Nizhny Novgorod Ostrog (Nizhny Novgorod Prison Castle, Ostrog) — a branch of the Nizhny Novgorod State Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve.
The only prison museum in Russia.
Nature of the Phenomenon
The first Nizhny Novgorod Governorate prison.
The main transit route to Siberia passed through Nizhny Novgorod. From the very beginning of its history, therefore, the Nizhny Novgorod Ostrog was used not only for holding inmates "in connection with the cases of the prisoners kept there," but also for accommodating convicts in transit. In the second half of the 1820s, between 150 and 250 such individuals passed through the city every week.
The prison complex served its direct purpose until October 1914, when the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate Prison was relocated to new buildings constructed on the Arzamas Highway.
In 1981, a decision was made to transfer the former prison block of the ostrog to the Gorky State Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve for use as an exhibition space.
Layout
The prison block of the ostrog is a two-story building with four round towers at its corners. The central section of the block contains a built-in church with a small bell tower. The first and second floors of the left and right wings house communal cells, while the towers contain solitary cells. In the basement, directly beneath the church, are the punishment cells. The prison yard once contained a large number of outbuildings — a bathhouse, barracks, guardhouses, a smithy, a hospital, and stables — none of which have survived. In the outer yard, wooden barracks were erected for political prisoners and convicts in transit.
Historical Background
According to the architectural drawings of the Nizhny Novgorod Ostrog held in the collections of the Gorky Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve, they were "imperially approved" on 8 May 1820. This is also stated in the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire (Series I, Vol. 37, 1830), which notes that a prison building in Kharkov was being constructed according to the same plan. A comparison of archival drawings reveals complete identity between the prison castles in Nizhny Novgorod, Kharkov, and Astrakhan (the last of these was built in 1821–1824). Under the rules then in force, designs for any new state building were required to conform to approved standard plans. This was equally true of the prisons mentioned above. In designing them, the standard design for a provincial-city prison castle drafted by A. D. Zakharov served as the basis. As in Zakharov's model design of 1803, all the structures of the Nizhny Novgorod Ostrog (and correspondingly those of the Astrakhan and Kharkov prisons) were conceived in monumental forms reminiscent of fortress architecture. The general layout is also similar: the inmate block stands in the middle of a square prison yard enclosed by a stone wall. At the same time, unlike Zakharov's design, this block has four round towers at its corners, while the enclosing wall, by contrast, has none. The entrance to the prison grounds, which is integrated with the administrative block, was also designed differently. Such departures from standard designs were entirely permissible, since those designs were advisory in nature.
Construction of the Nizhny Novgorod Ostrog began in the spring of 1820 and was largely completed three years later. The two-story inmate block fully met the legal requirements for housing prisoners "according to the nature of their offense." It contained separate cells for men, women, and juveniles, as well as a prison infirmary. The central section of the block was occupied by the church. Beneath it, in the basement, were rooms for secret prisoners — "dungeons." Even official inspectors examining the prison noted that in these rooms "the air, owing to dampness, is extremely exhausting and injurious to health." In addition to the main staircase, there were four more staircases located in the towers. These made it possible, bypassing the main entrance, to access specially enclosed exercise yards from any part of the block. All of this was intended to prevent contact between different groups of prisoners. In the administrative block, which was combined with the gateway into the prison yard, were "corps de garde" (guardrooms), rooms for newly admitted prisoners, and the prison warden's quarters. The main outbuildings — a bathhouse with laundry, a stable, and an ice cellar — adjoined the enclosing wall directly, while at two inner corners of the wall stood small stone sentry boxes. All the stone structures of the prison were plastered and whitewashed.
Conditions of the Prisoners
Archival documents of the period paint a grim picture of the treatment of transit prisoners. Upon their arrival, the "resident" inmates were herded into a few cells.
"The remaining rooms are occupied by transit prisoners who, after an exhausting journey in wet and frost-covered clothing, are locked in several rooms almost on top of one another, and remain in this condition for entire days at a time, not being let out even at night for necessities owing to insufficient guards; not only is there no place to rest, but there is not even room enough to distribute themselves among the bunks. This occurs every week over the course of the three days during which a party arrives, spends the day, and departs."
Reconstructions
In 1853–1855, the prison church was enlarged according to a design by architect A. Turmyshev. An additional volume with an altar apse was added to the block. The church was crowned with a gilded dome and cross. A bell tower appeared above the main entrance to the block. In 1857, cast-iron columns were installed inside the church, replacing the stone piers. The church's decoration as a whole stood in sharp contrast to the grim surroundings of the prison itself. This "embellishment" of the church was carried out at the expense of Nizhny Novgorod merchants.
The prison administration, fully appreciating the ideological value of subjecting prisoners to sermons "on love and humility," willingly accommodated such "benefactors." But for those who refused to submit — "particularly dangerous criminals" — the secret cells beneath the church rooms continued to exist as before. Moreover, a special punishment cell was added to them. During the 1840s and 1850s, the administrative block was repeatedly replanned, with partial changes made to its façade. The layout of the prison yard itself also changed.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the special exercise yards for prisoners and the corner sentry boxes along the enclosing wall had been eliminated. Despite the fact that a dedicated transit prison ("staging house") was built in Nizhny Novgorod in 1852, some transit prisoners continued to be housed in cells of the Nizhny Novgorod Prison Castle. These cells were almost always overcrowded. The prison population changed slightly in February 1858, when the women's section of the ostrog was closed and its inmates transferred to the convict company building on Novo-Bazarnaya Square. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the grounds of the Nizhny Novgorod Prison Castle expanded.
