Location: South- West of Molodezhnoe, Vyborgsky District, Leningrad Oblast Map
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Fort Ino or Fort Nikolaevsky (форт Ино or форт Николаевский) is an old abandoned coastal fortress situated in Vyborgsky District, Leningrad Oblast in Russia. Fort Ino was constructed in 1909- 1916 as part of ground defenses for the capital of the Russian Empire of Saint Petersburg. It numbered 2000 infantry, 2000 artillery personnel and over 500 soldiers from other types of formations (engineers, Cossacks and etc). In January of 1917 this number grew to a total of 5500 men. After the Russian Revolution the fort basically lost most of its garrison. In 1918 only 200 soldiers remained defending it. Finnish White Army (anti- Bolshevik army) approached Fort Ino and an officer of the former Imperial Russian Army demanded surrender. The defenders instead blew up remaining structure on 14 May and retreated to the Red Navy ships that were sent to their rescue. The Finns captured the citadel, but it was largely reduced to rubble. According to Russian- Finnish Treaty of Tartu it was completely demolished by the Finnish government in 1921. Its ruins were abandoned.
1. Gun Battery 4 by 12"
2. Open Gun Battery 4 by 12"
3.
Gun Battery 4 by 6"
4. Gun Battery 8 by 10"
5. Mortar
Battery 8 by 11"
6. Defensive wall
7. Concrete trenches
with infantry bunkers
8. Warehouse for 76 mm guns
9.
Warehouse for headquarters
10. Post for measurement of
distances
11. Machine gun
12. Living quarters
13.
Military base
14. Warehouses
15. Bus stop "21 km"
(twenty first kilometer)
Construction
In 1909, the General Staff approved a
plan according to which, 60 km west of St. Petersburg, at the narrowing
of the Gulf of Finland - the Strait of Stirsudden - an advanced
mine-artillery position was created. Its core was two new coastal forts,
each of which was able to successfully conduct an artillery duel with
the fleet of the line and prevent minesweeping. On the southern shore of
the bay, on a coastal hill near the village of Krasnaya Gorka, the
construction of Fort Alekseevsky began, on the northern shore on a cape
near the village of Ino (Privetninskoye) - Fort Nikolaevsky. Their
advanced batteries at Cape Gray Horse on the south coast and near the
village of Pumala (Sands) on the north were moved another 6 km to the
west.
The forts "Nikolaevsky" and "Alekseevsky" were designed
taking into account the latest achievements of Russian engineering and
bore a number of the main features of the so-called "Russian Fort" by
the outstanding fortifier K. I. Velichko. A significant difference
between the project of the “Ino” fort and the classic fort by K.I.
Velichko was the presence of large-caliber artillery (in fact, it was
built for this purpose). Moreover, 305 mm caliber guns were used in
coastal fortifications for the first time.
The village of Ino was
the largest village in the Uusikirk volost of the Vyborg province of the
Grand Duchy of Finland. A typical Finnish village consisted of dozens of
farms scattered over a large area. In addition, dachas were built here
(before the revolution, there were 68 dachas and villas of
Petersburgers; the most famous of the local dacha owners were
academician V. M. Bekhterev and artist V. A. Serov). On the territory
allotted to the fort, in addition to the Finnish peasant farmsteads,
there were plots of Zavyalov, Konstantin Valentinovich (?) Markov,
Nevzorovs, Mate, the wife of A. N. Kuropatkin, Anna Sergeevna Milyukova
(wife of P. N. Milyukov), Ivanov, Al. Al. Baryshnikov, Vvedensky,
Lebedev, Bobrov on the site of which and at his expense the church was
built, as well as the plots of M.V. and V.I. Volkov. Only Milyukov and
Mate voluntarily transferred their dachas to the treasury at the
beginning of the construction of the fort. The land plot of Valentin
Serov was not listed on the territory of the fort, and his dacha was
demolished during the construction of the railway to the fort.
