Historical reference. Alekseevsky ravelin: blogs: facts about Russia

The history of the Alekseevsky ravelin is inextricably linked with the history of the Trubetskoy bastion - a secret prison for state criminals. Laid down on July 1, 1733, the ravelin served as a place of confinement for "special" prisoners for more than a hundred years, among whom was the son of the founder of St. Petersburg, Emperor Peter the Great.

On the day of the 282th anniversary of the laying of the western ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress, the site recalls how it was arranged.

Prison in the fortification

The western fortification of the Peter and Paul Fortress was laid by Empress Anna Ioannovna on July 1, 1733 in honor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. An auxiliary structure of a triangular shape in front of the fortress water moat served to cover the Vasilievskaya curtain and its gates. Initially, the ravelin had an exclusively fortification purpose - it was equipped with ramps for lifting guns and ammunition, several gateways were made, and in the 1780s it was faced with granite slabs.

The prison could accommodate 20 prisoners at a time. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

The completion of the construction of the Ravelin in 1740 coincided with the death of Anna Ioannovna, and the further fate of the building was already in control of her successors. During the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna, this part of the fortress remained without special attention, and under Catherine the Great in 1769, a wooden prison was set up on the territory of the Ravelin. It was not for nothing that later they began to call it the "Secret House" - there was so little information about it that the first memories of prisoners became available only at the beginning of the 20th century.

No petty crooks, thieves or criminals were kept here. The prison was specially built behind the thick walls of the fortress so that people who committed crimes related to politics could be kept in it.

Nearby, on the territory of the fortress, in the 1730s, the Office of Secret Investigation Affairs was located - the main institution of the empire, engaged in the production of political investigations. The wooden prison lasted until 1797, after which it was replaced by a stone "Secret House" with 20 cells.

Complete isolation

In 1796, Emperor Paul I ordered: "For those kept under guard on business that belonged to the Secret Expedition, make a House with the convenience of being kept in the fortress." The estimate for the stone building and the "Inventory of the things of the new state house in the Alekseevsky Ravelin" confirm that we are talking about the "Secret House", which operated as a prison until 1884.

Today, tourists are told about the conditions of detention of prisoners in the Peter and Paul Fortress: the one-story stone prison was an equilateral triangle, inside which there was a platform for prisoners to walk. The windows of the "numbered chambers" overlooked the outer courtyard of the ravelin.

Alekseevsky Ravelin's plan. From the book by PS Polivanov "Alekseevsky Ravelin", Leningrad, 1926. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org Each cell had a tiled stove, in several chambers - a bed with semi-duvets and pillows and quilted chintz blankets, armchairs, soft chairs and card table, mirror, couch. Most of the cells were simpler furnished: a simple table and chair, a bed with a reindeer wool mattress, a soup bowl, a clay spoon and a bottle, and wooden cutlery. The four unnumbered "extra" cameras were the most modest.

A guard soldier was on duty around the clock in the cells, so that the prisoners were never left alone, although they were in solitary confinement. Three times a day, the chief of the guard went around all the occupied cells. Emperor Alexander I abolished this rule, released a significant number of prisoners, and transferred the "Secret House" to the jurisdiction of the St. Petersburg military governor, after which the regime of detention in it was significantly relaxed.

This led to the fact that the prisoners were able to correspond and even see their relatives without the knowledge of their superiors, so in 1812 it was decided to tighten the order again.

Prisoners

Having lost the opportunity to correspond, the prisoners invented to knock - a special "alphabet" was invented by the Decembrist Mikhail Bestuzhev, breaking the alphabet into vertical and horizontal rows, and designating each letter with two numbers corresponding to its place. Bestuzhev's table was improved by the next generations of prisoners, and soon became the "secret language" of the populists. The jailers found out about this and began to place the prisoners so that the neighboring cells were empty on all sides.

On the site of the prison, the building of the Military Archives was erected. Photo: Google Maps

Over the years of the existence of the prison, members of a wide variety of political unrest have passed through its walls. Here Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich was imprisoned, in 1775 the so-called Princess Tarakanova was held. In 1849, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, who was arrested in the Petrashevtsy case, was held in the "Secret House" of Alekseevsky Ravelin for eight months. Bakunin and Chernyshevsky visited here, and the former later wrote that "... in such conditions Napoleon will become dull, and Jesus himself will become embittered."

Decembrists Pestel, Ryleev, Muravyov-Apostol, Volkonsky, Trubetskoy, Bestuzhev were held in 20 solitary cells during the investigation. In 1882-1884, members of the organization "Narodnaya Volya" were in hard labor.

In February 1838, the question arose about the need for overhaul of the "Secret House", which was quickly destroyed after the flood of 1824. It was repaired, after which it stood until 1893 and was dismantled.

Today, on the site of the former prison, the yellow building of the Ministry of War archive with two service officers' wings rises.

The Alekseevsky Ravelin was considered the most important prison of the Russian Empire, the heart of the Peter and Paul Fortress, the "Russian Bastille".

Ravelin is a triangular auxiliary fortification located between two bastions. The Alekseevsky Ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress was built in 1733-1740 according to the project of the engineer and commander B. Kh. Minich. It served to cover the Vasilievskaya curtain (the section of the wall between the bastions) and the gates located there. The Alekseevsky Ravelin was named after Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, the grandfather of Empress Anna Ioannovna.

"Princess Tarakanova", KD Flavitsky, 1864

The Alekseevsky ravelin, taken outside the fortress fence and fenced off from it by a moat, represented the most inaccessible place of the Peter and Paul Fortress, and it is not surprising that it was there that a prison for especially important criminals was set up. For the first time, a wooden prison house was built in the ravelin in 1769. It was there that the famous princess Tarakanova was kept. In 1797 the wooden prison was demolished and instead of it, according to the project of the architect P. Yu. Paton, the "Secret House" was erected as a secret prison for the Russian emperors.

The prisoners who got there were considered primarily as personal enemies of the Russian tsar. For imprisonment in the Alekseevsky ravelin, a court verdict was not required. Only one royal word was enough to be placed in the fortress or to be released from it. Prisoners were always brought to the ravelin at night. Getting here, the prisoner lost his name and surname. In total, his connections with the outside world were cut off. Meetings and correspondence were allowed only with special royal permission.

The conditions of detention of the prisoners were considered extremely harsh. All of them were in solitary confinement. At best, they could only see their own jailers. Dampness was a serious problem - due to the proximity of the Neva, the lower part of the walls was covered with mold, ventilation did not work, clothes and mattresses were rotting. Because of this, many prisoners soon fell ill with scurvy and tuberculosis. In just two years, 1882 - 1884, out of fifteen people imprisoned in the Alekseevsky Ravelin of the Narodnaya Volya, six people died, and two went insane.

Among the well-known prisoners of the Alekseevsky Ravelin were the Decembrists P. I. Pestel, K. F. Ryleev, S. I. Muravyov-Apostol, S. G. Volkonsky, S. P. Trubetskoy, N. A. and M. A. Bestuzhev; F.M. Dostoevsky, N.G. Chernyshevsky, members of the Narodnaya Volya organization; Prince Kropotkin and S.G. Nechaev. The latter managed to discourage his jailers, “corrupted the whole team, not excluding the elderly gendarmes,” and made an escape plan, which did not take place because of the attempt on Alexander I.

A particularly sad fate befell the Decembrist G.S. Batenkov and Lieutenant M. Beideman. The first spent 20 years in the Alekseevsky ravelin. Not seeing a human face and not hearing a human voice, Batenkov lost track of time and forgot how to speak. Mikhail Beidman, "The Iron Mask" of the Peter and Paul Fortress, sat for the same amount of time. For the insult he inflicted on Alexander II, the unfortunate man was driven to complete madness and sent to die in a psychiatric hospital.

The Alekseevsky Ravelin performed prison functions until 1893, when the Secret House was demolished and the casemates were dismantled. The prisoners were transported to the Shlisselburg fortress, and the archive of the War Ministry was built on the site of the most terrible prison in the Russian Empire.

Ioannovsky Ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress- Ravelin John's Ravelin ... Wikipedia

Alekseevsky ravelin- a fortification behind the fortress wall on the western side of the Peter and Paul Fortress (see Peter and Paul Fortress) in St. Petersburg, founded in 1733 by Empress Anna Ivanovna in honor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich's grandfather. Behind the wall A. r. in 1797 to ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Alekseevsky ravelin- Alekseevsky ravelin, external fortification of the Peter and Paul Fortress, in its western part, in front of the Vasilyevskaya curtain. Named in honor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich - the father of Peter I and the grandfather of reigning in the 1730s. Anna Ivanovna. Built in ... ... Encyclopedic reference book "St. Petersburg"

ALEXEEVSKY RAVELIN- external fortification of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Founded in 1733, named after Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. In 1797, a secret house was built inside the Alekseevsky Ravelin (until 1884 a political prison with a particularly cruel regime), demolished in 1895 ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

ALEXEEVSKY RAVELIN- ALEXEEVSKY RAVELIN, external fortification of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. Founded in 1733, named after Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. In 1797, inside the A.R. a secret house was built (until 1884 a political prison with a particularly cruel regime, ... ... Russian history

Alekseevsky ravelin- external fortification of the Peter and Paul Fortress, in its western part, in front of the Vasilievskaya curtain. Named in honor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, father of Peter I and grandfather who reigned in the 1730s. Anna Ivanovna. Built in 1733 40 (engineer B. Kh. Minikh). ... ... Saint Petersburg (encyclopedia)

ALEXEEVSKY RAVELIN- (French ravelin) fortification behind the fortress wall to the west. side of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, founded on June 20, 1733 im. Anna Ivanovna in honor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich's grandfather. Behind the wall A. r. built in 1797 by order of Paul I ... ... Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

Alekseevsky ravelin- external fortification of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Founded in 1733, named after Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. In 1796-1797, a "secret house" was built inside the Alekseevsky Ravelin (until 1884 it was a political prison with a particularly cruel regime, demolished in 1895). * * * ... encyclopedic Dictionary

ravelin- a; m. [French. ravelin] An auxiliary fortress structure in the form of an angle with the top facing the enemy, located in front of the main fortress wall. Alekseevsky r. Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg (one of such structures, ... encyclopedic Dictionary

RAVELIN- in the fortification fortification in front of the middle of the front behind the ditch of the main rampart. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. Pavlenkov F., 1907. RAVELIN fortification in the middle of the line of the main rampart behind the moat. Complete dictionary ... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

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• Prisoners of the Alekseevsky Ravelin. From the history of the famous casemate, Shchegolev PE .. Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress is the most mysterious prison of the Russian Empire for the most important state criminals. No rank knew about those who were imprisoned within its walls ...

