In 157 years after Peter the Great extended Russia
to the Baltic Sea and founded St. Petersburg in the west,
the empire opened its gates to the east—to the Pacific Ocean.
The governor of Eastern Siberia, Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky
laid down a new military post in a bay named Zolotoy Rog
It was called Vladivostok, which means "to rule the east" in Russian.
A name like this probably wasn't too pleasing for the neighboring states,
who had their own plans for the region.
So a reliable lock was built for this gate,
one of the most unusual and unassailable fortresses
that was under construction for almost a century.
Around Vladivostok, you won't see any tall stone walls
with spikes at the top or imposing towers with battlements.
Old European fortresses belong in novels about knights.
A modern fortress of the early 20th century is a system
of forts, artillery batteries, and gunpowder magazines,
located at key elevated places and connected between each other.
This is how Russian military engineers designed the
main line of defense for the Vladivostok Fortress.
Vladivostok's coastal defenses were being built
since the establishment of a military post
in the Zolotoy Rog Bay.
While the first batteries only defended the entrance
to the bay from any potential adversary, in the 1890s,
defensive installations were being erected to protect the city
from a direct assault of a specific enemy—Japan.
This is the Novosiltsevskaya coastal battery, Number 375,
commissioned in 1888.
At first, the battery was made of earth and timber, but during the last
decade of the 19th century it was rebuilt,
and by 1902 it looked the way it is now.
During the Russo-Japanese War, in February 1904,
a Japanese cruiser squadron came here.
It consisted of armored cruisers with 203-mm guns.
The weather was very cold, minus 31 degrees Celsius.
The bay was filled with ice, and the Japanese ships had difficulty maneuvering.
They shelled the eastern part of the city with its military workshops,
as well as the batteries and forts that were under construction.
Nevertheless, the Japanese didn't even try to sail through the Eastern Bosporus,
a narrow strait between the Russky Island and the Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula.
That's because they were certain: this would have been a reckless mission.
This position was equipped with six 152-mm Canet guns,
installed on coastal mounts with shields, and two 57-mm Nordenfelt guns.
The gun positions were divided by concrete bulkheads,
which protected underground magazines.
The Novosiltsevskaya and other similar batteries made the Japanese
give up their plans of assaulting Vladivostok in 1904–1905.
But after the Russo-Japanese War, the city needed to strengthen its defenses.
The whole fortress needed extensive reconstruction:
the new project involved both experienced military engineers
and young officers who were eager to put their ideas into practice.
Among the builders of the concrete Vladivostok Fortress,
a major contribution was made by Alexei Shoshin
colonel and then major general.
Shoshin started a radical reconstruction of the Vladivostok Fortress.
Under the 1910 project, 11 new forts were to be added to the existing five,
built as far back as before the Russo-Japanese War.
And 12 more were reinforced with concrete breastwork and guns.
The works were carried out step by step, using cutting-edge technologies of the time.
In 1914, the Vladivostok Fortress comprised a total of 50 coastal objects,
equipped with over 200 cannons of calibers from 120 to 280 mm
I'm on Toropov Hill, 164 meters above sea.
Fort No. 7 is located here; it's one of those built from 1910 through 1917.
It faces northwest and is the last in a chain of fortifications
encircling Vladivostok from the north, from the Ussuri Bay to the Amur Bay.
This was a place for underground tunnel barracks, which were 150 meters long.
Water was supplied to the garrison from an artesian well in the technical section,
which also had an electric power station, a full-fledged kitchen, and even a bakery.
All underground tunnels are very tall and wide.
They created a pretty widespread network that connected all structures of the fort.
Riflemen and artillerists could move together
with their weapons from one end of the fort to the other,
remaining concealed and showing up in places where the enemy didn't expect them.
By the way, the floor here is not earthen, but
concrete; it's even covered with pattern paving.
The Americans and the English have been here.
The English even wrote afterwards that they thought
the Vladivostok Fortress was one of the strongest in the world,
and its defenses were a masterpiece of military engineering.
And I know what they mean: indeed, the fortress had the most powerful,
virtually impenetrable ground defense
and a very well developed system of coastal batteries.
When World War I began, the construction process slowed down.
After the October Revolution of 1917, construction stopped almost completely.
In 1923, an agreement was signed with Japan
that envisioned the demilitarization of Vladivostok:
the fortress was disarmed and ceased to exist.
In the second half of the 1920s, the fortress was practically abandoned,
and Vladivostok was virtually defenseless against the ever-present threat of an attack.