Alienation of land cost the treasury 418,379 rubles. The dachas began to
be used to house the garrison of the fort.
At various times from
1909 to 1918, military engineers lieutenant colonel Smirnov, captain
Lobanov, captain Poplavsky, captain (later lieutenant colonel)
Budkevich, lieutenant colonel Krasovsky, engineer Rosenthal were the
foremen of work at the fort.
The fort had two coastal batteries
for four 152-mm Kane guns (on the flanks), a battery for eight 254-mm
guns and a battery for eight 279-mm howitzers, which fired at 15-18 km.
Around the guns was a whole underground town, covered with a two-meter
layer of concrete, designed to be hit by large-caliber naval artillery
shells. There were shell magazines, barracks, a railroad for delivering
shells to guns, command and observation posts. The positions were
covered by a 3-meter concrete parapet. The fort was surrounded by a
rampart with concrete strongholds and adapted for all-round defense.
In addition to the construction of batteries and defensive
structures, the project provided for the construction of buildings for
the residence of the garrison of the fort in peacetime and a harbor
bounded by two piers - eastern and southwestern. The harbor was equipped
with three cranes: two with a lifting capacity of 1 ton and one with a
capacity of 32 tons. It was planned to build a 3 km long railway line
laid along the southwestern pier and further along all the batteries.
In 1912, two four-gun batteries of 305-mm guns began to be built in
the fort - a turret and an open one. The tower battery was a concrete
structure with two twin-gun turrets designed by A. G. Dukelsky and was
the latest technical achievement of that time. Inside there are
casemates, gun cellars, barracks, an underground railway along which
shells were transported on trolleys, an electric lift. Steam heating was
installed. By 1916, both batteries were combat ready. Concrete trenches
with shelters for guns and infantry were arranged around, connected to
the tower battery by underground posterns.
According to the
project, the smallest fortification garrison was set at 2 companies of
fortress artillery and 2 companies of infantry, but if necessary, up to
2 artillery battalions and 1 infantry battalion could be placed on the
fort. By the beginning of the First World War, the garrison was staffed
according to the wartime states. There were 2,000 artillerymen, the same
number of infantry, more than 500 other military personnel (miners,
sappers, Cossacks, etc.) and militias. In January 1917, the garrison
already consisted of 5,500 people.
By January 1, 1917, all of the
fort's artillery batteries were completed and were on alert.
The October Revolution, the collapse of the army,
mobilization practically deprived the fort of the garrison.
In
December 1917, the Grand Duchy of Finland gained its independence. The
border between the new states ran along the old administrative border of
the Grand Duchy with the abandonment of Pechenga from Russia, since it
was conditionally transferred to the Grand Duchy of Finland in 1864. To
resolve the issue of this territory and the official demarcation of the
border, a Special Commission was created. However, only its Finnish part
was formed - the Russian part was not formed due to the civil war that
began in Finland at the end of January 1918.
The revolution began
in Helsinki under the leadership of the Social Democratic Party and the
Trade Union Organization. The created revolutionary government - the
Council of People's Deputies - headed by Kullervo Manner immediately
established friendly relations with Soviet Russia. At the suggestion of
the SNU, a mixed commission was created to prepare a draft
Soviet-Finnish treaty. The commission included: from the Soviet side -
A. L. Sheinman, V. M. Smirnov, A. V. Shotman, and K. Shishko, from the
Finnish side - E. Gylling, E. Valpas, O. Tokoi and K. Arianna. And
already on March 1, in Petrograd, the agreement "On Friendship and
Brotherhood" between the RSFSR and the Finnish Socialist Workers'
Republic (so named in the text of the agreement at the suggestion of V.
Lenin) was concluded. The agreement provided for the mutual transfer of
territories - Fort Ino was to be transferred to Soviet Russia in
exchange for the Petsamo (Pechenga) region with an ice-free port in the
north.
However, the revolution in Finland was defeated, and the
parties had to start all over again.
