Secrets of the Brest dungeons. Dungeons of Brest

I heard with my own ears

Recently returned to hometown, which she left as a girl, Tatyana Nikolaevna Lazeba recalls distant years:

– When I was a child of about ten years old, I heard from my grandfather that somewhere in the year 1949 they decided to see where they were leading underground passages Brest. And before the war he worked in Brest Fortress, during the construction of fortifications, he knew the area and surroundings well. They went deeper, he said, from undershaftsBrest station. We walked for a long time, then we got lost. They came to the surface only three days later...15 kilometers from the city.

It seemed like they were going to east direction, adds Tatiana Lazeba. There are forts there, even Fortechnaya Street. So maybe that move was an eastern route to the forts?

“Now, with an adult mind, I evaluate this as interesting,” says Tatyana Nikolaevna. “I regret that I didn’t write down the details.” And then how – it went in one ear, out the other...

Experts' opinion

Commenting on this story, an employee of the city museum Sergey Bytskevich noted that “Kali seems to be the great city, so such a thing is unlikely, but the underground farfications and fortresses would not have created a history.”

Researcher at the Brest Fortress Defense Museum Elena Gritsuk showed me the Casemate plan of the fortress from 1850: the underground passages are not marked. “But this is information that would be appropriate to conceal, leaving only on a separate plan intended for a very narrow circle of people.” The researcher also remembered a conversation with the late rector of the Orthodox St. Nicholas Church. He mentioned the possibility of going underground from the Citadel to Fort Gavrilov. And this is near Mukhavets!!!

I couldn’t have a conversation in the church itself. Like, he couldn’t say that. But let’s leave the motives for such categoricalness at the level of guesswork for now.

Here is a third expert opinion. Author of a booklet about Brest, architectural historian Irina Lavrovskaya expressed little optimism regarding underground Brest. Although there was almost certainly only an underground passage from the station to the Bug Hotel, Irina Borisovna noted. In the period between the “liberation” of 1939 and the “ treacherous attack“The Germans built a lot of fortifications in 1941. First of all, they tried to secure the headquarters. All this was accompanied by absolute secrecy, which is so characteristic of totalitarian regimes. Fear shuts our mouths tightly. Therefore - why not? Especially if such a tunnel was built before the Bolsheviks, and all that remains is to renovate it?

Under the station

There is also a museum in train station. His guardian Savva Tikhonovich Shpudeiko became interested in the topic.

The enthusiastic historian showed two blurry photographs. “There are two iron pipes in the basements. They go downhill towards the Brest Fortress. But the casing is in a dilapidated condition. And they are covered with masonry about 15 meters away.”

We talked about popular for us in recent years flooding. No, says Savva Tikhonovich, if the station floods, it’s because of dilapidated water supply and other pipes. There is no groundwater. And why - was shown by measurements taken during the arrangement of the Moscow side of the station. In addition to the fact that they found the royal wall - a dead end where they put royal train, - through test drilling it was established: the station rests on a clay cushion 18 meters thick. It is 10 meters wide.

There was water here, continues the knowledgeable museum worker. The Nazis poured it in 1941 to oust our soldiers and policemen who had settled there. It was pumped out during repairs, which were completed in 1952. Design documentation must be stored in Kyiv in one of the design institutes.

Savva Tikhonovich agreed to restore the photographs unique tunnels. The administration rented a robe and a guide. You really needed special clothing: the station was narrow, dusty and cobwebby. In addition, the basement is filled with sand and all kinds of construction debris for about a meter and a half. Probably to dry it completely.

Both are interesting corrugated iron pipes that lead somewhere

(pictured) is obviously of post-war origin. But they managed to rust through in places. So I didn’t dare to do anything more than a photo. And there was no permission.

Walking into history

Now the station is being renovated. IN engineering service they said that all the soil from the basement would be removed to make way for passenger services. Bars, game rooms...

Archaeologists and historians have already been here. Even the walls were tapped. We found a teapot and a couple of spoons.

But now there is a greater chance, especially in terms of opening underground traffic. After all, sooner or later the bus station will be moved closer to the railway station. A completely logical logistics decision. And there you will need a tunnel. And suddenly it turns out that he already exists!

It’s no worse if the pipes from under the station lead to the Brest Fortress (it’s a kilometer away in a straight line). After all, what is it like to read complaints from tourists from Moscow: they say, in evening time There is no way to get from the station to the Memorial! And here - you pass, throwing Russian, European, American coins into the coin acceptor - it doesn’t matter, it’s a technical question - and please, after a kilometer of a well-maintained walk with the rental of electric flashlights, the purchase of booklets, badges, the appearance of the skeleton “Disturbed Beresteets” and its transformation into a tour guide - Let's go to the Memorial! Muscovites can put on a uniform and play the war of Russians with the Austrians, Poles and Germans, Poles and Russians, Red Army soldiers and fascists... Ukrainians can dress in the uniform of soldiers of the UPR army (they were interned here in the 1920s). Poleshuks can proceed to the prison site, where they were concentrated to be sent to the Gulag (4 trains were planned to be sent from Brest, but only one was completed). Jail ( built around 1850 as a transit station for shipment to Warsaw Central - information from I. Lavrovskaya) stood on the Northern Island, and across the river opposite, in a ring barracks lived its guards - a battalion of NKVD troops.