Ravelin Ioannovsky ravelin ... Wikipedia

A fortification behind the fortress wall on the western side of the Peter and Paul Fortress (see Peter and Paul Fortress) in St. Petersburg, founded in 1733 by Empress Anna Ivanovna in honor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich's grandfather. Behind the wall A. r. in 1797 to ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Alekseevsky ravelin- Alekseevsky ravelin, external fortification of the Peter and Paul Fortress, in its western part, in front of the Vasilyevskaya curtain. Named in honor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich - the father of Peter I and the grandfather of reigning in the 1730s. Anna Ivanovna. Built in ... ... Encyclopedic reference book "St. Petersburg"

External fortification of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Founded in 1733, named after Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. In 1797, a secret house was built inside the Alekseevsky Ravelin (until 1884 a political prison with a particularly cruel regime), demolished in 1895 ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

ALEXEEVSKY RAVELIN, external fortification of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. Founded in 1733, named after Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. In 1797, inside the A.R. a secret house was built (until 1884 a political prison with a particularly cruel regime, ... ... Russian history

External fortification of the Peter and Paul Fortress, in its western part, in front of the Vasilievskaya curtain. Named in honor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, father of Peter I and grandfather who reigned in the 1730s. Anna Ivanovna. Built in 1733 40 (engineer B. Kh. Minikh). ... ... Saint Petersburg (encyclopedia)

- (French ravelin) fortification behind the fortress wall to the west. side of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, founded on June 20, 1733 im. Anna Ivanovna in honor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich's grandfather. Behind the wall A. r. built in 1797 by order of Paul I ... ... Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

External fortification of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Founded in 1733, named after Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. In 1796-1797, a "secret house" was built inside the Alekseevsky Ravelin (until 1884 it was a political prison with a particularly cruel regime, demolished in 1895). * * * ... encyclopedic Dictionary

A; m. [French. ravelin] An auxiliary fortress structure in the form of an angle with the top facing the enemy, located in front of the main fortress wall. Alekseevsky r. Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg (one of such structures, ... encyclopedic Dictionary

In the fortification there is a fortification in front of the middle of the front behind the ditch of the main rampart. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. Pavlenkov F., 1907. RAVELIN fortification in the middle of the line of the main rampart behind the moat. Complete dictionary ... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

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• , Shchegolev Pavel Eliseevich. The Alekseevsky Ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress is the most mysterious prison of the Russian Empire for the most important state criminals. No rank knew about those who were imprisoned within its walls ...
• Prisoners of the Alekseevsky Ravelin. From the history of the famous casemate, Shchegolev PE .. Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress is the most mysterious prison of the Russian Empire for the most important state criminals. No rank knew about those who were imprisoned within its walls ...

Eastern part of the Peter and Paul Fortress.

For a long time, the main state prison of tsarist Russia was the Alekseevsky Ravelin, in which even those who served in the Peter and Paul Fortress did not know about life. P.E. Shchegolev in his book "Alekseevsky Ravelin" wrote - Who was sitting there, it was not given to know not only the officials of the commandant's administration, but also those who served in this very prison. To be imprisoned in this top-secret prison and to be released from here, the order of the tsar was needed.The commandant of the fortress, the chief of the gendarmes and the manager of the III department were allowed to enter here.Only the warden could enter the prisoner cell and only with the warden someone else.Going into this prison, the prisoners lost their names and could only be called a number.

We managed to find very little official information about the state of the Alekseevsky Ravelin for the last 15 years of its existence (1870-1884). Apparently, during this period, no major repairs were carried out in the ravelin. The fact that in the 1970s the number of prisoners fluctuated from one to three people per year did not make the administration want to renovate the prison premises. It can be assumed that some of the buildings were heated irregularly, and this led to the formation of dampness in the chamber, which prisoners of the 80s wrote about.

In August 1881, Alexander III decided to abolish the Alekseevsky ravelin, creating a new prison in its place on Shlisselburgsky island. Of course, such a decision by the tsar to build a new prison and preparations for this begun in the same 1881, were removed from the queue, the question of any serious repair of the Alekseevsky ravelin was removed from the queue.

Information about the repair of the Alekseevsky ravelin is available in two files of the fortress. One of these cases reports on the work done on the ravelin in July and August 1881, when only three prisoners were held in the prison, but when, apparently, they were already preparing to receive others. During the two months indicated, the tiled stoves that had fallen into disrepair were repaired and the cracks in them were covered with clay.

The glass in the frames was replaced with frosted ones, and the prison, surrounded by high fortified walls, became even more gloomy. The plaster that had fallen off the walls was greased. The outside of the building has been painted. Apparently, the building was in such a state of destruction that even this minor renovation was absolutely necessary.

Some very brief information about the state of the Alekseevsky ravelin is available in another archival file of 1880-1882 - "Inventory of the inventory located in the Alekseevsky ravelin." However, this information relates to the characteristics of the everyday life of the prisoners.

From this inventory it is clear that in the ravelin and in the years indicated by us, hand and foot shackles and even a neck chain continued to be preserved for a long time. The cases of the use of the latter are unknown.

In 1882, apparently at the initiative of the caretaker Sokolov, nicknamed "Herod", 16 iron plates were made on 16 doors of single cells and 16 locks were purchased for them.

In June 1883, that is, 14 months before the closing of the ravelin, 14 locks were purchased to lock the windows from the outside. The caretaker Sokolov felt calm with these locks on the doors and window frames2.

These locks were unnecessary precautions. During the entire period of its existence, no one has escaped from the Ravelin. However, on June 16, 1881, a fact occurred that aroused the suspicion of the commandant of the fortress. The commandant reported to the Ministry of Internal Affairs about the detention on the roof of the bastion of Zotov, who was going out to the Alekseevsky ravelin, an unknown man in military uniform, who identified himself as a military clerk and did not give a satisfactory explanation of his being on the roof of the bastion. The arrested person was sent to the mayor, and his further fate is unknown.

The above 16 overlays on the doors of prison cells and locks on the frames exhaust our information about the construction in the Alekseevsky Ravelin. From the recollections of the prisoner Polivanov, cited below, we learn that the overlays were metal strips the width of a palm. This heavy metal strip was superimposed on the door from one frame to the other and was locked at one end with a lock. Applying and removing this strip made a lot of noise. If these massive strips strengthened the prison locks, they did not strengthen the prison building, which was being destroyed by the terrible dampness in it. Overcrowding it with prisoners in the period from 1882 to 1884. did not allow large corrections to be made during this time, even if they were absolutely necessary.

The building of the Alekseevsky Ravelin, and after its closure in August 1884, existed for several more years before it was demolished in 1895. This building was demolished under the tsarist regime, and thus it did not have to live to see the revolution and be turned, like the Trubetskoy bastion, into the Museum of the Revolution. This building had even more grounds for such a transformation than the Trubetskoy Bastion, since the names of many glorious fighters against tsarism are associated with it.

The government's decision to close the Alekseevsky Ravelin prison raises the question: what caused this closure? We did not find an answer to this important question in the official materials. It can be assumed that several reasons influenced here. It should not be forgotten that the Alekseevsky Ravelin was replaced by a new prison on Shlisselburg Island with 40 solitary cells and an old one with 10 cells. Ravelin, with its 20 cameras, was no longer sufficient due to the growth of the revolutionary movement.

The presence of the most important political convict prison in St. Petersburg itself was an undoubted inconvenience: there was always a danger of intercourse between prisoners and strangers outside the prison and the possibility of escape from the ravelin. This was confirmed by the relations between Nechayev and his comrades at large through the gendarmes. Maybe it was this reason that was of paramount importance in this case. The prison on Shlisselburg Island, a few tens of miles from the capital, was especially convenient because of its isolation from the outside world. At the same time, these tens of miles did not make it difficult for the center to exercise constant control over it.

The hardly unsanitary conditions of the old building of the Alekseevsky Ravelin, where prisoners almost inevitably fell ill and many died, played any role in deciding whether to close the ravelin, since, despite the development of diseases and mortality in 1883, the government continued to place political prisoners there and in 1884. It could be said that the Alekseevsky ravelin was not closed, but moved to the Shlisselburg fortress. The caretaker Sokolov, part of the gendarmes, and all the prisoners were transferred to the new prison. The property of the Alekseevsky ravelin was also transferred to the new Shlisselburg prison, as evidenced by a special archival file "On the transfer of things and property of the house of the Alekseevsky ravelin to the Shlisselburg gendarme administration."

With one inventory of the property of the Alekseevsky Ravelin, as we indicated above, we had to get acquainted earlier in the archival file we used for 1880-1882. The composition of this property has remained largely unchanged since that time. The list of things to be transferred to the Shlisselburg Fortress included the furnishings of the prison cells, prison clothes, linen and shoes, kitchen utensils, a few tools, tableware, prison library books, icons, etc.

It should be especially noted that in the list of things to be transferred to the Shlisselburg Fortress, already known to us from the previous presentation, five hand shackles, eight leg shackles and one neck chain. It is not clear why this neck chain, the use of which had long been abolished by law, was not destroyed.

Speaking about the state of the Alekseevsky ravelin, one cannot ignore the question of the ravelin's library. This interesting question was resolved only now after we found the library catalog. One copy of such a catalog turned out to be in the archives about the inquiry regarding Nechaev's relations with the revolutionaries at large, the other - in the case of the surrender of the property of the Alekseevsky Ravelin in connection with the closure of the prison of this Ravelin.

In the lists of books of the library of the Alekseevsky Ravelin, 435 titles of books in Russian are listed, and moreover, many of the works of one or another author are presented in full in many volumes, and books of religious content in several copies. In addition to books in Russian, the catalog contains 175 books in French, the titles of which are not given. A large place in the number of titles belongs to books of religious content (No. 298-345). However, religious literature did not supplant scientific literature and fiction. Books on various branches of knowledge were presented in the library by the works of the largest Russian and foreign authors. Literature of fictional content was selected quite fully. For example, there were complete collections of works by Byron, Goethe, Schiller, Dickens, Shpilhagen, Pisemsky, Mordovtsev, L. Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Grigorovich, Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Ostrovsky, Dostoevsky, Krestovsky, Maykov, Potekhin, Pechersky, Gleb Uspensky and others. There were works by Belinsky and Dobrolyubov. The list contains many books on history, including the works of: Soloviev, Schlosser, Weber, Gervinus, Draper, Macaulay, etc. There were essays on geography, botany, physiology, mathematics and other branches of knowledge. The library also contained editions of the "Course of Criminal Law" by prof. Tagantsev, edition of 1867. The selection of books was not systematic, but indicated a high level of interests of the readers.

