of the temple painted as the sky. The sailor who came to the cathedral saw what he saw most of his life.

The temple was closed in 1929 for parishioners. At the initiative of the local party committee, it was proposed to install a red star or a statue of Lenin instead of a cross on the dome. Lenin had to stand with his arm extended towards the sea and, according to the proletarian plan, invite foreign workers to visit the USSR. Due to technical difficulties, the project was abandoned.

In 1932, a club named after Maxim Gorky was opened in the church. On the island, the cathedral became known as Maxim.

In the 1930s, the main shrines of the cathedral disappeared: black marble memorial plaques with the names of sailors who did not return to Kronstadt. The boards were made of black marble. Several mysterious and at the same time blasphemous stories are connected with their disappearance in the 30s.

According to one version, these plaques were laid in the foundation of new buildings. They bricked the streets and used them as benches in the baths. The most terrible story tells about how they chopped meat on these memorial shrines in the food shops of the city. In 2002, everyone understood that it would not be easy to bring the church back to life. But no one imagined that the first step in reviving the shrine would result in such a gloomy sign. When fastening the cross to the top of the cathedral, it broke down.

Today, the Naval Cathedral remains under the jurisdiction of the military. The issue of sharing a cult monument with the church is being resolved. Its condition is now close to emergency. But no major restoration work is underway. It feels like the military is waiting until the church is finally handed over to the Orthodox. And the church is waiting for the fleet to take care of its main shrine.

Fort Paul

The illustration of the possible consequences of a man-made disaster in the middle of the XIX century was the most powerful fortification on the outskirts of Kronstadt. Before the end of construction on the eve of the Crimean company, Fort Paul was called Risbank. Fort Paul served only a few decades after the conquering the cost of tremendous efforts. At the end of XIX it became obvious that other structures were needed to protect against new naval guns. Since that time, the fort was used as a mine storage.

After the revolution, Paul occasionally reminded of his existence to St. Petersburg with explosions of various strengths.

In 1919, the prepared rupture of ammunition served as a signal for the White Guard insurgency on the Red Hill.

In 1923, while trying to clear a mine in the fort, cadets from the Frunze School were blown up.

After the war, the dilapidated fort was enthusiastically finished off from the aircraft during the shooting of the movie “Baltic Sky”.

The lithograph of Risbank of the middle of the XIX century and the modern kingdom of broken brick. There is no need to worry about saving the fort.