In general, some get a sugar bone, some get cartilage, some get a war game, and some get a memory. The main thing is that it will be a real journey into history, unfolding on the spot. At professional approach this promises fantastic money for the city.

There is no need to invent anything in terms of implementing the idea. The first bridge across the Bug in Berestye in the 16th century was built, with the permission of the city Rada, by the Jew Moisha (Kandybovich?). The bridge was a drawbridge, with a ferry crossing ( certificate of I. Lavrovskaya). Having invested all his savings in the construction, Moisha received the right to collect taxes. As a result, everyone was happy.

But today the only option when everyone will be dissatisfied is if we do not return to our historical place. Or at least not try.

So what's the matter, gentlemen and comrades?

"Atlantis" of the Brest Fortress. Myth or reality? Many journalists and ordinary amateurs have tried to conduct investigations in search of answers to these questions, but so far no one has come close to an answer.

Who among us in childhood, inspired by “Treasure Island”, “Dagger”, “Polessye Robinsons”, consumed by a thirst for adventure, did not want to find something mysterious, incredible? Climb with flashlights in the casemates of the Brest Fortress in search of secret passages, imagining yourself as a hero from the pages of a book or an adventure movie? In childhood, everything is perceived differently.

The dungeons of the Brest Fortress is a topic that has already been written about and filmed more than once documentaries. As a result, there were always more questions than answers. There is an opinion in society that dungeons exist and they lead from the fortress to Poland, from the fortress to Brest and the railway station. Some say that underground communications are not limited to three directions, but spread further. All the forts of the Brest Fortress are connected by dungeons tens of kilometers long; moreover, the center of the underground labyrinth is the Citadel.

But where did this idea come from? Where does this information come from? And is there any truth to such assumptions? Many journalists and ordinary amateurs have tried to conduct investigations in search of answers to these questions, but so far no one has come close to an answer. The city is filled with dungeon legends. Unfortunately, there are no facts. Maybe they just haven't looked in the right place yet? In this material, Real Brest will try to conduct its investigation and give objective assessment, answering the question: does the “Atlantis” of the Brest Fortress really exist...?

Field trips with a flashlight are interesting, informative and educational, but you need to look for an underground fortress not in the casemates, but in the library. Until we understand the purpose of the communications hidden underground, the construction system and the purpose of each object in the fortress, we will be looking for a black cat in the fortress for a long time dark room, continuing to spawn urban legends. When looking for answers to the question about dungeons, it is important to understand in what years, how and for what purpose certain fortifications were built. Having approached the question of the existence of underworld under the fortress, the unnecessary is eliminated and the facts remain. Facts that no legend can resist.

I would like to start by clarifying the question: what do we mean when we talk about underground passages? This is an underground passage for free movement between fortifications of a fortress or strongholds of fortified areas. From the inside there is a long corridor with bulkheads at the entrance and exit, the height and width allowing an adult to move freely. All this fits the fortification term – POTERNA. This means that this is the purpose of our search. Poterna leading underground outside the fortress.

The territory of the Brest Fortress is very rich in technical communications, such as sewerage and storm drains, which were built simultaneously with the fortress. They are often mistaken for underground passages. This is partly true. The height and width of such communications were observed during construction in such a way as to allow an adult to crawl along them on all fours and, in case of a blockage, reach it and clear the line. Over the past 8 years, such sewer lines have been found on the Kobrin and Volyn fortifications and on the Central Island.

This is a truly large and extensive network, where, if desired, a person of average build can move around, feeling only some inconvenience. Here we can say with confidence that there is a plan for these “dungeons” in the archives. But, with all the desire, this is not a waste of time for moving manpower in full ammunition. This is a 19th century sewer system, a sewage disposal system. That is, this is not at all what we are looking for. By the way, such a system is indicated on one of the fortress plans, contrary to statements that such documents are hidden from the public. It is marked with a dotted line on the plan.

In 2010, after hurricane wind, a fallen tree on Hospital Island lifted part of the soil with its roots. Thus, it was possible to see what the old sewer system was like, perceived by many apologists for the existence of dungeons as a real underground passage.

The following objects to be considered for the title of “underground passages” are the gorge casemates of the main fortress rampart, the casemate traverse behind the police post, the Citadel cafe, casemates in the thickness of the main shaft of the Zvezda entrance (gorge casemates), in front of Gavrilov’s caponier, etc. No specialized terminology is used, may qualified historians and fortification experts forgive me, because... this material is intended for wide range readers.

