In 1752, several armed Russian detachments emerged from the Omsk fortress to the west into the wild steppe. Having dispersed over several hundred miles, these detachments began to build fortifications unprecedented for these places - fortresses, redoubts and lighthouses. The virgin land of the Ishim Plain was covered with geometrically correct figures - Russian defensive structures built according to the system of the French engineer Vauban were designed to ensure the safety of the subjects of the Russian Empire from raids by Dzungar and Kyrgyz-Kaisak nomads.
This is how the Tobol-Ishim fortified line began, which gave a powerful impetus to the Russian development of the Irtysh region. The Senate decree of 1752 commanded:
"1. Lead the line with only one structure of fortresses, redoubts and lighthouses between them, namely: make it up of 2 hexagonal fortresses, 9 quadrangular fortresses, 33 redoubts, 42 lighthouses.
2. For the settlement and work of regular and irregular troops, 3642 people should be used from the local garrison and service Cossacks and Tatars, who could build those fortresses and so on without paying money earned from the treasury of Her Imperial Majesty.”.
Construction continued for three years, and in 1755 the new Tobol-Ishim (aka Presnogorkovskaya) line was completed. From Tobol to the Irtysh, from Zverina Head to Omsk, a chain of fortresses and redoubts stretched for 584 miles, cutting a straight line through the ancient Siberian steppe.
On the territory of the modern Omsk region there are the remains of two of the nine fortresses of the Line - Pokrovskaya and Nikolaevskaya. And if the Pokrovskaya fortress has been more or less studied (although there is not much information on it), then the Nikolaevskaya fortress is practically unknown.
The Nikolaevskaya fortress was built in 1752-1755, simultaneously with other fortifications of the Tobol-Ishim (Presnogorkovskaya) line. However, already in 1761 it was moved to another place, closer to a source of fresh water - a large round lake. Where the original fortress was located is a historical mystery. True, there is information that the distance from the old to the new fortress was approximately 4 versts, but it is unknown where these versts should be measured. I would venture to suggest that it is necessary to count to the south, to the salt lakes of the Kamyshlovsky log, since fortifications were always built near bodies of water, and the reason for the transfer of the fortress was precisely the lack of fresh water. It is quite possible that the first fortress was located in the area of the modern villages of Zvezdino and Hofnungsthal, but no matter how much I looked at satellite images of the environs of these settlements, I did not see anything similar to ditches and bastions. It is quite possible that they were destroyed in the mid-twentieth century, during the years of Khrushchev’s upturning of the virgin lands, when almost the entire Irtysh region fell under total plowing.
Speaking of satellite images. Thanks to this tool, now available to any schoolchild, we can once again kick our candidates and doctors out of history, whose scientific work consists of reprinting all sorts of mistakes from each other. These mistakes did not spare the Nikolaev Fortress either. It so happened that in the 1970s, for some reason, the Omsk professor of geography Fialkov (1909-1995) became interested in the study of the Presnogorkovskaya Line - a lump and seasoned human being who left a very significant mark on the scientific life of Omsk. Being a very proactive person, he managed to get for his expeditions neither more nor less, but an entire plane with geodetic equipment, with the help of which aerial photographs were taken of almost all the eastern fortifications of the Tobol-Ishim line.
Based on the results of the expeditions, Fialkov writes an article “The Bitter Line of Military Fortifications” ( Notes on local history of the Omsk region. Omsk, 1972. P. 52-61), where for some reason he makes two gross, inexplicable mistakes. Firstly, he points out that the Nikolaev Fortress is located on northwestern outskirts the village of Nikolaevka, although one glance at the map is enough to determine that the fortress is located in the southeast.
Secondly, he writes that “on the southern side the fortress had an auxiliary external fortification - a crown, which is clearly visible in the photo”. The auxiliary external reinforcement is really clearly visible in the picture, but it’s not a crownwork at all. Kronverk- this is an outer bastion and two half-bastions on the flanks, similar to a crown on the plan (hence the name: Kronwerk(German) – crown-shaped reinforcement).
In the Nikolaev fortress there was ravelin(lat. ravelere– separate) – fortification triangular form, located in front of the curtain in front of the fortress moat in the gap between the bastions, serving for cross-fire of the approaches to the fortress perimeter and supporting neighboring bastions with its fire.
