It is known that in the 1930s, massive underground construction was launched in the USSR. Only along the "old western border" 13 fortified areas (URs) were erected. Each SD occupied an area of 100-180 km along the front and 30-50 km in depth. It was a complex system of underground reinforced concrete premises for warehouses, power plants, hospitals, command posts, communication centers and airfields. Underground structures were connected by a complex system of tunnels, galleries, and blocked communications. Each SD could independently conduct hostilities in complete isolation. This strip of fortified areas received the unofficial name - Stalin's Line.
In addition to reinforced concrete, a lot of special armored steel was used in the construction of the defensive system, as well as Zaporozhye and Cherkasy granites …
Stalin's line was erected not only on the distant western borders.
So, for example, in Moscow in 1933 the construction of the Bunker of the General Staff begins and by 1936 is being completed. This is a real "stone egg", surrounded on all sides by quicksand and "covered" by a four-meter reinforced concrete "mattress" with a total area of one thousand square meters.
Basically, the Stalin Line was completed by 1938, when a decision was made to strengthen it by building heavy artillery caponiers. The construction of another 8 new fortified areas - URs - was also started. In one year, more than a thousand military structures were concreted, where the smallest pillbox is a reinforced concrete monolith weighing 350 tons, dug into the ground "right up to the eyes", and granite blocks were piled on top. All this is covered with earth, on which trees have already sprouted for additional protection and camouflage. And around - ditches and artificial ponds …
According to unverified information in 1936 in various regions of the country, at the direction of Marshal M. N. Tukhachevsky (born - 1893-04-02, since 1935 - Marshal of the USSR, repressed - 1937-11-06) - several underground airfields were built. Their base was a huge reinforced concrete cylinder buried in the ground. In it along the perimeter on trolleys moving in a circle, light fighters were placed. In the center of the cylinder was a spare parts warehouse and repair shops. Several heavy bombers were located nearby, in a system of horizontal adits oriented in the shape of a herringbone trunk.
It is assumed that the defensive Zhiguli complex was built in the same years, according to similar developments, plans and methods.
But, after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in the fall of 1939, all construction work on the Stalin Line was stopped. The garrisons were first reduced and then completely disbanded. Soviet factories stopped producing weapons and special equipment for fortifications. Then the existing URs were disarmed, weapons, ammunition, observation devices, communication and fire control systems were dismantled and put into warehouses.
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From the end of 1939 to the spring of 1941, the process of destroying the Stalin Line gained speed. Only some of the military installations were transferred to the collective farms as vegetable stores, others were blown up or covered with earth.
In the spring of 1941, tens of thousands of long-term defensive structures were lifted into the air by the personal order of Stalin … Even today we have no logical answer as to why they were destroyed! (59).
The construction of the Kuibyshev hydroelectric power station, read the Zhigulevsky complex, was also stopped in 1940, which is in good agreement with the liquidation of the Stalin Line.
Discussing with V. Suvorov, V. Babenkov asks:
“Why was it necessary to build an (urban) command underground complex, go at great expense, if 20 km from it there was a ready-made, fully equipped command post. After all, not in order to hide "President" Kalinin and the secondary people's commissariats?"
The answer is quite simple! “The magnificent underground, or rather the rocky one, KP in Zhiguli was created to solve strategic management tasks. A system of bunkers in the city - for solving tactical problems and as an auxiliary complex. The buildings of the DKA, the regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and the "House of Industry" served as excellent landmarks for air strikes and shelling. All exits from the dungeons in these houses would have been destroyed after the first massive bombardment.
As for the significant costs, for a totalitarian regime with significant resources, they simply do not play a significant role.
Further V. Babenkov for some reason identifies the "bunker in Zhiguli" with the system of catacomb tunnels of the Falcon Mountains or takes another one - only one Sokskaya mountain-refrigerator.
Limestone in the Falcon Mountains was mined in the last century. In 1937, they began to equip tunnels for warehouses with the help of prisoners.
V. Suvorov writes:
“Thousands of prisoners were driven here, thousands of tons of building materials and construction equipment, and everyone knows why - for the construction of a hydroelectric power station” (60).
And with all this, the hydroelectric power station, unlike, for example, the Dneproges, was not built very talentedly. And as we now know, underground structures were built by small specialized units. So the already mentioned Stalin's city bunker (at a depth of 37 m) was built in just 8-9 months by a detachment of 600 builders. 25 thousand cubic meters were exported there. m of land, 10 thousand tons of concrete was laid, and at the same time everything remained unnoticed even for residents of neighboring houses. As we already wrote, it is possible that this construction proceeded along the already existing underground voids. A similar story can be observed in Zhiguli.
At the end of the 19th century, a discussion began in Europe about the need and possibility of using various expensive structures - fortresses, forts and batteries.
In connection with the development of long-range artillery, missile systems and aviation, such construction became completely useless.
Let us recall that flamethrower systems have proven themselves well in the fight against underground structures. It is reported, for example, that German flamethrowers from the 291st Infantry Division burned more than 150 concrete Soviet pillboxes guarding the approaches to Leningrad.