So these casemates were not connected to common system drainage of sewage. Therefore, the above-mentioned highways did not lead to them. Yes, and they were built in different times with the main fortifications. There were stationary latrines in the outer casemates, from which a five-meter tunnel ran beyond the perimeter of the building, ending in a storage chamber (cesspool) with a hole in the ceiling, through which sewage was collected from the street. Those. again not what we are looking for. This plan shows everything clearly.

But even here there were some surprises. In 2011, many Belarusian media reported that an underground passage had been found in the Brest Fortress!!! Which turned out to be... a sewer, as described just above.

Have any of you ever wondered when legends about dungeons in the fortress began to appear? Analyzing this question, it was possible to find out that all the rumors about certain underground passages appeared in post-war period, first in literature, in the memories of the defenders, then from children walking in the fortress. The children told the adults, who told them to their friends. Then the children grew up and continued to remember this on occasion. So the city was filled with rumors about dungeons. We will try to analyze several such cases, try to understand what this or that person meant when talking about underground passages. Let’s start with official sources, published memoirs of the fortress’s defenders.

It is worth noting that at the time of the outbreak of hostilities in the Brest Fortress, the garrison numbered about 30 (+ -) representatives of various nationalities. Some of whom were not only illiterate, but even poorly understood Russian. Moreover, to a person who had lived his whole life in the provinces and who found himself in a fortification for the first time, any passage in the rampart seemed like an underground passage. For your information, before the start of the war, the entire fortress was divided into sectors in which units were located and passage to the territory of another part was prohibited. Those. there was no confusion and vacillation throughout the entire fortress of fighters from one unit to the neighboring area. Consequently, they could not know how the entire fortress was structured.

ROMANOV ALEXEY DANILOVICH, sergeant, commander of the machine gun squad, secretary of the Komsomol bureau of the regimental school 455-sp. He fought in the Citadel in the area of the Brest Gate and the White Palace. From his memories, on the night of July 2, together with a group of comrades, he got out of the fortress.

... It was difficult for us to get some hundreds of meters from the White Palace to Mukhavets: out of 27 people, we lost 20, and only on the night of June 29, maneuvering among the corpses, we swam across Mukhavets 150-200 meters from the bridge, upstream.
On the opposite bank of the river, in the thickets of reeds and willows, we discovered a narrow arched passage leading to the dungeon. An absolutely dark corridor at the beginning led uphill, then downhill and ended in a vaulted, cramped room with three embrasures overlooking the road leading to the Central Island. Watching the road through the embrasures, we saw the Germans moving quickly.

If you carefully follow Romanov’s path, it turns out that he and his comrades ended up in a lock that maintains the water level in the fortress’s water moat (popularly called a bypass canal). The correct name is “Stone Pipe”, there really is an exit to the Mukhavets River. This is a quite wide hole, with a rise to the top, where there will be a technical well with a device for maintaining the water level, which Romanov describes as an embrasure.

Here's a small digression. In this story, Romanov refers to Grebenyuk as the commander of this group, with whom they crossed Mukhavets. You can’t argue with the facts; Grebenyuk’s prisoner of war card shows the date of his capture as June 24...

A. Leontyev, who fought in the Citadel, also recalled the underground passages.

At night, having crossed Mukhavets in the area of 455 sp, crawling through the entire Northern Island, he managed to leave the fortress through the “underground infirmary” in the main shaft:

“We knew the labyrinths very well, since it was an old thing (sometimes we went into the city through the gates without leave).”

However, apparently, Leontyev left through the veterinary hospital that was well known to him (the so-called “Gavrilovsky caponier”), where there really is a passage through the shaft.

Colonel General L.M. Sandalov “Experienced.” In June 1941 - colonel, chief of staff of the 4th Army:

“The Brest Fortress was built by the Russians in 1842. Its basis was a citadel located on an island washed from the southwest by the Bug, from the southeast by the Mukhavets River, and from the north by the Mukhavets Branch. Along the outer circumference of the citadel there was a solid brick two-story barracks, which at the same time served as a fortress wall. The barracks had 500 casemates for housing troops; under the casemates there were basements, and even lower there was a network of underground passages.”

The lower level under the basements of the Arsenal building. Indeed, in one of the compartments of this basement there are certain steps that seem to lead just below the floor level, which in turn is supposedly presented as the entrance to the dungeons. In fact, this is an ordinary “glacier”. Those. a small, paved area for storing ice. IN present moment covered with debris and flooded. Where does the water come from? Presumably, the floor of the glacier was undermined, through a hole in which groundwater rose. This is a deliberate explosion, as a result of the Germans clearing the casemates, during which grenades were flying into every dark corner. Hence the birth of the myth that the Germans flooded the lower level of the basements under the fortress. According to another version, the hole in the floor could have been the result of the well being dug by the defenders during the siege, because this is the lowest point in the basement.