In 1885, a new "transit yard" appeared beside the old prison yard, and two wooden barracks were erected on it. Their construction was necessitated by the closure of the transit prison in Nizhny Novgorod. The barracks were designed to hold 75 persons each, but according to the prison warden's own admission, "during periods of intensified prisoner transit, numbers can swell to more than 300 persons, and prisoners are then housed on the floor. Maintaining cleanliness under such crowding is extremely difficult…" It was in precisely such conditions that F. E. Dzerzhinsky spent several days in one of these barracks in the summer of 1898, while being escorted to exile in Vyatka.
As the revolutionary movement grew, so did the number of persons convicted of "political crimes." Whereas in 1879 the Nizhny Novgorod Ostrog officially held 6 political prisoners, by 1902 there were no longer enough cells in the stone block for them. One of the transit barracks was therefore converted into solitary cells for political prisoners.
Gorky in the Ostrog
Maxim Gorky was placed in a solitary cell during his second arrest in 1901. At other times, several persons were held together in these same rooms. Utility rooms in the block were also used as cells. Solitary cells had cement floors; communal cells had wooden floors. Bunks were often absent, and prisoners had to sleep directly on the floor on straw mattresses.
The gray walls of the cells were covered with various inscriptions, among which the "prison alphabet" used for tapping between cells could also be found scratched in. The doors were fitted with special peepholes through which warders could observe the prisoners. The windows were barred with thick iron gratings.
What prisoners particularly hated were the "umbrellas" — wooden screens that covered the outsides of the cell windows by slightly more than half. They were first installed in 1853 under Governor M. A. Urusov. The liberally minded F. V. Annenkov, who became his successor, did order the "umbrellas" removed; however, they reappeared on the windows again in the 1870s. For the slightest breach of prison regulations, prisoners were sent to the punishment cells.
Solitary Confinement Cells
A vivid description of them by the prison warden has survived: "…All the punishment cells are heated, but have no ventilation, nor is it hardly possible to install any; they are ventilated in the simplest way — when not occupied, their doors are left open; the punishment cells have no sleeping platforms, and those placed in them lie on the stone floor; there are no separate pitchers for water or buckets — instead a bowl of water and a latrine bucket of galvanized iron are placed in each cell." The design of the punishment cells did not even meet the requirements of the Chief Prison Administration.
End of Use
Technical innovations of the time were also employed to strengthen the security of prisoners: electric lighting, bell signaling, and telephone. By the early twentieth century, the stone structures of the First Nizhny Novgorod Governorate Prison, as the ostrog was then known, had fallen into a very dilapidated state.
In November 1909, an authoritative commission comprising several architects and engineers concluded that "even with considerable expenditure, the building (the inmate block — A.D.) will not meet the minimum requirements applicable to buildings of such specialized purpose." A decision was therefore made to construct a new prison outside the city on the Arzamas Highway, and the land plot on Ostrozhnaya Square was sold to the city. The city authorities regarded all the prison structures purely as demolition material. The prison was relocated to the new buildings on the Arzamas Highway in the autumn of 1914, as reported by Nizhegorodskiye Gubernskiye Vedomosti on 29 October. With the outbreak of the world war, there was no time to demolish the old ostrog: in November of that same year it was used to house prisoners of war.
Soviet Era
After the October Revolution, in the 1920s, the ostrog was occupied by the workshops of the Nizhny Novgorod Rifle Division.
In 1929, all the ostrog's buildings were transferred to the pharmaceutical administration. The main block was consequently adapted for use as warehouse space. The ostrog's grounds were replanned and certain structures were demolished, including the barracks.
The significance of the Nizhny Novgorod Ostrog as a historical and architectural monument was not recognized in time. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was hemmed in on three sides by residential buildings. The architectural loss is felt most keenly on Varvarskaya Street, whose vista is now closed off by a featureless ten-story building.
In 1981, a decision was made to convert the Nizhny Novgorod Ostrog into a museum. The Gorky Special Scientific Restoration Production Workshop developed a restoration project for it (designed and led by architect V. A. Shirokov). The exterior appearance of the inmate block, the interiors of the communal cells, solitary cells, and punishment cells are to be restored to their early twentieth-century state. An exhibition on the history of the revolutionary movement in the Nizhny Novgorod region will also be housed there. Restoration and reconstruction work is currently underway at the ostrog. However, some of its structures, including the administrative block, remain occupied by the pharmaceutical administration.
Museum
At various times, prominent public and political figures, members of the intelligentsia, and participants in the Russian revolutionary movement of the 19th–20th centuries were held as prisoners in the Ostrog: writers Korolenko and Maxim Gorky, Lenin's comrades in political struggle — Dzerzhinsky, Sverdlov, N.A. Semashko, as well as prominent Nizhny Novgorod residents: P.A. Zalomov, P. Lvov, and many others.
Currently open to visitors: a solitary-confinement cell, a general cell, the prison church, and the punishment cell (group visits and pre-booked tours only). By visiting the prison castle, Nizhny Novgorod residents and guests of our city can learn new facts about the biographies of well-known figures of the past.
Location
The Nizhny Novgorod Ostrog is located in the city center, two stops from the Kremlin and Minin Square — the city's central square. Nearby is a history and architecture museum-reserve. Adjacent to the Ostrog are the Opera House and the Nizhny Novgorod Theatre for Young Audiences.
Contact Information
Phone: (831) 261-30-18
Address: 603006, Nizhny Novgorod Region, Nizhny Novgorod, Freedom Square, 2.
Directions: From Moscow Railway Station, take buses 38, 39, 61, or Minibus No. 34.
Opening hours: Mon–Fri, 9:00–18:00. Sat and Sun — closed. Admission by pre-booked guided tour only.