The commandant of the
Kronstadt fortress, K. M. Artamonov, in a report to the Military Head of
the Defense of Petrograd, A. V. Schwartz, wrote on April 24, 1918 that
the entire fortress had only 150 combat-ready defenders.
"In
January-February 1918, when the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army had just
begun to form, the Sestroretsk detachment of the Red Guards (A.
Panshin's hundred) with S. P. Voskov carried guards at Fort Ino in
Finland. [2] The old army was randomly demobilized, leaving a fort to
fend for itself.A detachment from Sestroretsk found the fort almost
empty.Only a small part of the revolutionary sailors delayed the
disorderly flight of demoralized soldiers.
On April 24, Finnish
troops laid siege to Fort Ino. Pursuing the Finnish Red Guard,
retreating to the Soviet borders, the White Finns and Germans surrounded
him and offered to start negotiations for immediate surrender. But the
besieged, having strong weapons, a large amount of ammunition and food,
refused to surrender without the order of the Soviet government.
The officer of the tsarist army, the commandant of the fortress, tried
to prove that the defense of the fort by a detachment of 200 Red Army
soldiers was an empty undertaking. But he was not supported, with the
exception of 6 alarmists. The situation was worse when, on an April
evening, taking with him the plan of the fort, the commandant fled to
the White Finns.
On April 24, 1918, in preparation for the
surrender of the fort, the locks from the guns were removed and taken to
Kronstadt, the batteries were prepared for the explosion. Moscow feared
that the defense of the fort could lead to the breaking of the Brest
Peace.
On May 5, 1918, Germany demanded that the fort be handed
over to Finland.
The detachment held the defense until an
icebreaker and a warship broke through to help from Kronstadt, along
with a government commission that proposed blowing up the fort so as not
to leave a heavily fortified military base to the enemy.
In the
second half of May came the last days of Fort Ino. When the detachment
left its shores, bright flames devoured wooden buildings, kitchens,
barracks. Being far from the coast, the Red Army soldiers heard several
powerful explosions. The fort's fortifications did not fall to the
enemies."
- A. I. Davydenko. Sestroretsk. Essays on the history of
the city. L., 1962, p. 111-112
On May 14, 1918, at 23.30, the
tower batteries of Fort Ino were blown up by personnel, and the fort
itself was captured by the Finns, about which Artamonov K.A. wrote in
his report.
Destruction
Under the terms of the Tartu Treaty,
the Finns were obliged to destroy all the fortifications of Fort Ino.
The fort's guns were subsequently used in the system of coastal
fortifications in Finland - for example, 305/52-mm guns were installed
in an armored tower (with an unfinished 14 "Mäkiluoto battery) on
Kuivassaari Island.
As part of the USSR
In Soviet times, a 152
mm battery was built on the fort, but in early 1960 it was disposed of.
Until the mid-1980s, the closed regime of the territory. Entry was
by pass only. This was due to the fact that in the area of the fort
there were military units, a frontier post, and to a greater extent
because in the area of the former Fort Ino in the post-war years there
was a high-security test site. According to the stories of the
old-timers who served this complex of underground structures,
experiments were carried out in it to identify the effect of hard
radiation on animals. Then the landfill was liquidated, but access to
the fort was closed. Until the end of the 20th century, Fort Ino was
occupied by a military unit and the Central Research Institute of the
Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
XXI Century
Everything is overgrown with forest. The metal has been dismantled if
possible. The huge ditches of strong points No. 1 and 2 are well
preserved; at strong points No. 7 and 8, a clearly marked glacis-like
profile of positions is visible. The staircase of the former dacha of
Kuropatkin A.N., converted during the First World War into a temporary
hospital, has been preserved. The stairs lead to the bay. Clean sand,
huge boulders, on the horizon a chain of storage tankers that act as
floating oil transshipment bases[4]. In 2020 The Military Engineering
Institute of the Academy of Logistics of the Ministry of Defense of the
Russian Federation has developed a project for the revival of Fort Ino.
The project has been nominated for the Crystal Compass award.