Kuznetsk Fortress: A Russian Frontier Stronghold in Novokuznetsk

Site at a Glance

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★4.6

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Medium

Country

Russia

Primary era

Modern

External website

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Eras represented

Modern

Civilizations

Russian

Site type

Military

Remains

Fort

History

Kuznetsk Fortress is a Russian fortress in Novokuznetsk, Russia, built between 1800 and 1820 as a stone strongpoint of the Siberian Line, a chain of Russian frontier forts and defensive works across Siberia and adjoining borderlands. It stands on Voznesenskaya Mountain in the upper reaches of the Tom River, in the Kuznetsk district. Ordered by Emperor Paul I, the fortress incorporated eighteenth-century Western European principles of military fortification and was intended to protect southern Siberia from a perceived Chinese threat.

The First Kuznetsk Fort

A permanent fortified settlement was founded in April 1618. Its exact position has not been established, although it may have stood near the mouth of the Kondoma or opposite the mouth of the Bryaza River. It was probably located along the Ivantsevskaya–Kazachya channel, near the higher terrace later known as Nagorye. The settlement may have moved north toward the channel mouth in 1623 or 1624, when its area expanded fourfold.

By 1623–1624, the settlement included military, administrative, and economic buildings, as well as a wooden Church of the Savior, later designated the Transfiguration Cathedral. It was consecrated in August 1623. Officials were initially appointed from Moscow. T. Boborykin and O. Anichkov were named official voivodes, military-administrative governors who combined military command with civil and judicial authority, in 1617. A. Kharlamov and B. Kartashev served as local administrators in 1618–1619. Boborykin arrived in spring 1620 with 50 servicemen from Tomsk, strengthened the fort, secured the new Kuznetsk district’s administrative independence from Tomsk authorities, and established its first arable land.

Administrative Development and Frontier Warfare

From 1629, Kuznetsk was nominally part of the Tomsk administrative district, although its voivodes continued to report directly to Tobolsk and, on major matters, to Moscow. The settlement was formally recognized as a town in 1689. A drawing by Semyon Remezov, dated no later than 1675, shows the wooden fort as a two-part complex. An inner stockade, or “castle,” and an outer town were enclosed by a zigzag defensive wall.

Servicemen from Tomsk, Tyumen, and Verkhoturye built the fort under the direction of the Tatar head O. Kokorev, the Cossack head Molchan Lavrov, and the sons of boyars Bazhen Kartashev and Evstafiy Kharlamov. They were also instructed to bring surrounding Indigenous communities under state authority after the unrest of 1614–1616. During that unrest, local tributary districts withheld tribute and joined a coalition led by Yenisei Kyrgyz and Oirat forces against Tomsk.

The fortified town faced repeated attacks by surrounding peoples during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1667, the Kuznetsk fort repelled an assault by Kyrgyz, Tomsk and Kuznetsk Tatars, Teleuts, and Dzungars. A local legend holds that, during an attack in 1764, a twelve-year-old boy aimed the fort’s guns at the attackers.

The Stone Fortress

By the late eighteenth century, Kuznetsk remained an important strongpoint on the eastern flank of a frontier defensive system extending from the Caspian region to the Altai. Lieutenant-General Gustav Strandmann, commander of the Siberian Corps, designed two bastioned earthwork fortresses to modernize the defenses. A bastion is a projecting angular work that allows flanking fire along the faces of a fortification. Paul I approved the project in April 1798.

The lower earthwork, known as the Bolotnaya Citadel, was completed at the foot of Voznesenskaya Mountain by 1799. Construction of the main fortress on the mountain began in 1800 under Lieutenant-Engineer Bulygin. A system of defensive ditches and ramparts was formed in 1806. The work employed prisoners and hired contractors, and the only earlier structure retained within the construction area was the wooden Ascension Chapel.

The fortress mounted 18 guns in 1818. In 1819, it was removed from the regular military establishment and transferred to border-cordon administration, although construction was completed in 1820. By the end of the 1830s, it was no longer considered necessary, and military units were gradually withdrawn.

Later Uses and Destruction

In 1846, the fortress was transferred from the War Ministry to the Altai Mining Administration. Its internal buildings were rebuilt several times, and some were sold for demolition. During the 1860s, one altered building housed unmarried lower ranks of the Kuznetsk invalid command.

A prison for criminal offenders was established inside the fortress in 1870 and became known as the Kuznetsk Prison Castle. From 1872, the passage and observation tower was dismantled and altered so that its lower storey could support a gateway Church of Saint Elijah the Prophet. Paid for by the Tomsk merchant Yakov Petrov-Rodionov, the church was consecrated in 1876 and attached to the cathedral.

