Kronstadt Highway, 74, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 197761
Fort "Rif" is located at the very western end of Kotlin Island. This is where Swedish landing forces disembarked, only to be destroyed by the soldiers of Colonel Tolbukhin. The westernmost tip of Kotlin, called the reef of the Kotlin Spit, has always attracted the builders of the Kronstadt fortress for the construction of defensive structures. But initially, a testing ground for a new material in fortress construction — Portland cement — was arranged here. In 1890, the temporary wood-earth battery of 11-inch guns on the reef was dismantled, and in its place, several casemated concrete structures made with Portland cement were erected. For six years, experimental construction was conducted here, followed by testing with gunfire of various calibers on different casemated structures. The results of these experiments formed the basis for the new concrete-earth construction of all fortifications in Russia.
In 1906, a project was ready for the construction of an 11-inch battery on the reef, already made of concrete using the lightly damaged experimental structures. At the same time, the Main Engineering Directorate proposed building a fort on the Tolbukhin shoal for new 12-inch guns. However, calculations showed it was more advantageous to install them on the new coastal forts "Krasnaya Gorka" and "Ino," whose construction began in 1909. The need to build a fort on the Tolbukhin shoal disappeared, and the builders’ attention was again drawn to the reef of the Kotlin spit. Between 1909 and 1915, a fort was built here for the standard pair of fortress guns of that time — 10-inch Brinck guns and 6-inch Canet guns.
The fort’s design resembled the new sea forts of the Kronstadt fortress, "Obruchev" and "Totleben." It had a straight front designed to mount four 10-inch guns, with adjoining left and right flanks at an angle of 155 degrees.
On the flanks, the plan was to install eight 6-inch Canet guns. The main difference was the use of so-called oblique traverses on all batteries, unlike the sea forts where these traverses were only arranged on mortar batteries. With this traverse arrangement, the guns were spaced farther apart than in similar batteries of previous years, which increased the survivability of the guns in case of enemy fire. The second advantage was that fragments from exploding enemy shells were deflected by the traverse walls toward the rear of the battery.
In the winter of 1909, concreting of the foundations for the guns in the gun sheds began. By that time, a concrete plant, houses for the builders, and a branch line from the fortress railway to the construction site had been built on the reef. Building this fort was certainly easier — there was no need to create an artificial island. Only soil was added to expand the territory for the 6-inch batteries, so now Fort Rif resembles an island fort placed on the shore. Excavations for concrete foundations of the guns and casemates were not dug because the fort’s territory was low-lying and partly swampy.
As the concrete foundations were erected, they were “surrounded” by casemates for ammunition storage. The old structures, lightly damaged by the experimental firing, were modernized and became elements of the batteries at the junction of the 10-inch and right-flank 6-inch batteries. The fort’s escarp was built on a pile foundation beyond the shoreline, on the shoals of the spit. The escarp was earthen, with a wall of concrete blocks and a stone berm.
The barracks for personnel, casemated in the style of the forts "Obruchev" and "Totleben," were not part of the fort’s main body but were located in its rear, with an earthen embankment. One of the experimental structures, which survived the 1892-1896 shelling, is interesting — a tower-shaped casemate for an armored concealed installation of a 57-mm fortress gun. Moreover, no steam engines or diesel generators were used to lower the turret. The turret “hid” in a concrete well using a system of levers and counterweights that utilized the recoil force when firing.
The fort was completed in 1915 with the installation and testing of the guns. Officially, in documents, the fort was called the "Alexandrovskaya" battery, but the name did not catch on. Three batteries on one fortification already constitute a fort, and subsequently, to this day, the fortification on the spit is called Fort Rif.
During the revolutionary events of 1917, the fort’s garrison, due to its location, took the most active part. In the 1919 mutiny, the fort was shelled from the "Krasnaya Gorka" fort, though without success. And in 1921, during the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion, the fort served as the last refuge for the rebels. It was from here that they fled to Finland across the ice of the gulf on the night of March 17-18, 1921. After the mutiny, the fort received a new name — "Komsomolsky," which also remained only on paper, and the fort continued to be called by its old name.
During the Great Patriotic War, the fort was the 13th separate artillery battalion of the Kronstadt fortified sector. However, it did not take any special part in combat operations due to its location. The fort’s guns could not reach the northern shore. To the south, it also could not fire. The Germans were more than 20 km away on the southern shore. In 1942, one 10-inch gun was removed from the fort and installed in the center of Kotlin opposite Fort Konstantin. From there, the gun fired on German batteries installed on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland.
In 1953, 130-mm B-13-ZS guns were installed in place of the 10-inch guns. The battery was completely rebuilt. The courtyards were enclosed in a ring. A barrel blowing system with compressed air was installed on the battery. After the disbandment of the Kronstadt fortress in the late 1960s, the fort was used as a storage site for artillery equipment of the Kronstadt arsenal. The residential town was occupied by a radio-technical unit. During the turmoil of the 1990s, the military alternately abandoned and reoccupied the fort. Unique metal structures still intact in 1991 were cut down in the late 1990s. The unique turret of the 57-mm gun with its lever and counterweight system, as well as window frames and almost all armored doors from the early 20th century, the searchlight installation from the Siemens-Schuckert plant (now "Electrosila"), and much more, were not preserved.
Fort Rif, the westernmost of the Kronstadt forts, was included in the UNESCO heritage list in the early 1990s and until recently was a closed military facility, which helped it remain relatively well preserved.
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