A significant number of books were published in the 60s and 70s. They came to the library mostly at the request of Nechaev, as we will see below from the essay about Nechaev. Noteworthy is the presence in the list of the complete set of the "Bulletin of Europe" for 1876. The library was made up partly from books that belonged to the prisoners themselves, who provided them to the library when leaving the ravelin, while the library was partly replenished by the Ministry of Internal Affairs at the request of prisoners (for example, Nechaev and Mirsky). Over the past four years of the Alekseevsky Ravelin's existence, the supply of new books has stopped. Unfortunately, in the archives there is no information about the composition of books in foreign languages. It should be assumed that the indication that there are 175 books in the library only in French does not correspond to reality; that, in addition to books in French, there should have been books in other foreign languages. Our assumption about the presence in the library of books in various foreign languages ​​is confirmed by the inclusion in the list of dictionaries of the English-Russian, German-Russian, etc.

Regarding the fate of the library of the Alekseevsky Ravelin, after its closure, we found a demand from the State Police Department to present it with a list of books and hand over the books to the head of the Shlisselburg Gendarme Directorate, Colonel Pokroshinsky2. It is not known what kind of books were actually transferred, but it is known that in this fortress in the first years after the opening of a new prison in it (in 1884), the administration preferred to give the prisoners only books of religious content. So it was in the Alekseevsky ravelin in the last years before its closure. Thus, the composition of the library did not yet determine the extent of its use by the prisoners. Everything here depended on the arbitrariness of the administration.

In the memoirs of the former prisoners of the Ravelin, in the press, as well as in the previous archival files we used, there were no indications of the existence of basement casemates in the Alekseevskaya Ravelin. In the above-mentioned archival file, we read: "In one of the basement casemates of the Ravelin" old files of the former III department are kept. These lines undoubtedly prove the existence in the ravelin, in addition to the chambers of the first floor, also basement casemates. We have not received information about imprisonment in these casemates. It can be assumed that the casemates were used in the first years of the existence of the ravelin, information about which has not reached us. In any case, the very fact of the existence of such casemates is significant.

The 55 bales of files from Section III, stored in one of these basement casemates, were burned by order of the police department. It is not known exactly what files of the III department were kept in the basement casemate of the Ravelin behind seven doors and seven locks.

Ravelin's cases in the amount of 231 were handed over on September 29, 1884 to the police department. This ended the existence of this state prison. But history will never forget the terrible Alekseevsky Ravelin.

PRISONERS OF ALEKSEEVSKY RAVELIN

The last period of the history of the Alekseevsky ravelin covers 1870-1884. From the two previous volumes of our research, it is known that the history of the ravelin wrote on its tablets many names of the prisoners of this ravelin. Until 1870, major political processes gave their representatives to the casemates of this tsarist dungeon: the soldiers of the Semenovsky regiment, the Decembrists, Petrashevists, Karakozovites, writers - revolutionary democrats replaced each other.

Over the course of three quarters of the 19th century, great changes took place in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement: the noble period of the revolution developed and outlived its time, which was replaced by the period of raznochinsky. This period was represented by the last prisoners of the Ravelin.

In their revolutionary tactics, these prisoners represented two major trends - propaganda and terrorists. Since both were united in secret political parties and set as their task conspiratorial activities to overthrow the autocracy, they seemed to the tsarist government to be especially dangerous enemies. This circumstance left its mark on the history of the ravelin, especially over the last 5 years of its existence. Never in all the preceding time has the Ravelin regime been the same as it became in the 5 years before the closure of this state prison in August 1884. The reader will see below that this was a regime designed to kill prisoners.

No matter how short the period - 15 years - it should be divided into two parts: the first of them covers the 70s, and the second - the period from 1880 to 1884. In the 70s, when the number of prisoners in the ravelin dropped to one and did not exceed three, events unprecedented before that time took place: the prisoner here, Nechaev, successfully carried on propaganda among the prison guards, actually abolishing the typical features of the prison regime, and struck up relations with members of the revolutionary party on the loose. Our subsequent essay on Nechaev's stay in the ravelin is dedicated to these exceptional events.

Despite the fact that the second part of the study period covers only four years, it is characterized by a brutal regime. We will see below that atrocities were shown not in violent battles between the prison administration and prisoners, but quite calmly, thoughtfully and sophisticatedly. These last years of the Ravelin's existence have concluded its history.

Addressing the prisoners of the Alekseevsky Ravelin, we give a list of them for the period under study. Beidemann, who is the first in this list and who stayed in the ravelin from 1861 to 1881, is given an essay in the second volume. About Nechaev and Mirsky, convicted - the first in 1873, and the second in 1879, we give special essays. The conditions of stay in the ravelin of all other prisoners were so similar that we gave these prisoners of the 80s one general sketch.

In the list of prisoners of the Alekseevsky ravelin for 1870-1884. there are the names of 26 prisoners.

In the list of prisoners in the Alekseevsky Ravelin in 1882-1884, attached to Polivanov's book “Alekseevsky Ravelin” (published in 1926), three were mistakenly placed: A.V. Dolgushin was transferred from Kara to the Peter and Paul Fortress in June 1883, and on August 4, 1884, he was transferred to the Shlisselburg fortress; Klimenko M. F., convicted in the process of 17, transferred to the Shlisselburg fortress; Malevsky V.E. was transferred from Siberia to the Peter and Paul Fortress on June 31, 1883, and on August 4 - to the Shlisselburg Fortress.

From this list of prisoners, attached to the named book of Polivanov, it can be seen that 14 prisoners were students of higher or other educational institutions. One was an assistant attorney at law, one was a lieutenant in the Navy, one was a worker, one was an employee of the State Police Department. Of the total number of prisoners, 17 were sentenced to death, and 4 to indefinite hard labor. From our list of 26 prisoners of the Alekseevsky ravelin, it is clear that they entered the ravelin: one in 1861, two in the 70s (1873 and 1879), 23 people in the period from 1880 to 1884. Beideman (20 years) and Nechaev (10 years) spent the longest periods in the ravelin. Eight people spent less than a year in the ravelin (one of them died), seven were transferred to the Shlisselburg fortress. The rest spent from one to three years in the ravelin, six of them died here, and the rest were transferred to Shlisselburg.

LIST OF PRISONERS IN ALEXEEVSKY RAVELIN IN THE PERIOD FROM 1870 TO 1884

Of the prisoners of the ravelin, the fate of Nechaev, who died in the ravelin after a ten-year stay in it, is especially remarkable.

Nechaev

In the second volume of the "History of the Tsar's Prison" it was indicated that by the beginning of the 70s, only Beideman was a prisoner of the Alekseevsky Ravelin. On January 28, 1873, a new political prisoner was imprisoned in the same ravelin, whose name was widely known at that time in the revolutionary movement - it was Sergei Nechaev. For us, the case of this prisoner is of outstanding interest not only in the history of the tsarist prison, but also in the history of tsarist "justice". Certain features of this justice were identified by us in the first and second volumes of the "History of the Tsar's Prison" and in the second chapter of this volume. We saw the rude, undisguised interest of Catherine II when she dealt with Radishchev, Novikov Krechetov, Princess Tarakanova and other prisoners of the Peter and Paul and Shlisselburg fortresses. We saw the transformation of Emperor Nicholas I into a detective, investigator, judge and executioner in the case of the Decembrists and Petrashevists. During Chernyshevsky's trial, we learned about the use of forgeries, the fabrication of false documents and the recruitment of false witnesses. Always in these cases, the name of the court verdict by the decree of “His Majesty” was used as a cover for the arbitrariness of the autocracy's brutal reprisals against its enemies.

In the Nechaev trial, the tsarist government did not hesitate to repeat what it had done in the previous political trials: to commit a series of deceptions and gross violence and replace the harsh judicial verdict with an even more cruel arbitrariness of the sovereign will.

Nechaev, obsequiously arrested by the Swiss government and handed over to the Russian government as a criminal, was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor, but Alexander II, with a stroke of the pen, replaced the link to Siberia with imprisonment in the Alekseevsky Ravelin and instead of 20 years wrote with his own hand “forever”, emphasizing this so hopelessly sounding word.

Nechaev's trial was one of the largest in the era of the 70s. Nechaev's personal qualities, his iron will and talent as a propagandist put his trial, and then his ten-year stay in the Alekseevsky Ravelin, on the first place in the history of the 70s. In the history of the Alekseevsky Ravelin, he wrote unusual pages with his amazing propaganda success among the Ravelin's gendarmes, he struck up regular relations through the gendarmes with the Narodnaya Volya party. Within the walls of the ravelin, he did the same, for which he got into the ravelin. His relations with the committee of the Narodnaya Volya party were an exceptional phenomenon in the entire history of this political torture chamber. But during Nechaev's stay in the fortress, there were other facts proving his exceptional character. For example, neither earlier nor later was there a case of such prolonged shackling in leg and hand shackles, as it was applied to Nechaev: he was shackled in hand shackles for more than two years. In the same way, we do not know of other cases where a special sentry was placed under the window of the ravelin's solitary confinement cell, as was done in relation to Nechaev. Only about him, weekly reports were delivered to the chief of gendarmes instead of the usual monthly statements with the names of the detained prisoners. All this shows that Nechaev's stay in the ravelin provided a lot of material for the history of the tsarist prison.

Turning to the description of Nechaev's stay in the Alekseevsky ravelin, we have every reason to say that the conditions of this stay formed the history of the ravelin himself in the 70s. Although in these years Beideman was also kept there, Nechaev alone "made" the history of the Ravelin. The life of the Ravelin was never so seething and varied in events as it was under Nechaev, and meanwhile at that time almost two dozen cells were empty. The archival materials that have come down to us, collected by Shchegolev after the October Revolution and published by him in an extensive article, exhaustively acquaint us with this period of the history of Ravelin 1.

Nechaev entered under the vaults of the Alekseevsky ravelin on January 28, 1873. The commandant of the fortress gave the caretaker special instructions on the conditions for keeping the new prisoner in the fortress. It not only repeated the old rules on keeping the keys to the cells, on the entrance of the guards into the cells only in the presence of the caretaker, on monitoring the strength of locks, bars, etc., but also made new additional instructions. An innovation was the commandant's order to put a sentry at the window on the outside of Nechaev's cell at night. This precaution was, of course, unnecessary, since in the history of the ravelin there was not a single case of escape from this fortress. But the commandant's order shows what importance was attached to the protection of the new prisoner. In order to provide the strictest protection of the prisoner, the instruction demanded permission from the commandant for each withdrawal of Nechayev from the cell for a walk or to the bathhouse, and reminded the caretaker not to leave the fortress himself without it.