Not a single historian doubted Fialkov’s words, and for forty years now (!) scientific articles, monographs, dissertations and encyclopedias have been circulating "northwest of Nikolaevka" And "kronverg". It got to the point that even on Wikimapia some user placed the fortress not on the clearly visible contours of ramparts and ditches in the southeast of Nikolaevka, but in the northwest, right on the houses of residents (!?), where there had never been any fortress.
These historians are funny people after all. They sit in their departments and write articles based on the works of the same desk researchers. Historians don’t think about logic, common sense and other boring things - since the authoritative scientist N wrote it this way, it means that it was so. The fact that N-words may contradict the laws of economics, physics or geography is not taken into account, because authoritative scientists never make mistakes. After such incidents, you begin to understand that Academician Fomenko and his comrades are probably not so wrong with his criticism of official historiography.
However, we digress. What was the Nikolaev Fortress like? It was a square with sides bent inward, with bastions at the corners. The moat around the fortress reached a width of 13 meters (according to Fialkov), and on the rampart there were walls and towers made of birch forest. In 1765, the commander of the Siberian lines, Lieutenant General Springer, started rebuilding the fortifications entrusted to him in accordance with the latest achievements of European fortification. The wooden walls of fortresses and redoubts were replaced with earthen ones, tiered fortifications were replaced by longitudinal-flank ones, and internal structures were rebuilt.
It was then that the Nikolaev Fortress received a southern ravelin, which began to sharply distinguish it from other fortresses of the Presnogorkovskaya line, which received four ravelins each and turned from quadrangular to octagonal. In this regard, we can conclude that the Nikolaev Fortress was reconstructed according to a unique project, while the rest of the New Line fortresses were rebuilt according to a standard model.
Inside the fortress there were the usual structures for that time: a powder magazine, a provisions store, barracks, stables, storerooms, huts and light rooms. The total area of the fortress was about 41,000 square meters. m. There were cannons on the rampart, and the garrison was very small - about 70 people. His life was practically no different from the life of the garrison of the Belogorsk fortress, described by Pushkin in “The Captain's Daughter” - guarding the border, fighting gangs of nomads, patrols, campaigns, guards. During breaks between services there is hunting, fishing, haymaking, etc. Also, the inhabitants of the Line were engaged in a craft that was then popular in Siberia - digging up ancient mounds left over from the Sarmatian culture. This business was very profitable, but also extremely dangerous.
Slovtsov writes: “Despite the trials and tribulations experienced from time to time, our daring peasants, treasure hunters, did not stop going abroad, where they learned firsthand about the existence of ancient graves. It happened that while they were digging in the hillocks, the Kyrgyz riders killed them on the spot or captured them. In July 1764, on the occasion of similar misfortunes, again firmly confirmed, as before, in 1727, it was commanded that none of the Siberians secretly go out into the steppe.”.
The relations of the Russian administration with the Kyrgyz (as the Kazakhs were then called) is the topic of a separate article. I’ll quote Slovtsov again: “No matter how small the described dangers and unrest are, in comparison with the disasters that were at the same time caused by the gangs of the Small Horde along the Uyskaya and Ural lines, Lieutenant General Springer, from 1763 to 1771, put the Siberian line in reverence both for its structure and and with unremitting observation, he strictly ordered that nomadic wanderings of the Middle Horde should not be allowed at any time closer to our border than a 10-verst distance. The disobedient Kirghiz were pacified by military force, those accused of wine were punished corporally, and the border enjoyed peace and security. Philanthropy is comforting and praiseworthy when those who are spared know how to sincerely appreciate wise love.”.
The construction of the Tobol-Ishim line caused a sharp increase in the Russian population in the Irtysh region. Here, on the fertile steppe black soil, under the protection of fortresses and redoubts, peasant migrants, exiles, aged soldiers and Cossacks began to settle. Just yesterday, the fortifications, alone in the vast steppe, began to be overgrown with plantings, cultivated fields, and roads. In 1776, the first wooden church of St. Nicholas was built near the Nikolaevskaya fortress, and the small settlement began to rapidly turn into a rich village.
The motley population of the Presnogorkovskaya line (from exiled Poles to Bashkirs serving military service) was converted into Cossacks, according to the custom of that time. In 1808, Emperor Alexander I approved the Regulations on the Siberian Cossack Army, which divided the Cossack population of the Line into departments, villages and villages. The village of Nikolaevskaya became the center of a large territorial formation, which included the villages of Pervotarovsky, Losevsky, Solenoozerny, Volchansky, Pokrovsky, Kurgansky, Orlovsky and others.
