Western Russian fortresses
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The Western Russian fortresses are a system of
1830 Polish threat
During 1830–1831, the
Construction and development
The project included three lines of fortresses:
- The first line, called the Defense line of the Kingdom of Poland, crossed Poland north-south, consisting of the Modlin fortress, the Warsaw Citadel, and the fortress in Ivangorod (presently Dęblin).
- The second line along the Brest-Litovsk fortress.
- The third line was running north–south over 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) east of the first one across the present-day Kyiv fortress.
The extensive size of the Russian system led to high costs of construction and maintenance, and work on the fortifications slowed in the 1840s, leading to some fortress never being completed. The importance of the forts as military garrisons declined over the following decades, with some being used as
The
German threat and First World War
When relations between Germany and Russia deteriorated in the 1880s the fortifications saw a resurgence of importance, with the Russians modernizing some of them and adding new modern fortresses in between the old ones. In 1905, the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War caused a rethinking of military strategy, in particular the idea of concentrating forces in the interior away from the borders before hostilities began to gain popularity, eliminating the need for a chain of border fortresses.
In 1909, General