The Stronghold of Strongholds: Kars and the Russian Military, 1807 - 1878

This article examines the series of assaults by the Russian army of the Caucasus on the Ottoman fortress and city of Kars. The Russians seized the fortress three times, but a successful storming in 1828 and a successful siege in 1855 both saw them forced to give the fortress up under the diplomatic settlements which ended these wars. It was only after the last of these sieges in 1878 that Kars was finally annexed by Imperial Russia. Even then it would be returned to Turkey forty years later. This article examines the history of Ottoman rule in this remote region of eastern Anatolia prior to the Russian advance, provides an operational military history of the three successful Russian assaults and the Ottoman defence against them, and examines how Kars was described, visualised and desired by Russian officers and statesmen. It concludes that - partly because it was attained and then lost repeatedly - Kars developed an importance in the Russian military imagination that was completely disproportionate to its real strategic significance.