The end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries was the heyday of Nikolaevka and the Siberian Cossacks in general. In 1879, when the son Joseph was born to the shoemaker Vissarion Dzhugashvili in the Georgian city of Gori, the Nikolaevskaya village already had 185 households, 962 residents of both sexes, there was a church, two village schools: men's and women's. In September and December, two fairs were held, the turnover of which reached forty thousand rubles. There were also 53 shops, 2 forges, 15 mills, 2 drinking establishments and a postal station.
There were 475 horses, 665 heads of cattle and 1096 heads of small livestock in the village. By 1914, the cattle population had grown to 5,000 head. A certain Bredikhin had his own stud farm in the village, where he bred horses of the English breed.
By the beginning of the First World War, a paramedic station and several butter factories and brick factories were operating in Nikolaevka. Almost all households had arable land - up to 20 thousand pounds of grain were exported from the village every year... In general, a typical picture of “Russia, which we lost.”
A century has passed. How does the former Cossack village of Nikolaevskaya live today and what is the condition of the fortress?
The road from Omsk to Nikolaevka is in more or less normal condition. First, this is the M51 highway, which is a pleasure to drive along - no potholes, no trucks, no traffic cops. Then - several kilometers of bad asphalt and a large overgrown lake with gray rickety houses perched on the banks opens before the observer's gaze.
At the northwestern tip of Nikolaevka (where Fialkov's followers place the fortress) there is a sown field and the remains of a once large garden. All around are birch copses, meadows with steppe vegetation, and the calls of quails.
The village streets are full of abandoned houses, weeds grow wherever possible and impossible, there is no running water or gas and there never was. A typical Siberian village of the era of sovereign democracy.
A typical resident of a modern Siberian village at 56 years old looks 76.
According to the natives, Nikolaevka lives entirely on imported water. They don’t take water from the lake, they don’t dig wells - the water in them is always salty. Let me remind you that this is the 21st century, and the first water pipes, according to historians, appeared thousands of years ago, in Ancient Rome. It’s hard to call Lake Nikolaevskoe picturesque - its shores are covered with garbage, and the water surface is overgrown with reeds in many places.
Where is the village government? Where are the butter factories and brick factories? Where are the English breed horses? There is nothing.
From the former history of the Nikolaevskaya village of the Second Department of the Siberian Cossack Army, only the building of a trading store built in 1906 has survived.
Don’t believe the sign - there has been no “Stanichnik” store in Nikolaevka for a long time. The ancient building is boarded up and is gradually collapsing. It belongs to one of the local residents who lives nearby and guards its unique gates from metal collectors.
In Soviet times, for some reason, some kind of canopy was added to the shop, disfiguring the original appearance of the building.
With good care, such a house can last for hundreds of years. I'm afraid this is not about Nikolaevka. A beautiful ancient monument is slowly dying and no one cares about it.
The ramparts and ditches of the Nicholas Fortress are in fairly good condition. True, part of its territory is occupied by the estate of some local resident, but this does not particularly interfere.
The moat along the northeastern wall is filled with flowering water, and along the southeastern wall it is overgrown with trees.
It is impossible to determine the place where fortifications stood, such as a provision store or stables - the grass is in the way, and there is no plan of the fortress on the Internet. Amateur archaeologists often visit Nikolaevka and leave behind heaps of uprooted earth, but none of them shares information about the artifacts found there. But over 250 years, a lot of interesting things have probably accumulated there.
I’m tired of writing this, but once again I have to state the complete and total indifference of both our state and society as a whole to its own history. If the Nikolaev Fortress was located not in the Irtysh region, but somewhere in the Texas region, it would be a thriving tourist attraction. Enterprising Americans would restore the fortress with all its buildings, local residents in costumes of Cossacks and nomads would stage colorful shows with saber cutting and shooting from ancient cannons, and numerous tourists in a nearby souvenir shop would buy hare sheepskin coats and fox malachai...
Today, either historians specializing in Siberia of the 18th century, or “black diggers”, or local history bloggers know about the Nikolaev Fortress. Nikolaevka is not known to the general public. The Ministry of Culture of the Omsk Region spends millions of budgetary funds on useless “Holidays of the North”, but cannot find money to install an information sign in the fortress and a road sign on the M51 highway.
What does the future hold for Nikolaevka? I'm afraid it's not good. In another 10-20 years, only people who care about history will remember about the ancient Cossack village. Residents will disperse, some houses will be destroyed, some will be taken away, and only the collapsed and crumbling fortress will be a reminder of the glorious past - a monument to military valor, courage and hard work of their ancestors.