Giving a description of the fortress, General Sandalov most likely picked up the phrase about 500 casemates from S.S. Smirnov. “The Experience” was published in 1961. Smirnov first wrote about underground passages in 1956 in “Fortresses on the Border.” Moreover, it is HIM. Neither M.L. Zlatogorov nor T.K. Nikonova had anything about underground passages a year earlier. Moreover, in the description of the construction of the fortress, Nikonova lists the main structures down to the ramparts and canals, but there is not a word about the dungeons.

T.K. Nikonova. "…V early XIX century, the construction of the fortress begins. On the island between the Bug and Mukhavets, a ring of defensive barracks was built, forts and bastions were erected to the north, south and west, earthen ramparts were poured, and bypass canals were dug.". 1955 (actually signed for publication at the end of 1954)

However, Smirnov never had any specifics on this matter either, common phrases. Moreover, he himself admits that all this is mentioned "rumored"…

"Many fortress dungeons and underground passages have not yet been opened, which, according to rumors, in different places laid under the fortress territory."

“The defenders of the fortress descended into deep dungeons and, through underground passages unknown to the Germans, left the enemy-occupied areas of the fortress, continuing the fight in another place.”

The huge basement of the Arsenal building fits this description very well, along which you can cross the territory of the Citadel from the Terespol Gate to the barracks 455 bp. This also applies to the East and West forts, where the walls connected the main part of the fort with counter-scarp galleries (popularly “horseshoe”). This allowed the defenders to move secretly around the fort.

From memories:

“...The passage through the Eastern Gate was blocked. The Germans blew up one of the cars leaving the fortress, and a fire raged in the passage of the gate. We had to leave the fortress through underground passage, which was located just to the left of the Eastern Gate and led towards Brest.”

When a person finds himself in stressful situation on the verge of life and death, perception changes. You find yourself in an unfamiliar place, and the only way to survive is to leave this place of danger. IN in this case the passage through the shaft is described. Those. essentially an underground passage, two carts wide, leading towards the city of Brest.

A. A. Grebenkina "Living pain. Women and children of the Brest garrison":

“The women tried to find a way out of the fortress. They even thought they had found an underground passage. They crawled a few meters and discovered rubble. They dismantled them, but soon became convinced that there was no underground passage.”

Here we're talking about about women and children hiding in the mountain casemates of 98 OPAD (entrance “Zvezda”). What such casemates were like was discussed above. A barracks in the thickness of the rampart, consisting of 12 casemates, in the outermost of which there were toilets with tunnels leading to cesspools. Which is what was discovered.

Analyzing each case mentioned, it is possible to a large share it is probable to say that none of them are talking about full-fledged turns, hidden passages outside the fortress. All these occasions were worn local character and were mistakenly perceived by people in a stressful situation as dungeons.

Forts

A fort is a separate long-term fortification, a field artillery position in the system of fortifications. The construction of forts began in 1869 with the construction of the "Graf Berg" fort, a kilometer north-west of the fortress, in order to control the site railway Warsaw-Moscow and railway bridge across the Bug River. The so-called hidden road led from the fort to the fortress. What did you mean? A road covered on both sides by an embankment (glassis). Those. a covered or hidden road, which is accepted by some researchers as secret passage from fort to fortress.

On November 18, 1878, a plan was approved, according to which it was planned to build forts at a distance of 3-4 km from each other and at the same distance from the main fence of the fortress. Each received a numbered designation, and each could accommodate up to 200 soldiers and 20 guns.

What was the fort like at that time? This is a position in the middle of a field, with a regular profile of the rampart, brick casemates for infantry shelter and an ammunition depot. Fort I, preserved in its original form today, shows us shining example forts of the Brest Fortress before their modernization. Could there be underground passages between them, and were they connected to the fortress? For a comment, we turned to Vladimir Ivanovich Kalinin, a leading specialist in the history of the construction of Russian fortresses, the author of numerous works on the history of Russian fortification.

“The presence of passages connecting the forts with each other is illogical precisely from a military point of view. Forts are autonomous strong points that fire into the gaps between them and thereby assist the infantry defending those gaps.

In addition, the fortress position turned from a continuous fence into a sparse chain of forts, primarily for economic reasons, since increasing the size of this fence would lead to its unimaginable rise in cost. Digging underground passages between the forts, in addition to being militarily absurd, would be such an expensive pleasure that it would make no sense of the benefit gained from dispersing the fortress fence.

Thus, based on general theoretical considerations, as well as from the practice of building all, without exception, similar fortresses in the world, we can confidently assert that there are no such moves in Brest.

In the history of fortification, only one serious example of the construction of underground passages between individual strong points is known - this is the Meseritz UR on the border of Germany and Poland. They say that Adolf Aloisievich, seeing it even in a very unfinished state, fought in hysterics and said that this was not fortification, but a shelter for deserters! And he turned out to be right, since this system with a hypertrophied underground and underdeveloped combat units collapsed under the blows of the Red Army in four days.”