This did not exhaust the precautionary measures taken by the commandant and prevent the escape of Nechaev or the intercourse of strangers with him. In March 1873, four new positions of the so-called jury non-commissioned officers were established for the Ravelin. For the Peter and Paul Fortress, twelve such positions were introduced on February 23, 1870, they spent three years in the ravelin without these "juries", but the imprisonment in the ravelin of Nechaev prompted the cautious commandant and the III department to use these new guards. According to their official position, they were observers of sentries and responsible to the caretaker for the exact execution of all the rules of the ravelin. At the same time, they served to some extent as a control over the caretaker himself. It was their duty to be in the prisoner's cell whenever authorized persons entered. Only by special order of the superintendent was the "juror" to leave the prisoner's cell when visited by another person.

Section III, guarding Nechaev in the Alekseevskaya ravelin, went even further. In addition to the usual monthly statements about the prisoners in the ravelin, the chief of the gendarmes ordered, as mentioned above, to deliver to him every week information about Nechaev for the past 7 days. This was also a novelty, since no such reports had ever been made about anyone before. They were not made about anyone and later, until the closing of the ravelin.

Unfortunately, Shchegolev managed to find only a few of these weekly reports. This is all the more offensive because they provide abundant material about Nechaev's stay in the ravelin.

The first of these reports covered the time from February 2 to 9. It reported when a prisoner got up in the morning and went to bed in the evening. It was reported that throughout the day he reads "The War Collection" for 1869, often walks around the room and rarely lies on the bed. Even small details were noted, such as: "Recently I have become more affable, my face is more cheerful and I began to look into my eyes, whereas before I avoided meeting, I answered abruptly, in a sharp tone, with downcast eyes and drooping head." In great detail and in Nechaev's own words, the report conveyed Nechaev's request, which he verbally declared to the caretaker, to provide him with books and writing utensils for scientific work. He motivated this by the fear of going crazy without any work. The second report of the week, from 9 to 16 February, repeated the information again when Nechaev went to bed and when he got up. Again it was reported about reading the "Military Collection" already for 1870, about walking around the cell, about good sleep and appetite. Both of these reports were reported to the king. This suggests that he himself was the source of the idea for these weekly prisoner reports. Our assumption is confirmed by the fact that reports were sent to the king even abroad. One can be surprised at such an interest of Alexander II to a man locked by him forever within the walls of the ravelin.

Nechaev received his writing materials and requested books a month later. The essays he needed in Russian and foreign languages ​​were bought for him in a bookstore. Writing materials made it possible for Nechaev to make extracts from books he had read and to engage in literary work. This went on for three years. In early February 1876, not only writing supplies were taken away from Nechaev, but everything. what he managed to write during the three years of his imprisonment. This was the will of Alexander II. Nechaev was deprived of the right to read granted to him for appealing to the tsar with a request to review his case. In his petition, Nechaev insisted on the complete illegality of the court verdict, on the incorrectness of its issuance by the Swiss government, emphasized the tsar's guarantee of “his imperial word” to the Swiss government for the correctness and “impartiality of the court” and reminded that at the same time, during the trial, he refused to admit its correctness and called the Moscow District Court "Shemyakin Court". Nechaev did not forget to remind the tsar of the words of his decree on truth and mercy in the courts.

Neither the content of the prisoner's address to the king, nor its very tone could be pleasing to the one by whose decree this "Shemyakin judgment" was carried out. But the punishment that befell the author of the note was excessively cruel. Nechaev's mental equilibrium was completely disturbed. On the very first night after taking away his papers, he burst into shouts and abuse and knocked 12 glasses out of his cell window. For this they put a straitjacket on him, tied him to the bed, and then put him in leg and hand shackles. He remained in leg shackles for three months, and the hand shackles were removed from him two years later.

The papers taken from Nechaev were examined in Section III and, by order of the tsar, were burned, but their content is introduced to some extent by a memorandum about their review, drawn up for the chief of the gendarmes and, obviously, for the tsar himself. It shows what Nechaev was doing in his solitary confinement. We have to regret that this work of the prisoner has not survived. It would be of particular interest for the history of Alekseevsky Ravelin, since among the destroyed works was the essay "Impression of prison life (living grave)". The content of this essay is not given in the note, but its very title says a lot. Other works by the author include "A Letter from London", "Political Dumas", "On the Tasks of Modern Democracy" and the article "On the Nature of Youth Movement in the Late 60s". Among the destroyed works were a significant number of fiction, including novels from the life of emigrants, from the everyday life of student circles, from the times of the fall of the second empire in France, etc. The author of the memo made special mention of Nechaev's sketches: "In the kingdom of the bourgeoisie" - the fall of the Commune - and " In the mezzanine and attic ”- preparation for the action of the international (as in the original - MG). The largest number of papers fell on the records in connection with the books read. The author of the memo also tried to give a characterization of Nechaev's personality. The characteristic includes mostly negative features, but at the same time emphasizes the amazing persistence and willpower of Nechaev.

These last qualities Nechaev especially showed in the struggle for the right to read books and use writing utensils. Section III, although it provided the prisoner with German and French books, made a ridiculous attempt to supply him with books of religious content. So, in March 1878, the III department suggested that the commandant "imperceptibly" plant books of spiritual content in Nechaev's cell. This attempt caused Nechaev's sharp irritation for the whole day. The irritation increased also because he had almost no books to read, and those sent from Section III did not satisfy him either in quantity or in quality. After one of these dispatches, the strong-willed Nechaev was even brought to tears, as the caretaker reported. He did not eat all day. Deprived of his paper for several years, he resorted to an original protest. In April 1880, on the wall of his cell, he wrote an appeal to Alexander II. According to the commandant, it was scrawled with a teaspoon on the ocher-painted wall, and according to the Bulletin of Narodnaya Volya, it was written in blood. In this address, he wrote that Section III, depriving him of new books and magazines, dooms him to insanity, and ended as follows: otherwise".

At the same time, Nechaev began a hunger strike that lasted 5 days and ended in his victory. He received 10 foreign books and a catalog of French books. He continued the struggle further, realizing that the end of this struggle would cause a delay in the delivery of new books. On his insistence, future prisoners of Ravelin were obliged to purchase books for the library of Ravelin in the amount of about 700 rubles. But even this dispatch did not diminish Nechaev's energy in the struggle to read books.

In 1881, many books were sent to the Alekseevsky ravelin, references to which are not found in the memoirs of the former prisoners of this ravelin. For example, the works of Goethe, Pisemsky, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Grigorovich, Maiko; va, Byron, Schiller, Lermontov, Potekhin, Stanyukovich, Dickens, Dobrolyubov, Shpilhagen, Belinsky, Ostrovsky, Zhukovsky, Schlosser and others were sent. books of the library of the Alekseevsky ravelin. Probably, since 1882, the use of these books by the prisoner has ceased.

Nechaev did not achieve success at all in the struggle for the return of his writing instruments and papers. The king's prohibition remained in effect. When an attempt was made to equip the prisoner with a slate board instead of paper, he wrote his protest on this board and sent it back to the commandant, and tried to make his notes on the wall of the cell. In August 1880, on a piece of paper given to him to compile a list of books to read, he wrote an appeal to the State Police Department with a protest against the disagreeable delivery of books and the prohibition of writing classes since 1876. He wrote that he spends "boringly agonizing days of walking from corner to corner on the casemate, like an animal in its cage," and even more painful nights "listening to the insane screams of an unfortunate neighbor, brought to a terrible state by solitary confinement," and is afraid that such the same fate awaits him. He did not receive writing materials from the police department, but did manage to obtain them from the sentries guarding him. We will dwell on this absolutely exceptional fact.

Indeed, there is nothing more astonishing than the transformation of the sentries of the strictest state prison of the Alekseevsky Ravelin into accomplices of the prisoner in establishing his relations with the outside world. This fact becomes all the more surprising because the prisoner got in touch with the executive committee of the Narodnaya Volya party, that these relations lasted for several months and were conducted in the most regular manner. At the same time, not one or two of the Ravelin sentries became accomplices of the secret correspondence, but a significant number of them. We can say that the protection of the Ravelin was under the command of Nechaev. The tasks of the history of the tsarist prison do not include the identification of Nechaev's talents as a propagandist, therefore, we will only say that he acted with perseverance, energy and perseverance, applying various approaches to each person.

We remind you that the instruction of the Ravelin forbade the sentries to answer any questions from the prisoners. Under such and such conditions, Nechaev forced the sentries not only to speak, but also to act. Nechaev's connection with the sentries began in 1877. The prisoner managed to win over some of them in his favor that they began to bring him newspapers or food they bought with their own money. In his relations with the sentries, Nechaev showed himself to be a political propagandist, as he was before his arrest. He spoke about the difficult situation of the peasants and soldiers, about the impending revolution, about the taking of land from the landowners for the purpose of dividing it among the peasants, about the transfer of factories and plants to the workers. Nechaev himself, in a letter to the executive committee of the Narodnaya Volya party, described the soldiers among whom he was conducting propaganda: people's happiness, universal equality and freedom. "

Initially, Nechaev established relations with Mirsky, newly imprisoned in the ravelin on November 28, 1879, who shot at the chief of the gendarmes Drenteln. Later, with the help of the same sentries, he established relations with Stepan Shiryaev, who had been imprisoned in the ravelin on November 10, 1880 in the 16th trial. From this latter, he learned the addresses he needed, and soon correspondence from the Alekseevsky ravelin to the revolutionaries at large and from them to the prisoner in the ravelin began regularly. Thus, 7 years after Nechayev was imprisoned in the ravelin, where exceptional precautions were established for his maintenance, all barriers collapsed, all prohibitions disappeared and, in fact, Nechaev's intercourse with the will began.