The easternmost point of the Chelyabinsk region. The border line cuts like a wedge into the territory of neighboring Kazakhstan. This is Varna district. Nikolaev Fortress- the ambitious brainchild of a grandiose Orenburg project - is visible from several kilometers away. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Cossacks protected the local population from raids by nomadic tribes - Kyrgyz-Aisaks, as the Kazakhs were called in the 18th century, who set up ambushes along rivers, in forest groves, attacked and took someone to Central Asia and sold them there.
In total, 5 fortresses (or more) were built according to a standard design, located at a distance of 100 kilometers from each other. They formed the line of the fortified area. Built around the same time. Redoubts were built between the fortresses. The Imperial, Konstantinovskaya, and Mikhailovskaya fortresses have not survived. And if they had survived, they would now be standing on the territory of Kazakhstan. And another Naslednitskaya is located further south in the Bredinsky district. It was built in 1835 and named after the heir to the throne Alexander, the future Second, who recently visited these lands. On the territory of the fortress there is a temple in honor of the Holy Prince Alexander Nevsky. There are more than a hundred kilometers between Nikolaevskaya and Naslednitskaya, but they look like twins. Within a radius of 20 kilometers around each fortress there were Cossack settlements.
Nikolaevskaya was built in 1836-1838. The temple in it is exactly the same only in honor of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. The fortress was built of red brick of an unusual shape. The four towers in the corners are observation posts. There were also secret warehouses for gunpowder. The temple was not only a temple, but also a defensive element; it could be used for shooting during raids. In 1837 alone, the fortresses of the Orenburg border line withstood about 50 attacks by Kazakh nomads led by Khan (or Sultan) Kenesary Kasimov (aka Kene Khan and also Khan Kasym). This comrade zealously fought against Russia in 1837-1847.
The main task of the Cossack border guards was to patrol the border. The Nikolaev Fortress took 2 years to build. To be more precise, this is not a fortress, but a fortification, because the walls were not designed to withstand cannon strikes. But the nomads didn’t even have guns, and most importantly, they couldn’t jump over three-meter walls on horses. The fortress is small and remote. It withstood more than one raid by nomads. The biggest resistance came in 1839, when Nicholas Fortress Khan Kasym's detachment of about two thousand people attacked from the direction of Steppe. The Kazakhs now erected monuments to him, probably no less than the Bashkirs to their Salavat. There were no further serious attacks. The fortress regularly played the role of intimidation. The nomads, having arrived on the other side and seeing these powerful walls, immediately quickly realized that they could not interfere further.
The history of the fortress is connected with the name of the famous Vladimir Dahl, a compiler of an explanatory dictionary and an expert on Russian literature. They say that he personally participated in the selection of a site for the construction of the fortress. In 1833, Dahl was sent to serve in Orenburg, where he became an official for special assignments under the military governor.
Today, the forged cast-iron gates open once a week on Thursdays for parishioners of the small church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, which miraculously survived the years of Soviet power. There are not many of them, 5-10 local residents, and the priest comes 90 km from Varna. They say that an underground passage came from the fortress, which led far beyond its borders. They even tried to find him, but abandoned the idea. The bell for the temple was once brought all the way from Nizhny Novgorod, there were many icons. But vandals in the 30s destroyed everything, including the cemetery. Here in the temple there was a granary, and grain chests were stuffed with icons, gravestones were stolen around the house. In 1979, it was decided to restore the temple and fortress. Restorers from Kyiv removed the domes, crosses and took them away. After a while they returned it but without gilding. Everything in the Alexander Nevsky Church was also destroyed. But both of these temples have survived and are now working. The decoration is very modest. There is no luxury here, unlike the capital's churches. As the elders of Optina Hermitage predicted: “Everything will be in gold, but there will be no grace.” So here it’s just the opposite. Grace and such a special peaceful atmosphere. Once in the Nikolaev Fortress, you need to climb the bell tower of the fortress church, to its windy height. The Ayat River will sparkle below. Its rather steep bank will rise and disappear towards the horizon. Somewhere to the south is foreign land. The new line returned after 1991 and the collapse of the Union.
Nikolai Rogozev was born and lived for the first twenty years in the village. Then he went to St. Petersburg and worked in electrical engineering - making alarms and radar stations. But later he dropped everything and returned home.
