There are about 15,000 monuments in Ukraine. Among the 56 outstanding ones that need urgent renovation is the Fortress of St. Elizabeth in the city of Kirovohrad. It deservedly occupies a place alongside such prominent masterpieces as the Assumption Cathedral in Kyiv’s Cave Monastery and St. Michael’s Gold-Domed Monastery. In Soviet times this architectural structure was listed as a monument of local, Ukrainian, importance. Today, it may be considered a monument of the 18th-century European art of fortification, as it is the only earthen defensive structure in Eastern Europe that has almost completely survived to the present day. By the time the fortress commanded by Major-General Alvintsev was decommissioned as a military facility in 1805, two hundred years ago, it had already been a silent witness of many events during the 51 years of its existence.
If you drive into Kirovohrad from the northeast, you will reach downtown’s Karl Marx Street, once named Velyka Perspektyvna. When you reach the end of this street, you cannot miss the earthen ramparts that are in fact remnants of the Fortress of St. Elizabeth. The latter later became the city of Yelisavetgrad (now Kirovohrad). The city is thought to have been established in the mid-18th century (1754). There are a number of reasons why the fortress was built right there and then.
In the early 1750s the tsarist government, in its quest to populate the lower Dnipro basin with Russophiles, agreed to allow Austrian Serbs to settle in this territory. This gave birth to New Serbia, a series of cantonments that stretched for about 200 miles from Kaharlyk to the Dnipro. It was a historical necessity to build fortified defenses and St. Elizabeth’s Fortress thus became the settlement’s center. “You must build an earthen fortress to defend yourselves from enemy attacks,” stated the order to Colonel Ivan Horvat. The fortress was named after the martyr Elizabeth whom the tsarina considered her patron saint. Plans were drawn up to erect this structure, using the latest achievements in fortification art, in order to defend the weakest section of the defense line in the desolate areas between the Dnipro and the Southern Buh. This place — the right bank and upper reaches of the Inhul River — was also chosen because of such advantages as the availability of wood, sand, clay, and stone for construction, as well as a wide river. The cornerstone of the fortress was solemnly laid on June 18, 1754, but was completed only three years later.
The fortress provided adequate protection against enemies owing to the detailed construction plan. The inner defense line consisted of earthen ramparts 14 meters high and 7 kilometers long, in the form of right polygons, and had 6 bastions surrounded by walls and ditches. The bastions (fortified projections at the corners of the stone walls) were named after St. Peter, St. Catherine, St. Alexis, Archangel Michael, the Holy Apostle St. Andrew, and the Blessed St. Alexander Nevsky. The outer defense line consisted of 6 ravelins (V-shaped fortification outworks) also named after saints (Anna, Natalie, Theodor, Nicholas, and John the Baptist) and the blessed monks buried in Kyiv’s Cave Monastery. These were supplemented with glacises (open slopes in front of a fortified place). The surrounding three- meter-deep ditches, which increased the ramparts’ heights, were never filled with water. The embankments were built in a broken line to make it easier to exchange cross fire with the enemy. The fortress was truly impregnable, owing to an additional series of outposts. It could be entered through three gates named after the Holy Trinity, John the Baptist (where one can still enter the city today), and All Saints (in the southeast corner).
The fortress contained arsenals, powder magazines, barracks, food stores, the garrison office, ammunition dumps, housing for generals, brigadiers, senior officers, and civilians, infirmaries, a guardhouse, and a well. The year 1753 saw the beginning of the construction of a one-story wooden Trinity Church with a belfry, the city’s first cathedral. A mere 60 years later, in 1813, it was closed because of ruination. At first there were plans to build a three- altar church on this site, but a small chapel was built instead because there was already a stone church of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin in the center of Yelisavetgrad. Buried next to the chapel was Paul I’s educator, Semion Poroshin, who died while passing through the city.
The streets were mostly built up with drab one-story houses, except for the 14-room richly ornamented mansion, where Governor General Grigoriy Potemkin liked to put up. Incidentally, it was in St. Elizabeth’s Fortress that Petro Kalnyshevsky, the last Zaporozhian koshovy otaman, presented Potemkin with Cossack identity papers in April 1772. The Cossacks nicknamed the prince Hrytsko Nechosa (Greg the Uncombed). In 1787-1788 Potemkin helped found Ukraine’s first school of medical surgery on the basis of Yelisavetgrad’s general hospital. This institution trained doctors and paramedics for the army and the navy. Over a period of 10 years 225 specialists graduated from the school, including the well-known surgeon Yefrem Mukhin, the mentor of Nikolai Pirogov, the pioneer of battlefield surgery, who worked for some time in the city hospital. Unfortunately, the school was transferred to Kherson after the death of its supervisor, Potemkin.
In 1763 the first educational institution, a school for officers’ children and orphans of both sexes, was established in the city. A year later the fortress opened a print shop, the first in Ukraine to print books in standard Russian, rather than Old Church Slavonic, type. The first of these books was Jean-Jacque Rousseau’s comedy The Coffee-House. A grammar textbook, Azbuka, was also printed here.
For a long time the fortress was the residence of the prominent general and diplomat Mikhail Kutuzov and his family: his daughters and son were born and baptized here. Topographers from Kutuzov’s regiment drew a map of the locality.
The fortress was also the winter quarters of the regiment in which Yemelyan Pugachov, the would-be leader of a Russian peasant uprising, saw service. Historians believe that it was here that he hit upon the idea of seizing the tsar’s throne. In the early 19th century Ustym Karmeliuk, who robbed landlords’ estates in Podillia Province for 20 years, also served his prison term in the Fortress of St. Elizabeth. He managed to escape, as he had done many times before.
With the end of the Russo-Turkish war in 1774, the fortress lost its military and strategic importance and was decommissioned. Two remaining cannons are still standing at the entrance. What was once a citadel became part of the inner city, but it was still used by the garrison, which housed barracks, logistical services, an infirmary, and food stores. Some time later, Ukraine’s largest cavalry officers’ school was opened in Yelisavetgrad.
The eminent French geographer ElisОe Reclus wrote about the city: “Yelisavetgrad has developed at a purely American pace. You simply wonder, looking at the majestic buildings that have emerged in the middle of the steppe, as though by a magician’s trick.” Since the fortress gave birth to the city, a picture of its plan was placed in the center of the city’s coat of arms.
Today, the fortress is also the site of the Slava Military Memorial Cemetery, where World War II combatants are buried. For a long time the fortress had no governmental protection. In 1994 the first ever archeological survey was carried out under the guidance of the well-known British expert Lester. Today scholars suggest that the fortress be converted into an outdoor museum, with an additional pavilion to be built. “Regrettably, despite the decree passed by the former president, nothing is being done to restore the fortress. It is still not too late to do this because the fortress is in good condition and belongs to the state. But we still don’t know how to cash in on tourism,” city guide Vira Zinchenko concludes sadly. Together with the Kirovohrad Students’ Literary and Ethnographic Society, she has been studying the history of St. Elizabeth’s Fortress. Ms. Zinchenko and her students have even published research on this subject, for which they were awarded first prize in a competition organized by the regional tourism center. “Georgia has made tourism a top priority. We also have very many historical sights. Our fortress is one of them,” Ms. Zinchenko added.
The Fortress of St. Elizabeth, an unsurpassed historical treasure, still gleams in the steppes of Ukraine. The world must see it. The fortress must occupy its well-deserved place alongside our other majestic and unique historical monuments.
