It is amazing how many mysterious places on the map of Russia lie away from well-trodden hiking trails, historical monuments that are steadily turning into ruins day after day! One of such places is the Trongzund fortress, located on the outskirts of the small town of Vysotsk, in the Vyborg Bay of the Leningrad Region.
Trongzund, lost in the forest
The dense forest vegetation has almost completely absorbed the remains of ancient fortifications.
But once a formidable fortress was conceived by Peter the Great during the Northern War. It was supposed that it would become a powerful fort for the defense of Vyborg and the capital of the empire, St. Petersburg, under construction, from potential opponents. Now few know the history of this magnificent citadel. Her tangled mystical story dates back to the 18th century.
“By the iron will of Peter”
In 1710, during a fierce military campaign, Russian troops took Vyborg, which was previously Swedish possession. From here, the troops of Charles XII repeatedly threatened the young Russian capital, and the capture of Vyborg became an urgent necessity for Tsar Peter. As a result of the victory and the signing of the Nishtad Peace Treaty, strategically important new lands that need reliable protection have grown to the crown of the Russian Empire . The Russian emperor decided to build a defensive redoubt in the Strait of Trongsund, which would be covered from the sea by Vyborg recaptured from the Swedes.
Admiral Fedor Apraksin at the end of March 1710 made a report to the tsar that a place had been found where the enemy could be met with dignity.
The fortified town of Trongsund was founded where the strait has a width of only 180 m. But the enemy no longer poked his head in these lands, and the further development of events forced Peter to shift his attention to the strengthening of Kronstadt.
New Threats - Fort New Life
During the Crimean War, powerful forces of the Anglo-French squadron blocked Russian ships in the Baltic Sea. After the Baltic campaign, the government of the Russian Empire, in order to avoid further potential threats from the great European powers, considered it necessary to renew and strengthen the hopelessly outdated fortifications on the far approaches to the capital. So, on the site of the Trongzund constructions of Peter's times in the sixties of the XIX century, they decided to build new defensive fortifications, whose ruins have survived to this day.
Never fired a battle fortress
Large-scale construction on the site of Petrovsky Trongzund on the island of Uuransaari (now Vysotsky) began in 1864. Four sides of the new pentagonal fortress were fortified with gun batteries with the latest armament of the time - long-range rifled guns, the fifth side was a powerful moat. Under the redoubts are located food warehouses, powder cellars, barracks, and kitchens — the necessary components of a military bivouac. To connect all its parts, passages were constructed - ground and underground.
In the seventies, the strengthening and renewal of the redoubt continued: an internal road was laid, the combat power was reinforced with new guns. But already in the eighties, the Baltic defense strategy was sharply revised, and the Trongsund fortress was again considered obsolete, not meeting the needs of the times. In the early years of the 20th century, it was still maintained in combat condition, but the battles of the First World War did not affect it.
Winter war
The Vyborg lands, together with the Trongzund fortress, which had been inactive for a long time, went to Finland in 1918. More than 20 years have passed. In the winter of 1939-1940, battles between Finnish and Soviet troops broke out on the territory of the fortress for the only time in the history of its existence. The Finns desperately defended their Uuras (the then name of these places), but the Red Army units managed to break their resistance, and the territory again became Russian, that is, Soviet.
During these fierce battles, the machine gunner Kuzma Vysotsky made a heroic feat, in honor of which the Finnish Uuras was renamed Vysotsk in the late forties. Forty subsequent years, until the end of the eighties, the Trongsund fortress was considered a border outpost, which housed the garrison. Then the contents of the garrison were considered unnecessary, and it was finally withdrawn from these places. The fortress began to gradually turn into ruins, and the number of Vysotsk began to decline steadily. The number of residents of modern Vysotsk slightly exceeds 1000 people.
Fellow Petropavlovka
Now inexorably collapsing Trongsund fortress with dungeons, remnants rocky ramparts, powder cellars and vaulted brick corridors attract those who support the historical heritage of their country.
Connoisseurs of Russian fortification science note the uniqueness of this citadel, built and equipped with the latest military equipment of the sixties and seventies of the XIX century. They believe that Trongzund was created according to the same principles as the famous Peter and Paul Fortress of St. Petersburg: the location of poterns (hidden underground passages leading outside the ramparts), caponiers (vaulted structures located at the bottom of the rampart), powder cellars in both fortresses are exactly the same. The creation of Trongzund embodied the best engineering achievements of his time.
Time travel
While continuing the endless debate about the object of value, federal or regional, it is a fortification, it silently killed on the outskirts of Vysotsk. Only a few romantics who are close to traveling not only in space but also in time visit the Trongsund fortress. Everyone knows how to get to the quiet Vysotsk, located 120 kilometers from the Northern capital, but in order to find in the wild thickets the remnants of a once powerful military citadel that have gone into the ground, you need to be patient and very attentive. Having plunged into the forest, approaching the city outskirts, you can stumble upon the remains of an old quarry, from where they took the rock for the fortification ramparts. At a distance from it, on the lawn, a failure in the ground is revealed leading to an underground tunnel. Armed with a flashlight, travelers descend, and, having passed through an underground passage, fall on a rocky platform. It overlooks Trongsund - the fortress where it is located a well-preserved rampart, the walls of which are lined with granite boulders and where you can still see arched access gates, the remains of brick walls with loophole windows and feel the former power of this building.
Potato warehouse
It is not safe to wander alone through the vaulted dungeons of Trongzund alone and without a lantern. Wooden flooring has long decayed, brickwork collapses, locals use debris as garbage, and garages are set up behind one of the remaining rocky walls.
Impressive tourists, having got into gloomy dungeons and illuminated the arches, can be horrified at the first instant - in many places chains hang from the ceiling. Visitors say that the imagination immediately draws terrible pictures of interrogations with addiction, torture and inhuman punishment. However, there were no such horrors in the peaceful life of Fort Trongsund. The fortress in Russia on the island of Vysotsky did not know the fighting and, unlike his older brother, the Peter and Paul Fortress, was never a prison. And the chains hanging from the smoked dungeon ceilings are nothing but the attributes of a potato warehouse: in Soviet times, the underground galleries of the monument of military architecture were used to store potatoes.
Save cannot be destroyed ...
The surroundings of Vysotsk are majestic northern nature, gloomy spruce forests, quiet waters of a strait so narrow that it partially resembles a river and sandy beaches. In this pristine Trongzund more and more immersed. The fortress, the photo of which is published by tourists visiting it, surrenders every day under the onslaught of the forest and human neglect. Indifferent local historians are making efforts to preserve this monument, calling to stop its destruction. Several years ago, an examination of the condition of the object was carried out, and the conclusions drawn on its basis are disappointing. Walls of shafts carved out of granite can stand for several decades, but brick vaulted galleries are destroyed every day.
Unfortunately, the bureaucratic confusion does not allow to seriously engage in the restoration of the fortress, and after all, reviving it to life, one could create on the map of the Leningrad region an interesting and interesting tourist route with the elements of extreme tourism at the address: Uuras-Vysotsk, Trongzund fortress.