Nechaev's life in the ravelin completely changed. He took an exciting interest in working among soldiers and gendarmes. The life of these ravelin watchmen also became interesting. In the duty room, they discussed political issues, read proclamations and fresh issues of Narodnaya Volya, and even learned to write in cipher code. They protected Nechaev from unpleasant surprises when he wrote his notes at will. The prisoner himself used individual gendarmes and sentries in different ways. To some he entrusted intercourse both inside and outside the ravelin, to the others - only intercourse within the ravelin with the prisoners Mirsky and Shiryaev. None of these gendarmes and sentries turned out to be a traitor. The most disgusting role of a traitor was played by Mirsky, who was also a prisoner of the Ravelin. He committed this betrayal by revealing the secret of Nechaev's impending escape. In his letters from Ravelin, Nechaev touched upon several topics. He not only pondered plans for escape, but also drafted various methods of revolutionary influence on the broad masses of the people. His projects did not receive practical significance, not only because they were very controversial from the point of view of the revolutionary ethics of the Narodnaya Volya party, but also because the Narodnaya Volya executive committee was at that time busy preparing an attempt on the life of Alexander II. Nechaev himself admitted that all the forces of the party should be devoted to preparing for such an attempt, and that only after that the work of his release from the fortress could be started. The government's defeat of the Narodnaya Volya party after March 1, 1881 left Nechaev within the walls of the Ravelin. Soon Mirsky's betrayal took place. It can be assumed that Nechaev was restrained in his relations with Mirsky, who was not aware of the details of Nechaev's intercourse with the will and did not know exactly how the escape from the Ravelin was supposed to take place. Apparently, Mirsky made his messages gradually and began them with a denunciation of a supposedly possible attack on the ravelin from the river. In any case, the commandant of the fortress found out about the possibility of escape earlier than the fact that the Ravelin's team was on the side of Nechaev.

Starting from November 16, for a whole month, the commandant took precautions against escaping from the Ravelin, but did not suspect any of his subordinates of any deviations from the rules of service.

In the middle of December, an unprecedented event took place in the ravelin: all the gendarmes, including 5 non-commissioned officers and 29 privates, were arrested and themselves became prisoners of the Peter and Paul Fortress. At the same time, the entire rest of the team (at least 75 people) was removed and the ravelin superintendent was removed from office. Gradually increasing, the number of arrested gendarme non-commissioned officers and privates reached 681. These were the figures for the activities of the prisoner, who, according to the government's initial plans, was to be kept in the ravelin under extremely strict conditions. When a memorandum on this case was presented to Alexander III, he made the following inscription on it: “I think there has never been a more shameful case for the military command and its superiors”. This content of the resolution showed the degree of irritation and at the same time demanded that the guilty not be spared.

24 people on trial were convicted of non-compliance with special guard duty, and 19 people were found guilty of a state crime. By the verdict of the military court, the defendants were sentenced to various punishments, including disciplinary battalions. Ravelin's caretaker was sentenced to exile in the Arkhangelsk province, and his assistant Andreev was imprisoned in the Catherine curtain for eight months.

Although all the crimes of the convicts, without exception, were connected with the activities of Nechaev, he was not brought to court, his surname was not named, instead “prisoner No. 5” was constantly mentioned. Nechaev's cell was numbered 5 and was the place where all the ways of intercourse with the freedom came from and where the prisoner did vigorous work.

After discovering Nechaev's activities, on December 29, 1881, he was transferred to cell No. 1. It was located in the so-called small corridor of the front facade. This corridor was completely isolated from the large corridor. It had three cells, of which one - No. 2 - was the duty room of the gendarmes. Thus, the possibility of intercourse with other prisoners in any form was excluded, Nechayev was no longer taken even for walks. After consideration in a military court of the case on charges against gendarme non-commissioned officers and privates of the Ravelin (from the beginning of June), the director of the Plehve police department notified the commandant that the Minister of Internal Affairs found it perfectly correct to dress Nechaev in convict clothes, give him simple food and deprive him of reading books, except the gospel and the bible.

The government found it "perfectly correct" to hasten the death of Nechaev. Within five and a half months, it achieved this. November 21, 1882 Nechaev died. At night, his body was secretly taken out of the cell, where he was buried alive, and handed over to the police bailiff for burial as the corpse of an "unknown" in a cemetery outside the fortress.

The tsarist government did everything possible to kill Nechaev. The killing of Nechaev by the Ravelin administration was quite deliberate. This is documented by the report of the prison doctor, who, only 12 days before Nechaev's death, found it necessary to provide him with a daily walk and half a bottle of milk for treatment. It is difficult to imagine that a seriously ill prisoner could walk. The deprivation of walks for a long time and poor food in conditions of complete isolation led the prisoner to death.

There is almost no information about Nechaev's life after the trial of the sentries and his transfer to cell No. 1 in the small corridor. It must be assumed that the prisoner endured his complete isolation with particular difficulty, since before that his life in the ravelin was filled with communication with the will, and propaganda among the sentries, and reading books.

Almost 10 years of Nechaev's imprisonment in the Alekseevskaya ravelin, as we have seen, inscribed a very special page in the history of the ravelin. Its peculiarity lies in the destruction of the brutal regime, which the prisoner achieved not from the higher authorities of the fortress, not from the minister, not from the king, but from the soldiers and gendarmes of the Ravelin. The tenfold cruelty of this regime after the condemnation of the soldiers and even the deliberate bringing of Nechaev to an untimely death by the prison administration do not destroy this feature.

MIRSKY

On November 28, 1879, Leon Mirsky was imprisoned in the Alekseevsky ravelin. At that time there were two prisoners already known to us: Beideman and Nechaev. Mirsky was brought here from the Trubetskoy bastion after the Petersburg military district court sentenced him to death for the attempted murder of the chief of gendarmes Drenteln. Mirsky jumped on his horse to the window of Drenteln's carriage and fired at it, but missed. He managed to escape and was arrested only a few months later. When arrested, he put up armed resistance.

Despite his twenty years of age, he already had a revolutionary past: for propaganda and for facilitating the escape of three political prisoners from Kiev prison, he was imprisoned in this prison, and then transported to the Peter and Paul Fortress. From here he was released on bail in January 1879, and two months later he shot at Drenteln. Sentenced to death, he applied for a pardon, and the death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment.

After replacing the death penalty with hard labor, Mirsky, being in the Trubetskoy bastion, turned to the commandant of the fortress with a request to send him an Orthodox priest, since the Catholic priest did not satisfy him.

He was sentenced to death again in 1906 by the punitive expedition of General Reppenkampf for editing the Verkhneudinsk newspaper. And this time the death penalty was replaced for him with indefinite hard labor in Akatui. From here he was sent to a settlement and died after the revolution, in 1919 or 1920.

This man, twice sentenced to death, who served hard labor in the harshest Siberian prisons - in Kara and in Akatui, turned out to be a traitor to Nechaev. For this betrayal, the government paid him with preferential conditions of detention in the Alekseevskaya ravelin and a reduction in the period of stay there.

Nechaev had relations with Mirsky through the prison guards. According to Shchegolev's assumption, neither Mirsky nor Nechaev were completely frank with each other. However, Mirsky knew in general terms of Nechaev's plans and reported them to the commandant. Shchegolev gave exhaustive evidence of this by publishing the traitor's handwritten letters that he found in the archives.

From these letters it is clear that a relationship was established between the political prisoner and the commandant of the fortress, completely unusual for a state prison. Mirsky's addresses were not official statements, but private letters. One of the letters contains an indication that Mirsky considered himself entitled to receive special attention from the prison administration. When the ravelin caretaker withdrew a significant part of the books from the library, Mirsky expressed surprise in a letter to the commandant: "Is it really necessary to take such precautions against me after all that has happened ...". He recalled that at one time he had decided "to render the generous government the service he could and did everything he could in this regard." For his part, the commandant explained to the Minister of Internal Affairs that Mirsky's request was satisfied by the importance of the service rendered by the latter to the government.

It is disgusting to reread some of the traitor's letters with his requests. So, in one of them, he asked the commandant to give him, as it was before, on Sundays, a dessert in the form of a pair of oranges, a bunch of grapes or berries, and also provide tobacco of a higher quality. Obviously, he included oranges and tobacco in those "thirty pieces of silver" for which he sold Nechaev. However, he himself covered up his betrayal, of course, not with material gains, but with his "sincere repentance." “Having come to know God, I loved the king with all my tormented soul. Bitter tears of repentance and remorse prompted me to at least somehow commemorate my moral rebirth. "

There is reason to believe that Mirsky's "services" continued in the ravelin even later. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain the visit to him in the cell by the Minister of Internal Affairs, as well as by the head of the secret department of a separate corps of gendarmes, Sudeikin. At that time, the People's Volunteers were already detained here. It can be assumed that the minister and Sudeikin were interested in the latter.

On June 26, 1883, Mirsky was transferred from the Alekseevsky ravelin to the Trubetskoy bastion, and then to the House of Pretrial Detention and sent to the Karu.

He was in the ravelin on especially favorable terms. In any case, he enjoyed the right to read magazines and purchase foreign books. The transfer from Ravelin to Kara was a relief for Mirsky's lot, but this relief was too far from the pardon he had hoped for.

The conditions of Mirsky's stay in the ravelin after his betrayal are completely exceptional: he was fed oranges, grapes and berries, while others were dying of scurvy and hunger. Of course, the boundless arbitrariness characteristic of the Ravelin regime manifested itself here. We do not know of any other cases of such feeding of prisoners. And the privileges that were provided to Mirsky regarding the reading of books and magazines were also completely exceptional.

This position of Mirsky in prison should be noted all the more since the 80s were the period of the most brutal prison regime for the entire existence of the Ravelin.

PEOPLE'S WAYS IN ALEXEEVSKY RAVELIN

Over the last 5 years of the Alekseevsky Ravelin's existence (1880-1884), 23 prisoners passed through it, who were mostly members of the Narodnaya Volya party. Despite such a significant number of prisoners, they left almost no information about their stay in the ravelin. This can be explained very simply: most of these prisoners died in the ravelin itself and in the Shlisselburg fortress, where they were

translated from Ravelin. In our further presentation, we use, firstly, the found archival materials and, secondly, the memories of former prisoners.

Until now, almost no information has appeared in the press from official sources about the stay of prisoners in the Alekseevsky ravelin over the last 5 years of its existence. The cases that we found in the archive of this ravelin for the indicated period and related to individual prisoners are very brief. Shiryaev was the first of the Narodnaya Volya members to be imprisoned in a ravelin. After being sentenced to death, he was imprisoned in the casemate of the lower floor of the Catherine Curtain. He was transferred to the Alekseevsky Ravelin on the night of November 10, 1880 with the utmost secrecy and was placed in cell No. 13. The list of things of the new prisoner contains, among other things, a list of books that belong to him, including those without the names of the authors. works such as "Mental, moral and physical education", "Comparative statistics of Russia", vol. I, "The economic life of the landowning population in Russia", "The experience of statistical research on peasant allotments and payments", a textbook on the German language, the New Testament and dr.