During the subsequent modernization of the fort fortifications, underground communications and posterns were laid between the objects inside the forts themselves. Until now, such underground passages can be seen and walked through them in forts letters A, 8 and 5, which are located on the territory of the Republic of Belarus. For your information, the underground wall of the fort, letter A, has a length of 98 meters and this is the longest underground communication in the forts of Brest available today!

Lieutenant A.I. Makhnach recalled:

“Before receiving the units, we were sent (16 people) to the 1st battalion of the 455th rifle regiment in order to check the internal regulations of the platoons. The battalion was located five kilometers from the center of the fortress, in one of its forts. According to the stories of the soldiers, there were several of our forts behind the fortress. They were connected by underground passages to the fortress. During my stay at the fort, I went with other officers into the underground passages for about 300 meters, where there was already water and dampness.”

In his memoirs about the “passages leading to the fortress,” A.I. Makhnach refers to the stories of soldiers. He himself, as can be seen from the story, failed to reach the fortress - for the passage leading into it, he probably took one of the turns that connected the residential barracks with the caponiers and half-caponiers of Fort 8 (B), where one of the battalions 455 was located before the war rifle regiment.

Plus, when describing this, Makhnach mentions that they lit the way with matches, which were already beginning to run out, and then the decision was made to return. That is, it’s hard to believe that they could walk 300 meters, lighting the road only with matches, calculating them for the way back. On the given plan of the fort, which Makhnach writes about, there are quite a lot of communications, but not one of them goes or did not go beyond its perimeter.

Even without being an expert, looking at the intricate communications of the fort, it is clear that you cannot bypass it with a box of matches.

Urban legends.

At the beginning of last year, it was mentioned that legends about the dungeons of the fortress appeared in the post-war period, and one of those who spread these legends were children. IN free time Brest boys continually walked around the fortress in accessible places, played “war games”, examined the casemates and tried to climb wherever they could. Children's impressions are especially vivid, and therefore they often mistakenly pass off wishful thinking as reality. The generation of the 60s and 70s has long grown up, and now they are accomplished men, serious bosses, businessmen or ordinary workers.

Many people have heard one or another story more than once that in childhood, while walking in the fortress, children found underground passages and used them to emerge in a completely different place. Or the boys returned back, because... matches ran out or the batteries in the flashlight ran out. Sometimes the adults themselves found something similar to dungeons, and then talked about it. Here I would like to clarify one point. In the 60s and subsequent years, part of the Kobrin fortification was freely available, plus the area of the wooden CPS on Volyn. Having collected large number legends, we began to carefully check each one.

In most cases, the ends were impossible to find, because... many retold similar stories from other people’s words, but they themselves saw nothing. At the same time, omitting something, adding or naming certain things in their own way. But the main thing is that in all the stories these were underground passages! In several cases, we were able to find the original source and talk in person. Moreover, for the sake of objectivity, go to the place and indicate what exactly the person saw in the fortress, which he then told everyone about as an underground passage.

Legend No. 1. Underground passages several kilometers long.

Nikolai Vladimirovich (name changed). “As children, we often loved to walk in the fortress, fortunately we lived not so far away. Cossack robbers, war games, and just look for German machine guns (laughs). Once, entering one of the casemates, we saw a collapse of sand and a tunnel leading into the darkness. I only had matches with me. I wondered what was there? Let's climb. They left one friend at the entrance so that he could call for help if something happened. At first they walked bent over, then crawled on all fours until they reached a large room. The cave, as we called it then. Two more moves left from it different sides. It seemed to us several kilometers ahead. We decided to check one out and climbed in. Soon there was a blockage, and the matches began to run out. Under the ground, it seemed that we had covered 300-500 meters. We decided to return and try again after a while with lanterns and ropes. But they never got together.”

He walked for some time and could not figure out where it was. “I haven’t been to the fortress for a long time, I don’t have time, and what’s there to see?” Some time after the start of the walk, Nikolai began to remember. He led us to the Northern Gate, walked out of it towards the city and turned right. "Here!" said triumphantly, “Here! Right here! pointing to the caponier under the North Gate.

The caponier under the Alexander (Northern) Gate was built in 1871, and what it is is shown on the plan. IN at the moment Indeed, it was partially filled up, but in some places the turnouts and casemates were still accessible. Those. Nikolai's childhood impressions, plus ignorance of where he was, led to the guys being completely confident that they had found underground passages! But now the myth has been tested and debunked.

Legend No. 2. Going to Poland.

Leonid Mikhailovich (name changed). A retired officer who served in the post-war era artillery regiment on the territory of the Northern Island of the Brest Fortress, claimed that he knew about the presence of an underground passage from the fortress, which leads towards state border and further to Poland. He did not make contact for a long time, but chance helped. There were mutual acquaintances who vouched and he nevertheless agreed, in exchange for complete confidentiality, to show the place where, according to him, there was an entrance to the dungeon. Having reached the area, Leonid Mikhailovich led us confidently through the territory of the former military unit. We approached the North-West Gate and turned left, along the rampart, walked about 300 meters, where there was an entrance in the thickness of the rampart. “Here, guys, is the same move, two carts will boldly separate here. There will be a wall about 50 meters away, it’s a dead end. The move has been made. It was forbidden to go further, and why should we? Next is the border.”