During perestroika in the neighboring village of Bolshie Gorki, his mother was given a plot of six acres. Nikolai built a house and a bathhouse there, and somehow there wasn’t enough space.
Crossed the road wherethere was an abandoned quarry. And Nikolai decided to build a fortress there - “Nikolaev’s amusing fortress.”
At first he and his daughter drew everything on paper, then he took up the instrument. I did everything myself, although I couldn’t do it before. Sometimes friends and helpers came, and in especially difficult cases, guest workers.
Nikolai mined construction material right here in the quarry. The work was hellish. The stones lay in open ground. At first he lifted and dragged them by hand, then on a sled, children's ice skates, then with a winch. In the end, I came to the conclusion that hiring a tractor was both faster and cheaper.
Nicholas divided the fortress into three zones. The upper one has “extreme” slides.
Middle - with a lighthouse and a boat. He brought the longboat from Strelnya - at the local club it served as a dumpster. There is also a “musical kitchen” where anyone can play with lids and pots.
Well, below there is a concert stage and areas for ax throwing and archery.
There are watchtowers along the perimeter. You can just sit there and play war games.
Now Nikolai is building a forge. Again he moves stones and drags earth.
But his most important tool is a shovel. Without her - nowhere. Cheesecake slides require constant “updating”: where the snow needs to be thrown up, and where, on the contrary, it needs to be scraped off. Only then does a perfect glide occur.
Nikolai does not earn money from the fortress. As he says, it’s only enough for tea, and that’s all..
- Where? After all, admission is free, the only cost is to rent cheesecakes. And that’s it, says Nikolai.
This ravine has long been privately owned by a private organization, which in the near future plans to begin building cottages here.
- They say use it for now. So I use it as best I can,” Rogozev jokes sadly.
In the village of Bolshie Gorki near St. Petersburg, there is a stone “amusing” fortress, where everyone will find entertainment to their liking: here you can go through a real obstacle course, do archery, become a drummer in the “musical kitchen,” ride cheesecakes down high slides, and practice throwing ax or just walk along the stone walls. A few years ago, this fortress was built with all the fun of a simple village resident Nikolai Rogozev. With his own hands, Nikolai carried stones and built walls from them so that the local population could have an interesting time. Now, people not only from the immediate vicinity, but even from St. Petersburg, come to the “Nicholas Fortress,” as the building is popularly called. Rogozev is only happy to see all the guests: the more people, the merrier.
Second life of an abandoned quarry
Nikolai Rogozev grew up in one of the villages in the Leningrad region, and in his youth he left to conquer the city: he moved to St. Petersburg, where he worked as an electrician for a long time. Despite the great opportunities of a city dweller, Nikolai was still more attracted to the countryside, and he decided to return to his native place. Rogozev settled in a small house in the village of Bolshie Gorki in the Lomonosov region, and life began to flow quietly and peacefully.
Next to Nikolai’s site there was an abandoned quarry, which stood idle and only spoiled the surrounding landscape. Without thinking twice, Rogozev decided to turn the undeveloped area into the main village center: he planned to build a “fun” fortress here with entertainment that would attract both children and adults. Inspired by his idea, Nikolai drew on paper a plan for the future stone town, and then got down to business.
Nicholas built a fortress from stones found in a quarry. Photo:
From ax throwing to downhill slides
The construction of the fortress turned out to be no easy task even at the first stage of work. Nikolai pulled boulders and stones from the quarry and carried them to an impromptu construction site. To make his work a little easier, Rogozev came up with the idea of transporting a heavy load on a children's sled, and then he realized that he couldn't do it without a tractor. When the materials were finally prepared, the former electrician began building the walls and towers. Although Nikolai had never had to work with tools before, the construction of the fortress was in full swing and turned out as well as possible: Rogozev was helped by friends and some local residents.
The fortress has a lot of entertainment for every taste. Photo: From the personal archive of Nikolai Rogozev
Soon, in the place where there used to be an abandoned ravine, an unusual stone fortress grew up. It consists of three parts. On the lower “floor” Nikolai installed a stage for various events and equipped a forge and a shooting range for archery and ax throwing. In the central part of the fortress there is a musical installation made of pots with lids. The site is illuminated by a small lighthouse, near which a real restored boat is moored, which previously served as a garbage dump. Having climbed to the very top, everyone can slide down high slides or overcome an obstacle course - get to the other end of the fortress using a rope over a ravine.