Shlisselburg Fortress, known as Peanut, is located on a small island at the outflow of the Neva from Lake Ladoga (70 km east of St Petersburg). A grim fortress with a 700-year history, it has defended the north-western frontiers of Russia since the Middle Ages. Over time, Tsar Peter I turned it into a harsh, cruel prison for "the most dangerous state criminals". Inhumane conditions, penetrating cold, dampness and prolonged isolation from the outside world meant that few lived to see the end of their sentence. The torture of Szlisselburg was also experienced by many Poles.

Tsarist political prison

At the end of the 18th century, the Szlisselburg Fortress completely lost its defensive significance and became a political prison where opponents of the tsarist self-rule were oppressed. The first special prison building - the 'secret house' - was then erected. This so-called old prison was built in a citadel separated from the fortress courtyard by high stone walls. Inside ran a corridor, on either side of which were ten cramped, damp cells. The windows had frosted glass and iron bars. In 1870, when the last inmate of the 'secret house' was already a Pole, Bronislaw Szwarce (1834-1904), the tsarist authorities decided to close the prison. However, anti-Tsarist sentiment soon grew. The rise of the revolutionary organisation Narodna Volya (Narodna Volya) and the assassination of Alexander II (1881) prompted the Tsarist authorities to restore the Shlisselburg Fortress as one of the main political prisons of the Russian empire. In 1884, it was enlarged with the so-called New Prison, a five-storey building with 40 small individual cells.

The Shlisselburg prison ceased to exist after the February Revolution of 1917. It was converted into a museum facility in the late 1920s. During the blockade of Leningrad, which began in September 1941, the fortress was on the front line. It defended itself for nearly 500 days. The museum was reopened in 1965 as a branch of the St Petersburg State History Museum (Petropavlovsk Fortress). The former buildings, having been damaged by the war, underwent extensive repair and reconstruction work.

Poles - prisoners of Shlisselburg

The Szlisselburg Fortress was the site of the long-term execution of many Poles - independence activists and conspirators. The fortress is associated with the tragic fate of Walerian Łukasiński (1786-1868), who - recognised as one of the main ideological inspirers of the November Uprising - spent 46 years in tsarist prisons, 37 of them in the casemates of Szlisselburg. In January 1831, he was imprisoned in a 'secret house'. The most severe regime was applied to the prisoner, he was locked up for more than 30 years in a low and dark room without a floor. He was cut off from the world and people. Extraordinary precautions were taken. It was not until 1862 that his fate improved somewhat. He was moved to a bright and relatively dry cell. He was given some books, newspapers and writing utensils. In 1863, he began to write down a diary ("Pamiętnik", PWN, Warsaw, 1960). Towards the end of his life he was allowed limited contact with the outside world, and was even offered a move to the city. Łukasiński, however, refused; he was no longer able to live independently. He died in Shlisselburg in 1868.

Bronislaw Szwarce, an engineer on the Warsaw-Petersburg Railway, a publicist, one of the leading activists of the 'Reds' left wing and a member of the general authorities of the Central National Committee, spent more than seven years in the fortress. He was arrested by the Tsarist authorities a month before the outbreak of the January Uprising. His death sentence was commuted to indefinite imprisonment and he was imprisoned in Shlisselburg. He was probably the only one of the fortress' inmates to become famous for his frantic escape attempt. He was punished by a stricter prison regime. Szwarce is the author of the memoirs: "Seven years in Shlyselburg" (Lviv 1893).

The later physicist and geologist Jozef Lukashevich (1863-1928), who as a student at St Petersburg University was involved in organising the assassination of Tsar Alexander III, was sent to Szlisselburg for 18 and a half years. The conspiracy was detected, and in March 1887 Lukashevich was arrested and sentenced to death. His plea for clemency was granted and his sentence was commuted to indefinite imprisonment.

The new prison was the site of the sentence of Ludwik Waryński (1856-1889), ideologue and socialist activist, who was sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment in the Proletariat party trial. He died in Shlisselburg when he was 33 years old, of which he spent almost seven years in prison. The news of Waryński's death was passed on to his family a few years later by Ludwik Janowicz (1858-1902), also a Proletariat member who briefly led the party after Waryński's arrest. He shared his comrade's fate and found himself in Shlisselburg, where he stayed for 10 years.

Ludwik Kobylanski (1857-1886), a revolutionary activist who collaborated with Waryński, was also imprisoned in the new prison. He was sentenced to disbarment and 20 years' imprisonment for his membership of Narodna Wola and his complicity in the preparations for the assassination of the Tsar. After two years in Shlisselburg, he died of tuberculosis. Among the Poles imprisoned in the Szlisselburg Fortress were also 16 PPS activists imprisoned between 1907 and 1917, including Kazimierz Pużak (1883-1950) and Wincenty Jastrzębski (1885-1977).

Signs of remembrance in Szlisselburg

The victims of Szlisselburg are commemorated in the former fortress. The names of Ludwik Kobylanski and Ludwik Warynski are engraved on a small memorial standing at the edge of the island, behind the fortress walls. In 1998, thanks to the cooperation of the Council for the Protection of Remembrance of Struggle and Martyrdom and the General Consulate of the Republic of Poland in St Petersburg, a three-part black granite plaque dedicated to "Poles - prisoners of Szlisselburg" was erected on the wall of the citadel, opposite the "secret house". It is engraved with a central cross with a 19th-century eagle, on the sides - in two languages - a quotation from Walerian Lukasinski's "Diary" and eight names of the most famous Polish prisoners. The plaque was unveiled and consecrated by Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, head of the Catholic Church in the European part of Russia.

Following Russian aggression against Ukraine, in a wave of similar acts of devastation, the plaque was dismantled on 6 July 2023. In its place appeared a plaque with the inscription: "Object in conservation". The fate of the plaque is unknown.