It is not clear from the file whether these books were admitted to Shiryaev's solitary confinement. In any case, Shiryaev received neither letters from his mother, nor letters and money sent to him by his friend Anna Dolgorukova. He was completely cut off from communication with the outside world, but, as we already know, Nechaev established relations with Shiryaev through the gendarmes.

A few months after his imprisonment, Shiryaev fell ill with tuberculosis. However, in the named archival file, his illness is indicated only in the document in which it was reported to the Ministry of Internal Affairs about Shiryaev's death. The death of Shiryaev followed at 6 am on August 18, 1881 "from lumpy inflammation of the entire left lung." By order of the State Police Department, the corpse of the deceased was transferred in full secrecy, by the gendarmes to the casemates of the lower floor of the Catherine Curtain and at 12 o'clock in the morning given to the police for burial in one of the city cemeteries. Thus, the body of Shiryaev ended up in the casemates of the same curtain, from where, 10 months before, after the announcement of the cancellation of the death sentence, he was transferred to the Alekseevsky Ravelin, where the death penalty was performed on him day after day during these months.

The following archival materials about the prisoners of the Alekseevsky Ravelin date back to 1882. In that year, on March 26, as always, at midnight, 11 prisoners of the Trubetskoy Bastion were delivered one by one to the empty cells of the Ravelin, observing the strictest secrecy. These prisoners were: Mikhailov, Kolodkevich, Frolenko, Isaev, Kletochnikov, Barannikov, Aronchik, Morozov, Langas, Trigoni and Teterka. The transfer of prisoners was carried out by the highest command. The police department issued a special order for the especially strict detention of Mikhailov. He was assigned a cell, isolated from the others, in a small corridor, where cell no. 1 - Nechaev was located. It was forbidden to take them both out for a walk, and let the rest go out for a walk, as far as possible, one at a time, but not more than half an hour each.

Since, after a long break, the Alekseevsky ravelin on March 27, 1882 again filled with a significant number of prisoners, the police department prescribed new conditions for feeding the prisoners. They were to receive cabbage soup or soup with 1/4 pound of meat for lunch, and pea soup on fast days. For the second course, buckwheat porridge was to be served. Black bread was supposed to be two and a half pounds. For dinner at 7 o'clock, the same porridge was to be served, for lunch and dinner - a mug of kvass.

From the recollections of the prisoners we cite below, we learn that this food was provided in completely insufficient quantities and poorly prepared, and worms were found in the bread. The monotony of food and its inadequacy led very soon to the development of scurvy, to tuberculosis and to an increase in mortality.

The highlight of this 1882 year in the ravelin was the permission for Trigoni to meet with his mother. It happened in the Catherine curtain through the bars, in the presence of the administration, under its strong supervision. It was ordered to inform the police department what the mother and son talked about on the date and how it went. The commandant gave the required information in a special report, indicating that the conversation concerned exclusively family and household matters.

Another outstanding event was the admission of several new prisoners to the ravelin in the same 1882. So, on September 18, Ivanov, Popov and Shchedrin, brought from the Kary penal servitude, were admitted to the ravelin.

An absolutely exceptional fact was revealed in relation to Shchedrin. On Kara, he was chained to a wheelbarrow, and she was sent with him to Petersburg. On the way, by order of the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, Shchedrin was freed from the wheelbarrow, which was simultaneously delivered to the Alekseevsky Ravelin.

Due to the breakdown of the wheelbarrow, Shchedrin was for some time in his solitary cell without her. But after the correction, he was again chained to her. Only on October 5, 1882 Shchedrin was released from the wheelbarrow.

The Alekseevsky Ravelin was completed by the end of September 1882. In sixteen cells, prisoners were kept, two were occupied by gendarmes, and two were warehouses for household supplies. The caretaker Sokolov was therefore unable to immediately fulfill the orders to place Polivanov in the ravelin, who was convicted in Saratov for trying to free a political prisoner.

Polivanov was temporarily placed in the Trubetskoy Bastion in an isolated cell. Sokolov was in a hurry to prepare a cell for him in the ravelin, and on November 17 Polivanov became a prisoner of the ravelin.

In 1883, the caretaker Sokolov, with complete calmness and indifference, reported on the tragic events in the ravelin. One by one the prisoners die: July 13, 1883 - Kletochnikov, August 6, 1883 - Barannikov, August 9, 1883 - Teterka, September 11, 1883 - Langans, March 18, 1884 - Mikhailov. A special case was started about the death of each. In these cases, there is no information about the course of the disease: the administration was not interested in the prisoner's illness, but only in his death. The reports reported on the day and hour of death, the reason for it. The cause of death was almost always the same — tuberculosis.

We already know that Shiryaev died in 1881 from pulmonary tuberculosis. In Kletochnikov, death followed from "lumpy suffering of the intestinal canal", in Barannikov - from transient pulmonary consumption, in Teterka - from debilitating fever, in Langans - from "lumpy pulmonary consumption" and Mikhailov - from "acute catarrhal inflammation of the lungs." Each case ends with a message of the same content. So, for example, in the Mikhailov case it was reported that his corpse was transferred to the empty casemate of the lower floor of the Catherine curtain under the lock "with the setting at the door of a rifle sentry." Even the corpse of the prisoner Alekseevsky Ravelin was transferred to a solitary confinement cell, locked up and guarded by an armed sentry.

Secretly at night they brought the prisoner to the Alekseevsky ravelin, secretly at night they took out the corpse of the deceased from the ravelin and at night, in complete secrecy, they buried this corpse in the cemetery so that no one knew the grave of the revolutionary.

The prisoner's own dress and other things, besides money, watches, a cross and glasses, were burned, and the listed items and money were sent to the police department. The relatives and friends of the deceased prisoner were not notified of his death.

Only now, after the October Revolution, did it become possible to establish the time and causes of death of the prisoners of the Alekseevsky Ravelin.

In the same 1883, when the solitary cells of the Alekseevsky Ravelin were released due to the death of prisoners, another cell was vacated as a result of a serious mental illness of prisoner Ivanov. He was transferred to the Trubetskoy bastion on September 5, 1883 and later transferred to the Kazan psychiatric hospital.

The solitary cells that were freed in the Alekseevsky ravelin were not empty for a long time. By the highest order on April 29, 1884, 7 convicts from the Trubetskoy bastion were transferred here: Meer Gellis, Savely Zlatopolsky, Mikhail Grachevsky, Yuri Bogdanovich, Alexander Butsevich, Yegor Minakov and Ippolit Myshkin. The transfer of exiled political revolutionaries to the "prison of death" was motivated by the overcrowding of the Trubetskoy bastion with political prisoners under investigation. In fact, a selection was made of those political prisoners sentenced to hard labor, whom tsarism considered its most dangerous enemies and for whom imprisonment in the Alekseevsky ravelin was supposed to be a disguised death penalty.

These are the archival materials about the prisoners of the Alekseevsky Ravelin in the very last years before its closure. The materials are not complete, but we considered it necessary to cite them, since they remained unused in the literature. It is characteristic that the personal files of the prisoners do not reveal the peculiarities of the stay in the ravelin of this or that prisoner. The monotonous prison regime did not provide materials for recording in the personal files of prisoners. We will see below that the memories of the former prisoners of the Alekseevsky ravelin were largely reduced to descriptions of diseases and deaths in the ravelin.

Although the Alekseevsky ravelin took care of his murderous regime to close the mouths of those who could tell about him, he did not quite succeed, and we have come down to a description of the ravelin's regime for 1882-1884, made by Frolenko, Polivanov and Trigoni.

The material and moral conditions of this regime in the 80s were the most difficult during the entire existence of the Alekseevsky Ravelin. They could only lead to premature death or serious illness. The life and health of the prisoners were hourly eroded by the dampness of the casemate.

According to Frolenko's description, the dampness affected everything. She managed to cover the floor of the cell with a coating during the night when the prisoner did not walk on it. The paint on the floor, near the walls, where it was still preserved, was easily smeared by this dampness. The salt in the salt shaker turned into brine. The mattresses stuffed with hair are rotten. It can be assumed that in the 70s, when only one to three cells were occupied by prisoners in the Alekseevsky ravelin, the rest were not heated or heated little. Therefore, the terrible dampness, characteristic of the Alekseevsky ravelin before, has now grown to incredible proportions. In Polivanov's cell, mold covered the prison walls with a crust so that they seemed to be painted with black paint two yards high from the floor. With such dampness, there was not enough light and fresh air in the cell. The window was carefully painted over with white paint, and instead of a window in the upper part of the frame, a narrow tin pipe was inserted with a thick strainer at the outer end, covered with cobwebs. To this it should be added that some of the prisoners were taken out for 15-minute walks only 5 or 6 months after being imprisoned in the ravelin. Only later the walking time was increased to 45 minutes.

The food of the prisoners was insufficient, and the bread was mixed with cockle and even with worms. But the first day of their stay in the ravelin, Frolenko and 9 other prisoners, who arrived here at night on March 26, 1882, constituted an exception, calculated as if to make the prisoners feel more strongly the burden of the prison regime. Frolenko recalled that on the first day in the morning he was served tea with a roll and black bread. For lunch, they served large portions of cabbage soup with meat and roast and, as Frolenko remembered, even a sweet dish. At the same time, napkins and a silver spoon were served. In the evening tea was served, then supper. It was on the Saturday before Easter. The prisoners assumed that their food on Sunday would be even better. They were wrong. In the morning, instead of tea, there was water with a piece of rye bread and a small curd paste. At dinner they served cabbage soup, and instead of roast - liquid porridge. The wooden spoon replaced the silver one, the napkin was gone. It is difficult to find any explanations for this abrupt change in nutrition, other than the desire of the administration indicated by us to force the prisoners to experience the bitter feeling of mockery at them. This assumption is all the more likely that on the same day the prisoners were dressed in the clothes of convicts.

Trigoni, who entered the Alekseevsky Ravelin at the same time as Frolenko, painted exactly the same picture of the change in the prison regime during the first 24 hours of the prisoners' stay in prison. He also experienced the difference in food on Saturday and Sunday and the mockery of changing his clothes from Saturday to a different dress exactly 24 hours later. He recalled how pleasantly surprised he was when he received "fine linen, made of thin canvas, a new black, comfortable dressing gown, and shoes - low shoes, even smart ones." The next day, just on Easter Sunday, all this was taken away and replaced, like Frolenko's, with sackcloth linen, a rough prison dress, and old cats. One should not think that such a change in food and clothing on the second day of imprisonment in the ravelin was associated with the entry into force of the sentence. It entered into force much earlier, even during the stay of the prisoners in the Trubetskoy bastion. Thus, no formal excuse can be found for changing food and clothing.

