Why is Shlisselburg Fortress known as the ‘Russian Bastille’? (PHOTOS)

Impressive in its power and scale, Shlisselburg Fortress is located on Orekhovy Island, 50 km east of St. Petersburg, where the Neva River flows out of Lake Ladoga. It was founded in 1323 by Prince Yuri Danilovich, who served the Novgorod Republic.

Oreshek ("small nut"), as the fortress was then called, was intended to protect the republic's borders and halt Swedish expansion. It was there, in that same year of 1323, that the parties concluded the Treaty of Orekhovo, which became the first border treaty in the history of the two states. It did not prevent the Swedes from capturing the fortress in 1348. However, the Novgorodians recaptured it just seven months later.

In 1352, a stone fortress was built to replace the wooden one. Its modest size did not meet the demands of the emerging artillery era. After the Novgorod Republic was annexed by Moscow in 1478, the fortification was rebuilt once again. Stretching around the entire perimeter of the island, with thick, sturdy walls and towers, the fortress took on its modern appearance.

In 1617, the Russian state ceded Oreshek to the Swedes. It was not until the Northern War in 1702 that troops under the personal command of Peter I captured the stronghold after a 13-hour assault. "This nut was very hard to crack, but, thank God, it was successfully cracked," the tsar said at the time. He ordered the fortress renamed Shlisselburg – "key city" – which opened the way to the mouth of the Neva.

After the founding of St. Petersburg and the annexation of the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland by Russia, Shlisselburg lost its strategic importance and became a political prison. Guilty nobles and undesirable members of the royal family were held there. Among the first “guests” of the fortress were Peter I's sister, Maria Alexeyevna, and his first wife, Evdokia Lopukhina.

Tsar Ivan VI spent virtually his entire life in the dungeons of the ‘Russian Bastille’, as Shlisselburg came to be known. Overthrown by Elizabeth Petrovna in infancy, he was killed by guards in 1764 during an unsuccessful attempt to free him. The young man was only 23 years old.

The Decembrists, who staged an unsuccessful uprising against Nicholas I in 1825, along with members of Russian revolutionary organizations and fighters for Polish independence, languished in the Shlisselburg Fortress. One of them, Polish officer Walerian Łukasiński, spent 37 years there, making it the longest prison term ever held on the island.

In 1887, Vladimir Lenin's elder brother, Alexander Ulyanov, was hanged in the Shlisselburg Fortress. As one of the organizers of the ‘Terrorist Faction’ within the illegal underground organization ‘Narodnaya Volya’ (‘People's Will’), he had been plotting an assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander III. His death is believed to have largely inspired the future Bolshevik leader to embark on the path of revolution.

After the establishment of Soviet power, the prison was closed and the fortress was first used as a naval base and, later, as a museum of the revolution. In 1941, it was forced to recall its glorious military past. On September 8, troops of Army Group ‘North’ captured the city of Shlisselburg. However, the fortress held its ground and its garrison defended it for nearly 500 days – right up until the lifting of the Siege of Leningrad in 1943 – against enemy forces that vastly outnumbered them.