Our retired military man did not know that in front of him was a passage through the ramparts, behind which was the first caponier of the Brest Fortress. And why did he need to know this, the less you know, the better you sleep. What he was right about was that, indeed, behind the caponier, the Bug River and the border with the neighboring state are not far away, and the width of the passage in the shaft allows two carts to pass each other. Another myth tested and debunked!

Legend No. 3. Walking under the water of the Bug River.

We also managed to contact one retiree who served in the fortress back in the 50s. This was the hardest part, because... the man was old. We did not go to the place due to his poor health, but Vsevolod Mikhailovich (name changed) met halfway and sketched in detail where the entrance to the dungeon was located. “Exit the Terespol Gate to the Bug, approach the former support of the bridge, there you will see the entrance to the dungeon. The same ones that soldiers used during the war. True, the Germans later sank them.”

On the ground, it turned out that Vsevolod Mikhailovich pointed to the exit of the storm sewer, which we wrote about in Part I. The myth was verified and debunked!

Legend No. 4. The forts are connected to the fortress.

Another legend says that the forts are connected by underground passages to the fortress, and the gunpowder magazines are the starting points. Our source pointed to the powder magazine of the Volyn fortification of the Brest Fortress. According to him, this is where you can see the entrance to the dungeons.

The cellar was built of brick in the 2nd half of the 19th century, but in 1912-1915 it was modernized by strengthening each of the entrances with an elbowed concrete through-hole. The cellar is big hall with two entrances at the ends. The entire perimeter of the hall is surrounded by a narrow gallery connected to it by numerous windows. The drawing shows the reconstruction of the cellar.

Empty outlines indicate old brick walls, gray outlines indicate new concrete entrances with drafts. In addition, an increase in embankment is shown (solid vs. dotted lines). All this was intended to better protect ammunition from enemy artillery. During the modernization, the cellar was covered on top with a thick concrete pad.

In the post-war period, the found ammunition was disposed of in the cellar, as a result of which a hole appeared in the floor, under which there was a space the size of the main hall, ending in a dead end... Supporters of the version of the existence of dungeons present this as the entrance to the secret labyrinths of the fortress, which was filled in in the post-war period.

If you look closely at the drawing, you can see that the structure of the fortress’s powder magazines required the presence of an underground floor, which, according to the engineers’ plans, protected the room from dampness. Tested and debunked!

Now about the specifics.

It is possible to say with a small degree of probability that it is possible central island Once upon a time there were underground passages between religious buildings. The late rector of the St. Nicholas Church of the fortress, Igor Umets, mentioned in one of his interviews that there is an underground passage from the church towards the former Jesuit college (Monument of Courage). However, this version has not yet been verified. What exactly the late abbot meant remains a mystery.

The surviving buildings of the Jesuit Order in many other cities have several levels of basements with underground communications. This suggests that, perhaps, they could have existed here, in old Brest. Recall, on the ruins former monastery Order of the Jesuits in the Brest Fortress, currently the “heart” of the Memorial - Eternal Flame and the Monument to Courage. The main part of the basements is not accessible.

From fortifications in the fortress there are posterns inside the Western and Eastern forts, allowing you to move secretly within the perimeter of the fort. The basement of the Arsenal building is completely walkable. The basements of the defensive barracks (Citadel) are not connected and represent confined space everyone except individual cases, where there were communications between several compartments and a descent from the first floor. By by and large These are technical rooms that provide air flow in the ventilation system.

Underground walls in forts on our territory exist in forts 5, 8 and letter A. Through the thickness of the North Island rampart there are passages into three caponiers and a passage in the rampart into the second ravelin (former campsite). This can be considered the real dungeons of the Brest Fortress. And which, in turn, were perceived as underground passages.

Apologists for the version of the existence of dungeons always argue their point of view by saying that plans for such exist, but they are hidden behind seven seals and will never be made public. That all the underground passages were filled up at one time by the Poles and then by the Soviets. There are also words addressed to the writer S.S. Smirnov that he wouldn’t lie! But, I repeat, Sergei Sergeevich did not write specifics about the dungeons, but only from someone’s words, like all legendary book about the feat of the defenders of the fortress.

Bottom line.

To date, the presence of full-fledged posterns - underground communications intended for secret passage beyond the perimeter of the fortress and beyond - has not been revealed. Perhaps because they simply do not exist and never have existed. Alas, reality often lags far behind colorful fiction. adventure novels, and “word of mouth” embellishes and gives rise to more and more new legends for those who have absolutely no understanding of fortification. But, whatever one may say, truth is valued at all times above all else. As they say, “better the bitter truth than a sweet lie.”

We have tested and debunked!