The same prisoner introduced us to the appearance of a prison cell in the Alekseevsky Ravelin in 1882. Its walls were painted yellow. The window frame was of the usual size, as in residential buildings, but the glass in the frame was frosted. The entire furnishings of the cell consisted of an oak table and chair, a wooden bed with a mattress, a sheet, a blanket and a pillow, and a portable toilet seat. Water for washing was brought in in the morning, and subsequently metal sinks were installed. The furnishings were complemented by a kerosene lamp.

We will not reproduce the description of the appearance of the Alekseevsky ravelin already known to us, but we will note a few of the author's instructions about the garden in front of the ravelin. It seems to us that we should not overlook the small touches of the everyday side of the Alekseevsky Ravelin, information about which was kept secret, no matter what they concerned. In this kindergarten, prisoners appeared for short minutes and not every day. The prisoners drew at least a little strength here to maintain their crumbling health. Polivanov gave a very detailed description of this garden in summer and winter. It was not for nothing that the prisoners called him by the diminutive name "kindergarten". It was a small triangle, its vegetation consisted of four apple trees, ten tall, but not thick birches, one linden, one small Christmas tree and bushes of elderberry, lilac, raspberry, currant. There were two flower beds in the garden, each with a cast-iron bench. To the prisoners, this vegetation seemed lush and rich. In winter, for a walk, a narrow, straight path was cleared of snow, along which the prisoner walked up and down. However, it was allowed to sit on the bench. Later, with the onset of warm weather, a pile of sand was poured on this bench, and the prisoners were allowed to pour it from place to place, but it was forbidden to sprinkle it on the paths for fear that the prisoners would establish communication with each other by using any sand figures along the paths.

No physical labor was allowed in the Alekseevskaya Ravelin. The prohibition of physical labor was in full accordance with the entire regime of the Alekseevsky Ravelin. It is difficult to describe this regime because it was too monotonous and meaningless. Its distinctive feature was its lack of content. The tsarist government made sure that life in the solitary cell of the Ravelin was completely isolated from all external impressions. First of all, the regime was aimed at not giving the prisoners food for any kind of mental work, and at the same time not giving them the opportunity to engage in any kind of physical labor, although they were sentenced to hard labor.

Monotony was a characteristic feature of the regime in most of the prisons of the period under study. But in the Alekseevskaya ravelin, the monotony was carried out with amazing, unprecedented completeness. Each day of the prison stay was an exact copy of other days of the same. The life of every prisoner in the ravelin repeated with amazing accuracy the existence of all his other prisoners. We know that this was required of every prison, but in no other Russian prison it was possible to carry out a similar regime to the same extent as in the Alekseevsky ravelin. He owes this to the caretaker Sokolov, whose name is associated not only with the history of the Alekseevsky Ravelin in the last years of its existence, but also the history of the new prison in the Shlisselburg fortress.

The historian of the tsarist prison cannot pass over in silence the activities of this jailer. We do not know of any other jailer whose “glory” could be equal to the “glory” of Sokolov, or “Herod,” as the prisoners called him. He acquired "fame" for himself by his activities in both prisons we named - in the Alekseevsky ravelin and in the new prison of the Shlisselburg fortress, where he transferred in August 1884. Therefore, characterizing Sokolov, we have to base this essay on the Alekseevsky Ravelin on the results of his activities in the Shlisselburg Fortress.

The name of Sokolov became known to wide circles only many years later, after the termination of his official career; the secret that enveloped the Alekseevsky ravelin and the Shlisselburg fortress kept the name of Sokolov a secret. When the opportunity appeared in print of the memoirs of former prisoners of state prisons, each author paid attention to this soulless executioner. His role in the creation of the prison regime of the Alekseevsky Ravelin and Shlisselburg was exceptionally great.

Matvey Sokolov was born into a bourgeois family in 1834. His education is lower, he graduated from the cantonist school. "Early military service began as a private and already in the seventeenth year served in a regiment. He took part in the suppression of the Polish uprising and was awarded the order. Soon after that Sokolov transferred to the gendarmerie. Obviously, on this new We do not know the "feats" he accomplished, but they undoubtedly were, as this is evidenced by the transfer of Sokolov "by the highest command" in 1866 to serve in the III department for the execution of special assignments with enrollment to the gendarme division.

In 1880, this former cantonist already held the rank of staff captain. After the disclosure of Nechaev's actions, Sokolov was appointed to the Alekseevsky Ravelin to establish "order" and in May 1882 "was approved as the caretaker of this ravelin. So the career of this jailer began, and the prisoners themselves gave us his characteristic stick. It is worth stopping at it.

As we already know, Sokolov was completely uneducated ”person. His service in the army, and then in the gendarmerie, did not at all raise the level of education with which he left the cantonist school for 16 years. Such a service only developed from him a campaigner, ready to carry out the orders of his superiors without any reasoning. The main feature of his character was his diligence and readiness to always do everything with precision that his superiors ordered him to do. This blind obedience was the motto of his life. This was his philosophy. According to V. Figner, Sokolov said: “If they order a prisoner to say“ your Excellency ”, I will say“ Your Excellency ”; if ordered to strangle - I will strangle ”.

We add that no one ordered him to speak respectfully with the prisoners, just as “direct, frank orders to strangle the prisoners were not given to him either. But this uneducated gendarme had enough natural wit to guess that he was put in the role of a strangler in prison. E. Kolosov noted Sokolov's ability to find the most sensitive, painful places in each prisoner. Then he began to methodically play on them, giving his victim real torment. Kolosov calls such observation of Sokolov subtle, which is in complete contradiction with his primitive rudeness.

The prisoners assessed Sokolov as a cruel executioner who served the tsar not for fear, but for conscience. In fact, he did not miss a single case that in one way or another concerned the prison. He spent days and nights in it. For example, in the new prison of the Shlisselburg fortress, he neatly appeared in the interval between nine o'clock in the evening and six in the morning four times. He himself caught the prisoners by tapping.

Volkenstein recalled how Sokolov, completely unexpected for the prisoners, caught them tapping on Easter morning at dawn, when he was not expected at all. According to Figner, this jailer loved his craft and was a true guard dog, a Cerberus like the three-headed dog at the gates of Tartarus.

To establish a murderous regime in the Alekseevsky ravelin and in the Shlisselburg fortress, Sokolov had well-chosen gendarmes. They were worthy of their boss. It would seem that Sokolov should have completely trusted them. But he didn't trust any of them in any way. This was the basic rule of his prison administration. Therefore, he did not allow any gendarmes or doctors into the cell to the prisoners without himself. For example, in the Alekseevsky ravelin, he was present during the morning cleaning of each cell. He tirelessly, with strained attention watched the gendarmes and prisoners during the distribution of food to the latter three times a day. He himself came with the gendarmes for the prisoner to lead him on a walk, and during the walk each prisoner and the guards were under the watchful eye of Sokolov. He himself took the prisoner back to the cell after the walk. With his participation, the gendarmes took or dragged the offender from the cell to the punishment cell. He was, so to speak, an indispensable assistant to the prison doctor when visiting sick prisoners and tried to allow such visits as rarely as possible. Finally, under his supervision, the corpse of the deceased was taken out of prison. He had enough time and energy for all this. It was a man with oxened nerves. He calmly watched as before his eyes, one after another, people went crazy and died in their solitary confinement. His nature was, as it were, in accordance with the iron and stone from which the state prison was built.

In his activities, the head of the Sokolov prison was guided by a very simple rule: to carry out the principle of solitary confinement for each prisoner without any indulgence. For this, he did not stop at anything and did not spare either others or himself. At the same time, he was not afraid that he exceeded the rights granted to him, but he also did not hesitate to perform duties that were not directly on him. In the Alekseevsky ravelin, for example, he allowed a doctor to see a prisoner only after making sure that the prisoner was ill. He personally locked and unlocked the doors of the prison cells.

In 1887, Sokolov was dismissed after Grachevsky's suicide in the Shlisselburg fortress.

Novorussky, after his release in 1905 from the fortress, sought out Sokolov in St. Petersburg, trying to collect from him information about the former prisoners of the fortress. But the old jailer remained true to himself and did not tell the secrets of the fortress, which Alexander III put him to guard.

When you reread the memories of your stay in the Alekseevsky ravelin in the 80s, you see that neither Sokolov nor his guards fought, did not swear, and there were no general protests or stormy speeches by any of them on the part of the prisoners. separately. Sokolov did not beat, but killed by the regime introduced by him. The memoirs of Polivanov, Frolenko and Trigoni boil down to descriptions of how the prisoners in the Alekseevskaya ravelin were ill and died. Actually, about the regime, the authors of the memoirs could only say that they were deprived of light, air, all communication, books, except for religious, physical work, meetings and correspondence with relatives. In other words, they were deprived of everything they needed to continue life. To preserve such a life, some of them did not have enough strength, already exhausted by the previous years of struggle.

Unfortunately, in the archives of the Alekseevsky Ravelin, almost no files have survived during this period (1880-1884) that would shed light on the regime in the Ravelin. Of the available memoirs, the more complete are the memoirs compiled by Polivanov after his transfer to the Shlisselburg fortress and later published by him. However, assessing the degree of completeness of these memories, it should be remembered that the life of the prisoners of Ravelin was very monotonous and their attention was focused on such phenomena that seem unimportant. We will not miss them, as they help us to understand the peculiarities of the prison regime of the Alekseevsky Ravelin.

Polivanov was placed in cell No. 5. Next to him, in cell No. 4, Shchedrin was placed two months earlier (September 18, 1882). Shchedrin was sentenced to be hanged in 1881 in the case of the "South Russian Union of Workers" in Kiev and sent to Siberia instead of the death penalty. During his stay in the Irkutsk prison, for striking an official of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the face, he was again sentenced to death, replaced by being chained to a wheelbarrow. Shchedrin was sent to Kara, from where, after an unsuccessful escape, 8 Carians were imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Polivanov was completely isolated from the outside world until communication was established between him and Shchedrin by tapping. In his memoirs, he described the cruel Sokolov, his assistant Yakovlev, the equally heartless and rude prison doctor Williams. Despite the swelling of Polivanov's arm, the prison doctor refused to help him. The mission of this doctor was by no means to provide serious assistance to sick prisoners. He did not take measures to improve the sanitary conditions of the Ravelin.