The old Ascension Chapel was dismantled in 1877. A new single-storey wooden chapel on a rubble-stone foundation was built beside it and consecrated on Ascension Day. In 1919, Red partisans burned the prison buildings during an attack on the town. The Church of Saint Elijah burned completely and remained unused for a long period. The Ascension Chapel was destroyed in the 1920s. Part of its commemorative cross remained in the Transfiguration Cathedral until 1934 and is now held by the Novokuznetsk Local History Museum.

Systematic dismantling of the fortress’s stone buildings for local construction continued until the late 1940s. In 1919, two fortress guns were removed for use during the assault on the village of Togul in Altai territory. One was later placed beside the partisan monument there, while the other reportedly sank during a crossing of the Chumysh River.

Preservation and Archaeology

Kuznetsk Fortress received the status of a monument of republican significance on 30 June 1960 and later became a federally significant cultural-heritage site. Restoration projects followed. The guardhouse was restored in the late 1970s but burned in 1997.

The Historical and Architectural Museum “Kuznetsk Fortress” was established in Novokuznetsk on 28 December 1991 and became a museum-reserve in 2011. Large-scale reconstruction in 1998 restored the Barnaul Tower and adjoining half-bastions, rebuilt the soldiers’ barracks on its former site, and added reconstructed fortress guns and mortars. In 2008, the officers’ house was recreated and stone sorties, passages that allowed defenders to move out from an enclosed work, were reconstructed in the ramparts. Further reconstruction took place in 2018.

Archaeological work in 1998 revealed the oldest known cultural burials in the Kuzbass region, with human burials accompanied by horses and dated to the first centuries AD. The fortress now contains a museum subordinate to the regional cultural administration, which organizes publication of a historical-local studies collection. A permanent exhibition of unique gold and silver jewelry was added in 2013.

Remains

The fortress originally comprised three principal parts: the Voznesenskaya Fortification, the Citadel, and the Provision Town. Its modern area is about 20 hectares. The perimeter forms an elongated rectangle enclosed by an earth rampart with redans, angular projections in the defensive line. Earthen gun ramps inside the redans allowed artillery to be raised into position. The corners were occupied by half-bastions, projecting works with one face and one flank. The Tomsk and Kuznetsk half-bastions retain sandstone facing.

Voznesenskaya Fortification

The Voznesenskaya Fortification had an arrow-like plan. Half-bastions stood at the projecting ends of its northeastern front, while converging ramparts extended southwest and closed with another half-bastion. The ramparts contained flèches, small angular fieldworks or salients in a defensive line. Dry ditches with stone escarps, sloping or retaining defensive faces, strengthened the enclosure.

A glacis, a sloping earthwork outside a ditch, and a covered way, a protected route along the outer edge of a fortification, protected the northeastern part. About 200 sazhens south of its tip stood the permanent Lower Tomsk Redoubt, which had stone escarps. A rampart with a flèche-like bend connected the redoubt to the Voznesenskaya Fortification. From the redoubt, a stone defensive wall ran toward the middle of the fortress, generally parallel to the ramparts.

Citadel and Provision Town

The Citadel was a quadrilateral bastioned earthwork strengthened on its northeastern side by a hornwork, an external defensive work with horn-shaped arms. It had broad dry ditches, a shared glacis and covered way, and a sally-port protected by a lunette. A lunette is a detached or projecting work with two faces and two flanks.

The Provision Town contained eight stone magazines adapted for defense and linked by stone defensive walls. Together with the Citadel and the Voznesenskaya Fortification, these works formed the fortress’s original defensive and storage arrangement.

Entrances and Interior Buildings

A brick, three-storey passage and observation tower stands between the stone half-bastions. The road to Barnaul led to this tower. The fortress interior contained eight stone buildings and one wooden structure: the guardhouse, powder magazine, soldiers’ barracks, senior officers’ house, soldiers’ kitchen, staff officers’ house, arsenal, Barnaul Passage Tower, and a wooden room for storing firefighting equipment.

The Barnaul Tower has been reconstructed with an appearance different from its 1934 form. Its domes and crosses were omitted to restore an earlier version of the tower. The soldiers’ barracks was rebuilt on its former site, and the senior officers’ house was recreated in 2008.

Chapels, Church, and Fortress Guns

The original Ascension Chapel was wooden. Its replacement, built in 1877, was a single-storey wooden structure on a rubble-stone foundation. The gateway Church of Saint Elijah the Prophet occupied the lower storey of the altered passage and observation tower. Its exterior included a decorative onion dome and belfry before the church burned completely in 1919.

Four former fortress guns now stand beside the Novokuznetsk Local History Museum, and two stand beside the museum in Kemerovo. One additional gun is presumed to be held by the Novosibirsk Local History Museum. These dispositions are separate from the gun placed at the Togul partisan monument and the gun reportedly lost during the Chumysh River crossing.