Our railway station cannot be repaired without historians and archaeologists. Its sand-filled cellars likely conceal the entrance to a tourist paradise. After all, underground from the station to the Brest Fortress is a pleasure for both the tourist and the city treasury. The railway station is currently being renovated. The successes are different, but more on that later. The main thing is different. So let's get straight to the main thing.

I heard with my own ears

Recently returned to her hometown, which she left as a girl, Tatyana Nikolaevna Lazeba recalls distant years:

– When I was a child of about ten, I heard from my grandfather that somewhere in the year 1949 they decided to see where the underground passages of Brest led. Before the war, he worked in the Brest Fortress, on the construction of fortifications, and knew the area and surroundings well. They went deeper, he said, from undershaftsBrest station. We walked for a long time, then we got lost. They came to the surface only three days later...15 kilometers from the city.

They seemed to be heading east, adds Tatiana Lazeba. There are forts there, even Fortechnaya Street. So maybe that move was an eastern route to the forts?

“Now, with my adult mind, I evaluate this as interesting,” says Tatyana Nikolaevna. “I regret that I didn’t write down the details.” And then how – it went in one ear, out the other...

Experts' opinion

I couldn’t have a conversation in the church itself. Like, he couldn’t say that. But let’s leave the motives for such categoricalness at the level of guesswork for now.

Here is a third expert opinion. Author of a booklet about Brest, architectural historian Irina Lavrovskaya expressed little optimism regarding underground Brest. Although there was almost certainly only an underground passage from the station to the Bug Hotel, Irina Borisovna noted. In the period between the “liberation” of 1939 and the “treacherous attack” of the Germans in 1941, a lot of fortifications were built. First of all, they tried to secure the headquarters. All this was accompanied by absolute secrecy, which is so characteristic of totalitarian regimes. Fear shuts our mouths tightly. Therefore - why not? Especially if such a tunnel was built before the Bolsheviks, and all that remains is to renovate it?

Under the station

There is also a museum in the train station. His guardian Savva Tikhonovich Shpudeiko became interested in the topic.

We talked about flooding, which has been popular for us in recent years. No, says Savva Tikhonovich, if the station floods, it’s because of dilapidated water supply and other pipes. There is no groundwater. And why - was shown by measurements taken during the arrangement of the Moscow side of the station. In addition to finding the royal wall - a dead end where the royal train was parked - they established through test drilling: the station rests on a clay pad 18 meters thick. It is 10 meters wide.

Savva Tikhonovich agreed to restore photographs of the unique tunnels. The administration rented a robe and a guide. You really needed special clothing: the station was narrow, dusty and cobwebby. In addition, the basement is filled with sand and all kinds of construction debris for about a meter and a half. Probably to dry it completely.

Both interesting corrugated iron pipes that lead somewhere (pictured) are obviously of post-war origin. But they managed to rust through in places. So I didn’t dare to do anything more than a photo. And there was no permission.

Walking into history

Now the station is being renovated. The engineering service said that all the soil from the basement will be removed to make way for the passenger service area. Bars, game rooms...

Archaeologists and historians have already been here. Even the walls were tapped. We found a teapot and a couple of spoons.

It’s no worse if the pipes from under the station lead to the Brest Fortress (it’s a kilometer away in a straight line). After all, what is it like to read complaints from tourists from Moscow: they say that in the evening you can’t get from the station to the Memorial! And here - you pass, throwing Russian, European, American coins into the coin acceptor - it doesn’t matter, it’s a technical question - and please, after a kilometer of a well-maintained walk with the rental of electric flashlights, the purchase of booklets, badges, the appearance of the skeleton “Disturbed Beresteets” and its transformation into a tour guide - Let's go to the Memorial! Muscovites can put on a uniform and play the war of Russians with the Austrians, Poles and Germans, Poles and Russians, Red Army soldiers and fascists... Ukrainians can dress in the uniform of soldiers of the UPR army (they were interned here in the 1920s). Poleshuks can proceed to the prison site, where they were concentrated to be sent to the Gulag (4 trains were planned to be sent from Brest, but only one was completed). Jail ( built around 1850 as a transit station for shipment to Warsaw Central - information from I. Lavrovskaya) stood on the Northern Island, and across the river opposite, in a ring barracks lived its guards - a battalion of NKVD troops.

In general, some get a sugar bone, some get cartilage, some get a war game, and some get a memory. The main thing is that it will be a real journey into history, unfolding on the spot. With a professional approach, this promises the city fantastic money.

After our publication “Secrets of the Dungeon” (“BK”, No. 4 this year), where we talked about a tunnel that possibly connects the Brest station and the fortress, responses came and various kinds information.

Literally immediately after the publication of the newspaper, a reader came to the editorial office. Named himself Anatoly Fedorovich and reported the following:

– When they were dismantling the ruins of the former tobacco factory on Ordzhonikidze Street ( the reinforced concrete skeleton stood for so long that poplars grew inside - E.B. ), The entrance to the basement opened. From the basement, the workers were able to walk quite a distance through the underground corridor towards the Brest Fortress, but then they were afraid and returned. Now the entrance is braided with wire to prevent them from climbing. But I think you can enter if you want.