Even before his communication with Shchedrin, Polivanov guessed that he had ended up in the Alekseevsky ravelin. He became convinced of the correctness of his assumption when he saw the stamp “A. R. 1864 ", and on the bowl -" A. R. 1819 ".

Dinner dishes were not taken out of the cell, and the prisoners themselves had to wash them with cold water, so the dishes could not be properly clean. In a metal mug in the cell, Polivanov squeezed water from a rag from the windowsill. He kept a daily count of the water collected in this way, which he poured into the sink of the washstand. In addition to this "occupation", there was only one thing: sweeping the floor with a mop. One can imagine the excitement of a prisoner when he heard an inviting knock on the wall from a nearby cell. The tapping began with Shchedrin.

Polivanov believed that the tapping in the ravelin was more successful than in the Trubetskoy bastion and in the Shlisselburg fortress. The gendarmes, who were not in soft shoes, hardly managed to quietly sneak up to the "peephole" of the prison cell and catch the prisoner tapping. It was even more difficult for Sokolov, who wore squeaky boots and spurs. At the tapping, both neighbors spent hours and hours arguing about revolutionary tactics. Polivanov learned from Shchedrin about the fate of many comrades and about the blows inflicted on the revolutionary movement. Polivanov could not have communication with another neighboring cell, since she was occupied by the tseikhhaus.

From Polivanov we learned about the details of the prisoners' walks. All the time, two guards walked non-stop on one side of the prison garden - one towards the other, not losing sight of the prisoner in the garden. Sokolov constantly, through a special window in the wall, checked whether any violations were committed while walking. They took Polivanov for walks only every other day.

During the walks, the cell was searched and examined. During one of these examinations, Sokolov discovered an earprint on a moldy wall: the prisoner pressed his ear against the wall in order to better hear his comrade's knocking. Sokolov transferred Polivanov to cell no. 3, adjacent to cell no. 2, where the gendarmes were housed.

Here Polivanov spent eight months in complete solitude, sometimes without uttering a word for months at a time. During his stay in cell no. 5 a Bible was given to him for reading. Very rarely did he manage, standing on the windowsill, to look through the window through the holes punched in the iron sheet for the flow of air, which was the only entertainment. There was no one to talk to. Such loneliness led the prisoner to a mental illness, from which, however, he recovered after a while. However, this illness led him to twice failed suicide attempts.

In addition to mental illness, something else began. Poor diet has led to severe scurvy. At this time, several prisoners were already sick with this disease. In the period 1881-1884. out of 24 prisoners of the Alekseevsky ravelin, 7 people died.

Polivanov, Frolenko and Trigoni report that scurvy was the common lot of prisoners.

The widespread development of scurvy threatened to leave the ravelin without prisoners due to their extinction. The food was slightly improved and the time for walking was increased.

Despite all Sokolov's measures to prevent the prisoners from communicating with each other, some prisoners managed to get along with each other. Polivanov, after transferring him to cell no. 15 (this was the third cell he occupied in the ravelin), established relations with his comrades by marking letters in a book from the prison library. During this time, Myshkin managed to correspond with some of his comrades through notes. The prisoners wrote short notes on ribbons torn from the fields of the book. A charred match was used instead of a pencil. Such notes were successfully attached to the handle of the shovel, which remained in the garden where the prisoners took walks. Receiving such a note was a huge event in the life of the prisoner of the Alekseevsky Ravelin.

The prisoners did not meet each other either in the corridors or on walks.

This is the information about the Alekseevskaya ravelin in the last years of its existence until the beginning of August 1884. The authors of the memoirs had nothing more to write about. The very brevity of these terrible memories speaks of the transformation of imprisonment in this ravelin into a painful death penalty.

While the prisoners of the Alekseevsky Ravelin spent terrible years in this prison, the new emperor was building a new prison for them on Shlisselburg Island. It was supposed to be the same place of slow execution as the Alekseevsky Ravelin was. We will learn about this in the chapter on the Shlisselburg Fortress. The authors of the memoirs about the Alekseevsky Ravelin, and especially Polivanov, mentioned by us, wrote how they were transported from one prison to another. They were shackled with leg shackles, and their hands were linked with a short chain. One by one they were taken out of the ravelin and delivered to the barge, to the single closets arranged in it. The river police steamer delivered this barge with prisoners to Shlisselburgsky island. Sixteen people from the Alekseevsky ravelin and six from the Trubetskoy bastion on August 2 and 4, 1884 were transported in this way to the new prison.

However, the Alekseevsky ravelin so justified the hopes placed on it by the tsarist government that the new prison on Shlisselburgsky island had it as its prototype. “Herod” Sokolov remained the caretaker in it. New pages were written in the history of the prison.

The building of the Secret House will be demolished at the end of the 19th century, and in its place, as if hiding even its foundation, a building for the Naval Archives is being built.

Zotov Bastion

Near the Nikolskaya curtain. It was built under the supervision of the uncle and educator of Peter I, the Moscow Duma clerk Anikita Moiseevich Zotov.

The St. Petersburg Fortress was built in accordance with all the rules of the art of military engineering. During its construction, the latest achievements of Western European fortification were used. The main fortress fence followed the coastline, leaving not even a piece of land for the landing of an enemy landing. The bastion pushed forward increased the battle zone. Not a single enemy ship could approach the fortress within shot range, and its guns controlled the Neva fairway. The entire system of the fortress made it possible to defend against any enemy attack without loss. A canal dug inside the fortress gave the defenders of the fortress an unlimited resource of drinking water.

The walls of the bastion, up to 12 meters high, are made of bricks. They consist of two parts: the outer wall facing the duct, which is called the scarp wall. Its thickness reaches from 3 to 8 meters. The inner or valgang wall extending into the interior of the fortress has a brickwork thickness of up to 2 meters. By the way, this can be clearly seen from the windows that cut through the thickness of the wall. The embrasures are shaped like lancet niches.

Inside, behind a large striped gate, there are casemates. Depending on their purpose, they were protective and defensive. As stated in the documents, "... the protective casemates serve as storage facilities for stocks of firearms ... and food ... for the living of the garrison." Defensive casemates were intended to accommodate guns and riflemen. The dimensions of the two-tiered casemates were quite impressive - the lengths ranged from 12 to 16 meters, and the width from 3 to 6.

In addition to defensive and protective casemates, there were also powder magazine-caches in the fortress. They were located at the front of the bastions. On the Zotov Bastion, to the right of the center, you can see two openings going inside the fortress - a window and a door. " These are the powder chambers.

In the center of the bastion there is a gentle rise - a ramp. On it they rolled guns onto the fortress walls. All the bastions of the Peter and Paul Fortress, except for the front Naryshkin, had such ramps. A secret passage - sortia - was also included in the system of the fortress fence. It made it possible to leave the casemate with a narrow corridor to the outer wall of the fortress. There were two such passages in the fortress, one of them is located just in the Zotov bastion.

Over time, the casemates of the Zotov Bastion also became a place of imprisonment of prisoners, moreover, "especially dangerous criminals", to whom were attributed "enemies of the throne, the Fatherland and the Orthodox faith."

The embezzlers were undoubtedly considered especially dangerous. They were treated very harshly. One of the first prisoners in the fortress in 1717 were 22 sailors from the ship "Revel", arrested in the Admiralty case of embezzlement. In 1738, the cabinet minister Artemy Volynsky, the head of the conspiracy against Biron, the all-powerful favorite of the Empress Anna Ioannovna, was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, and two years later he was beheaded in the Sytny market. Biron himself, arrested by Field Marshal Minich after the death of the empress, was in the fortress before being sent into exile. And when, as a result of the palace coup, Elizaveta Petrovna ascended the throne, Minikh would also be arrested. By the way, he took part in the construction of the fortress, continuing the work of Domenico Trezzini.

Often literary men were among the most dangerous criminals - their works were equated with especially dangerous political crimes. The lack of timeliness of their thoughts aroused serious anger on the part of the authorities. So in 1726, Ivan Timofeevich Pososhkov, the author of the "Book of Poverty and Wealth", was in the fortress. His book was the first economic criticism of the existing system. The author was "rewarded" by imprisonment in a fortress, where he died after 5 months of arrest. There is one more literary man worth mentioning. In 1790, Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev was arrested for his book "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow". Empress Catherine II, having familiarized herself with its content, found that "... this composition is outrageous and criminal ... the author aims to bring the people into indignation against the bosses and superiors." The verdict of the court is the death penalty. However, the empress showed mercy - Radishchev was pardoned and exiled to the Islimsky prison in Siberia for 10 years.
The prisoners of the fortress were a motley kaleidoscope of the most diverse and amazing destinies.

The places of detention in the fortress were never empty. But there were cases when the prison premises could not accommodate all the prisoners. This happened for the first time in connection with the "Semenov story". In 1820, 1,500 soldiers of the Semenovsky regiment were simultaneously in the fortress. They were arrested for their protest against the rough drill and ill-treatment of the lower ranks of the regimental commander. The soldiers were accommodated in curtain casemates equipped for barracks. Dampness, half-starved existence, extreme cramped conditions led to such a number of diseases that a special infirmary was created in the fortress for the Semenovites. About the verdict, the ringleaders were to be driven through the ranks six times (6 thousand blows with gauntlets), then sent to hard labor in the mines. The entire regiment in the old composition was disbanded. Even a spontaneous uprising in the army was an unprecedented event. Therefore, apparently, one of his contemporaries wrote: "This will serve as a threshold to important and unprecedented events." These events were not long in coming. In 1825, the Decembrists, participants in the uprising on Senate Square, were kept within the walls of the fortress. The commandant of the fortress was ordered to keep the prisoners as "villains", and the Decembrist Zubkov would later write in his memoirs: "The inventors of the gallows and beheadings are benefactors of mankind, who invented a solitary confinement is a vile scoundrel."

For the Decembrists, 11 ranks of guilt were determined, five leaders of the uprising were placed outside the ranks and sentenced to death. Those sentenced to death spent the last night in the casemates of the Kronverk curtain, and in the morning they were hanged on the right bank of the Kronverk.

John's Ravelin

On the wall of the left semi-counterguard of the Ioannovsky Ravelin, a gallows was installed on November 4, 1880, and at 8 hours 10 minutes in the morning, prominent people from the People's Will Alexander Alexandrovich Kvyatkovsky and Andrei Korneevich Presnyakov died here.