But a number of generals in Tsarist Russia adhered to a completely different concept.
“The defender prepares in advance a certain area of the terrain. He can study it much better than the enemy. His fortress artillery is always ready, and the heights are shot down,”General Ts. A. Cui (1835-1918).
The need for such a defensive complex was especially felt on the southeastern borders of the empire, where since the time of the collapse of the Khazar Kaganate, there was no peace in the steppes east of the Volga. And the only obstacle from the attacks of the nomads were the Cossack villages beyond Orenburg, and the old defensive lines.
The threat from the East grew as the British colonial empire approached the Russian borders.
After the defeat of tsarism during the unsuccessful Crimean War in 1853-1856, a secret decision was made to create special defensive complexes in the southeast, east and south.
According to unverified information on Samarskaya Luka, construction work began in 1860-1866 (the annexation of the Central Asian states to the Russian Empire), actively continued in 1891-1895 as part of the highly secret operation "Bosphorus". (_Operation "Bosphorus" - the final defeat of the Turkish Empire and the capture of the straits and Constantinople_).
In the same years, construction began on the so-called Sevastopol Fort, or "four-gun tower battery", to protect the city from the sea, taking into account the experience of the Crimean War. The objects were erected of the same type, at dominant heights, a hill slightly curved towards the river / sea, which provided circular fire for the guns.
Construction was especially active in the period from 1912 to 1914. At the Sevastopol Fort, by the beginning of the First World War, pits for gun towers, several underground cellars and corridors were prepared.
There is no information on Samarskaya Luka. Although, perhaps, work was carried out there until 1917. It is curious to note that the royal documentation for these objects has not been preserved. Perhaps they were taken abroad by White Guards or interventionists. Their new design had to start with measurements of structures on the ground.
In the late 1920s, the construction of the Sevastopol Fort was resumed. It proceeded with the use of mechanisms and parts of dismantled heavy warships of the Tsar's fleet. By 1933, this coastal defense battery was equal to a destroyer in salvo power. This underground fortress in Crimea was put into operation under the name of the Fort "Maxim Gorky-1".
It can be assumed that around the same years work was accelerated on the Samarskaya Luka, which was the reaction of the Soviet Government to the development of the so-called Operation "Baku" by Britain, France and Turkey.
Operation "Baku" was planned by a group of Western countries for 1939-1940 and envisaged a number of stages, including the massive bombing of oil fields in Azerbaijan and Astrakhan, the withdrawal of tank landings in the direction of Astrakhan-Stalingrad-Samara, with their subsequent consolidation on the natural defense lines of the Don-Volga Kama. The purpose of the operation is to cut off the central regions from Siberia.
Only an extensive network of modern fortified areas could reliably resist these plans.
According to unverified information in those years, all underground facilities were supervised by the Naval Department. Even the uniforms of their garrisons were nautical. (Perhaps this is where the legends about the "underground sailors" of the Zhiguli originate?)
By the beginning of World War II, the Sevastopol Fort was commanded by Captain G. Alexander. It was an extremely secret facility.
Thanks to him, the fall of Sevastopol was delayed by more than six months. Until the very beginning of firing, neither the Nazis nor the tactical Soviet Command knew about the very existence of the Sevastopol Fort and its battery.
So what were these batteries located in the Mekenzian Mountains?
The caliber of the guns is 305 mm. Firing range up to 42 km. A three-meter layer of concrete. Water supply - through two inputs from external systems and its own artillery well. To the two modes of ventilation systems (duty and combat), a special combat-anti-chemical one was also added. An artificial gorge was cut in the rocks for a 75 ton gantry crane. Huge storage facilities. Stocks of products. Electrified galley, medical block, hygienic latrines. At some distance from the battery itself, at a depth of several tens of meters, the command post was located. It was divided into two parts - an armored cabin and its underground part, connected by an electrolift and a tunnel communication. The supply of shells and charges from the cellars to the towers and guns was carried out by electromechanics in a semi-automatic mode.
The power supply provided for three sources - two autonomous cable inputs from the outside, an underground autonomous power station was located somewhere in the Inkerman mountains. In case of its failure, the fort had its own diesel power plant with a supply of fuels and lubricants in casemates-tanks.
For several months, the Nazis shelled and bombed the Sevastopol Fort. But they were able to take it only after the departure of the Soviet ships. Underground battles continued for another 19 days. When the front doors were blown up, the Nazis were greeted with machine gun and rifle fire. Gas was released into the casemates, and only then there was silence in the dungeons (61).
Already at the very end of the Great Patriotic War, the most secret archives of the Third Reich intelligence, which contained drawings and technical documentation for numbered Soviet underground forts, fell into the hands of the Soviet command. Sevastopol was listed under N1.
Somewhere in the east remained the forts "Maxim Gorky-2" and "Maxim Gorky-3". Their fate was consigned to oblivion. (_Exception - a small publication in the journal "Technology-Youth" in 1985 and in the book "Secrets of the Millennium". M, 1997_).