Tobacco factory

Of course, such a signal interested me. I visited the address provided by the reader. There are also preliminary results. It can be seen that this used to be a semi-basement: there are doors and barred windows. But the entrance to the underground corridor has not yet been found. The well nearby, covered with an iron plate, turned out to be filled with water. Obviously, she and the one in the basement are on the same level.

Near the railway workers' club

The second visitor turned out to be a veteran and friend of the newspaper Boris Pavlovich. He remembered what two Brest residents told him back in the 50s - former boss city police department Ovchinnikov and furniture factory employee Tolmachev, also a former policeman.

Immediately after the war, near the village of Tyukhinichi, a “gang of Bulbash” was pressed to the Lesnaya River ( or “Bulbovtsy”, Ukrainian nationalities, named after Ataman Bulba (Borovets) - E.B.). And suddenly they seemed to disappear into the ground. Then they showed up in the area of the railway station. The Bulbovites settled in the church, on the site of the current railway workers’ club. In the end, the police launched an assault. One group attacked directly “head-on”, the second penetrated there along the way from the Tyukhinichs, Boris Pavlovich recalled the story of two of his acquaintances. There used to be an arched entrance to some kind of underground communication near the club. Later it was filled up, and now there is a hole in its place.

At the said cultural institution, the railway workers we met corrected: there was a church here, its walls now create the relative comfort of the auditorium of the old club. They reacted positively to the “pit”, but pointed to a well-equipped and long-unvisited underground entrance about fifty meters away.

New addresses

The voice of the people on the Internet sounded no less impressive. On one of the sites that copied the article “Secrets of the Dungeon”, a user under the nickname “ deonysus guest“reported that “during the reconstruction of the courthouse, they found a tunnel leading towards the Brest Fortress.” Thanks, we'll check it out.

They also reported a large void under Gogol Street, which had to be filled with concrete when installing the monument to the 1000th anniversary of Brest. It fit organically into the story Stanislava, working not far from a family of cats who are sitting on a column near the intersection of Sovetskaya and Pushkinskaya streets. It turned out that they were sitting there for a reason. They are guarding. And here's who.

There is an underground Brest, and it is inhabited

Unfortunately, not by people, but by rats. Stanislav's interest in his story is vital, because it is professional: you have to fight off the rats, since they eat up the workers' food. “So the communications had to be cut off, in the sense of being walled up,” said my next interlocutor. From time to time the rats break through, but then the cat comes to the rescue. Not like the one in the microsculpture, but a completely ordinary Murka.

According to Stanislav, part of this particular passage was filled with concrete when the monument was erected on Gogol Street. The passage allegedly ends, according to third parties, somewhere on the other side of Masherov Avenue. It is possible that this is a post-war anti-nuclear defense system, as some interlocutors suggest. And I thought: this is also part of our history. During a mini-football tour of Europe by the AMATAR club 16 years ago in a German town, we spent the night in a former NATO barracks. Six floors, four of them underground. It was underground that we slept. It’s silent, I’ll tell you, like in a tank. And even romantic.

In short, I slept great. Is it really impossible to tempt the guests of our city to spend the night in a Soviet bomb shelter? With a corridor of three hundred meters. Of course, the fact that rats used to live here is not something to write about in guidebooks.

And again the fortress

Another trace suggested Dmitry Borodachenkov. But, judging by the style of his posts, Dmitry was tired of talking with people in government cloth. From an inquisitive internet user Nikolai Kolyadich I managed to find out about the achievements of Brest diggers, among whom, by the way, the mentioned Borodachenkov was one of the first.

Since it is premature to make some versions public without checking, I will deal with this closely. So far I tried to check the version about “underground passages in the area Northern Gate Brest Fortress with brick vaults melted by fascist flamethrowers" (user under the nickname "my guest city"). It was completely confirmed: there are passages, it seems there are even several of them parallel, they are indeed difficult to access, since they are narrow and covered with sand.

It is obvious that the casemates here are underground due to the bulk earth (the ramparts of the Brest Fortress reach a height of ten meters). The vaults inside are actually all covered in soot, with bricks that have dried out from the temperature hanging from them. Creepy... And living history. I thought: the revitalization of the Brest Fortress, about which there is so much noise, would finally happen faster. And we should at least make some noise about the fact that our ruins, so to speak, have already entered the second round. After the war, the destroyed fortress was further destroyed by building command staff houses (in the Northern Town, for example), or even bricks were used for the townspeople’s sheds. Including from the three-story building back in 1950, judging by the little-known painting by the artist Zaitsev, the White Palace. Then I had the opportunity to make dummy ruins for the Memorial. The casemates, thank God, were not dismantled, but they were actually covered with sand.