The new Soviet government understood this well
and, in 1932, began the construction of new coastal artillery batteries of two types:
medium-caliber, armed with modernized Canet guns,
and large-caliber, with the newest 180-mm guns.
However, the 180-mm batteries might not have been enough to stop the enemy.
They could approach Vladivostok despite fire from the 180-mm batteries—
I think you know how strong
the Japanese battleships were—and shell the city unpunished.
A number of measures were taken.
The first was the construction of the Voroshilov Battery.
The Voroshilov Battery was erected on the Russky Island in just two years,
from 1932 to 1934.
It had the largest caliber among all stationary guns—305 mm—
and was named after Klimen Voroshilov,
Soviet Defense Minister, who actively supported the construction.
We are now at a battle position of the Voroshilov Battery.
It includes two turret mounts.
They were taken from battleship Poltava
Russian battleships were superior to enemy ships in terms of rate of fire.
It was the transition:
the golden age of mechanics combined with electricity.
They had electrical motors and, in addition,
a well-proven mechanical actuation as a backup.
In fact, the turret—weighing 900 tons—can be rotated manually.
You only need ten men for this. It's very impressive.
A road was built leading to every turret to supply ammunition.
It stops at the entrance of the turret positions,
which are located 5.5 meters below the terrace.
From here, our guide Vladimir
will show us the way to the gun house.
Our battery is located in a closed position.
What does that mean?
From where the guns are, you can't see the target they fire at.
Nevertheless, the guns need to be aimed, there's no point in firing blindly, is there?
This was a task for the command and range-finding post.
It was located 1.5 km away on top of a hill.
They could spot a target at a distance of 50 km
They then supplied the gun crew the two numbers they needed to aim:
the elevation and traverse angles.
Artillery men didn't need anything else,
all the necessary calculations were made at the command and range-finding post.
A charge represents a bag like this, filled with gunpowder tubes.
A loader would take a charge,
carry it to the supply tourniquet, press here,
open the flaps, and load the charge.
Take out the charge and load it into the feeder.
Now we close the flaps and, with the help of the engine telegraph,
notify that the charges are ready to be loaded.
We're now in the shell magazine.
Depending on the target indicated on the engine telegraph
(destroyer, cruiser, etc.),
the squad commander here knew what type of shells he should choose.
The platform would turn and the shell would be loaded to the feed line.
We're now in the gun house of the MB-3-12 turret.
The left barrel.
If we look inside the barrel, we'll see that it's rifled (72 rifles).
Shells made one and a half revolutions when passing through the muzzle,
so that they would rotate on their axis without wobbling after leaving the barrel.
To take a shot, we need to insert an ignition tube,
or a primer tube, into the firing arrangement.
It basically does the same thing as the percussion cap in small arms cartridges.
The recoil is 1.27 meters; it's absolutely forbidden to be here when the gun fires.
After a shot, in order to fire another, we need to remove the ignition tube first.
For this purpose, a soldier from the gun crew
was especially assigned to this position
and he used this curious device called a net.
He held this net under the firing arrangement and extracted the ignition tube from it.
This soldier didn't have any other tasks except catching the tube with the net.
His position was called "netter," which in Russian now has another meaning—
a person who shirks work while others sweat their guts out.
The main objective was to prevent enemy ships from reaching Vladivostok
and ensure the safe exit of our ships.
The Russky Island itself protects Vladivostok
and the main base, acting as a natural shield.
We can't consider the Voroshilov Battery
separate from the entire defense of the Vladivostok stronghold.
The large-caliber artillery is also installed here;
180-mm guns are considered large-caliber.
A battalion of marines appeared here later, together with the anti-landing defenses...
All of this protected the city.
While the majority of large-caliber batteries of other countries
were dismantled right after World War II,
the Voroshilov Battery remained in service up until the end of the 20th century.
In 1995, the entire complex of the Vladivostok Fortress was declared a historical monument.
Today, the forts built at the beginning of the 20th century,
the biggest and most modern of the time,
together with the powerful battery on Russky Island
are the trademark of Vladivostok,
the city that became the Russian gates to the Pacific Ocean.
The Russians are here to stay—
that was the motto of the Russian engineers who designed the Vladivostok Fortress.
The result of their work leaves a great impression
and brings to mind such monumental buildings as
the Great Pyramids or the ancient cities of Peru.
Standing here, I'd like to quote Nikolay Klado, a Russian historian:
"A coastal fortress that didn't fire a single shot in a war—
because the enemy thought that they were at a disadvantage
and would not dare to attack it—completed its objective in the best possible way.
It is this silence in times of war that made it extraordinarily successful."