According to unverified information, the fort "Maxim Gorky-3" was erected on the Volga, where fortifiers used the bed of one of the underground rivers for its construction. They took away the water, and began to blow the vacant space with heated air. Perhaps, the old channel of the paleo-Volga was involved in this way. It was an extremely secret facility.
It is assumed that the Volga in the pre-glacial time flowed through the present mouth of the Sok River, skirted the Sokol'i Mountains and continued its journey southward through the Padovka River valley. It is possible that the brought in remains of this ancient paleochannel could serve as the reason for the emergence of the underground system. This system may have an underground connection with the Vodinsky quarries and the Syreikinsky caves.
An indirect evidence of a certain "Big Construction" in Zhiguli is the image of the railway line on the old map of the "Kuibyshevsky Krai" in 1935. This Road is not on earlier maps, and it disappears from later ones. Starting from the river bank, it goes into the mountains, and having made a half-circle, it turns to the village of Alexandrovka.
During our searches in Samarskaya Luka, we often found broken power cables that went into the water of an unnamed lake. In some places, in the dump hills that had settled from time to time, one could guess the old artillery caponiers, for some reason, most often, the front turned to the east and southeast.
Many stories describe the shapeless ruins (of an anti-aircraft rifle complex?), Accidentally found in the Zhiguli forests, once with special diligence erected from "Volga concrete" and refractory bricks.
Some of them have already been a source of gratuitous building material for "needy" summer residents for quite a long time. Whole blocks they broke out and removed bricks, fragments of concrete slabs and even lightweight expanded clay. Groups of modern marauders have left many traces of hunting for non-ferrous metals here. Pieces of copper and aluminum wires pulled out to the surface, burnt cables, some kind of gutted structures and mechanisms. Everything in the open space was destroyed.
Often, during searches, the authors had to climb into the thicket of the forest, where in the dark gloom of mossy trees there was a damp silence. A small stream, making its way through the trunks of the fallen giants, disappeared into a ravine.
It was clearly seen here that until relatively recently this ravine was covered by massive concrete slabs. They were mounted on wide metal pillars and rested on brick walls, forming rather large enclosed spaces, possibly hangars, suitable for a variety of uses. A small vestibule was located at the far ends of these rooms. There, long-forgotten designers have placed a whole system of some kind of service mechanisms and units. Perhaps they were intended to maintain a strictly defined temperature, humidity and air purity inside this structure. But at present, the researchers saw only traces of destruction, massive coal filters and cellular dust collectors piled up in shapeless heaps.
On a thoroughly rusted pedestal, the heating installation was still preserved. The sophisticated system of pipes that approached it, once provided for the intake of clean cold air, "flowing" along the walls of the ravine, and also diverted and dumped exhaust gases down the slope.
There were several such hangars along the surrounding ravines. Depending on their distance from the "central clearing", the preservation of these buildings was different …
As conceived by the designer, this entire system of buildings was covered by a complex fortification network. The secret passageways of communications snaked between the trees, once dug up to their full height, lined with bricks on the walls and covered with concrete slabs on top. They connected long-abandoned machine-gun and mortar nests, observation platforms and checkpoints.
It was a whole system of ground-underground complex. In some parts of it, you can squeeze through thoroughly rusted partitions with casually half-open doors decorated with huge steering wheels to enter the halls, where torn bundles of thick cables and tin ventilation ducts are still preserved.
Several miraculously preserved buildings were built in such a way that they merged with the surrounding area as much as possible. On their roofs, as on the slope of ordinary hills, bushes and even small trees grew. Their walls - rubble stone and waterproof bricks - still resisted the onslaught of ruthless time.
The memory of one of the electricians who in the early 60s worked on the construction of the Volzhskaya hydroelectric power station has been preserved. Then, in the course of the work, there were several attempts to meet the growing needs of the construction site for electricity. Once a group of specialists was taken to one of the mothballed power plants in Zhiguli.
“We were brought to a small wooden structure standing alone in the forest. The escort opened the rusted lock. We entered and found ourselves inside a completely empty room. In its center was a concrete shaft covered with oak logs at the top. Forged staples went down. We went down along them. There was a large hall. On the walls, painted with blue oil paint, behind the wire reinforcement of the hoods, the pilot lamps burned dimly. The whole room was just filled with some kind of tanks, old pumps, compressors, and high voltage transformers. Thick bundles of pipes with valves, couplings and plugs stretched in all directions. After a few steps, the adit leaving the hall was closed tightly with a steel door, securely sealed with a screw lock … Having examined the available equipment, we went upstairs."
As a result of the inspection, a conclusion was made about the possibility of using the facilities of this facility to partially meet the construction needs for electricity. But the appropriate decision was probably not made, and "our farm" was connected to other sources of electricity.
In the opinion of the authors, the described object is a classic underground step-down substation, where high voltage current is converted into low operating voltage: 380, 220 and 120 V. This is the voltage used for the operation of electric motors of escalators, fans, pumps and lighting systems; the structure is quite typical for Metrostroy of the 30s.
