70 ROSSIYA
today. Contradictory though it may seem, Poland was an integral part of
Russia; Warsaw and Wilno, as Varshava and Vilna, were Russian cities; and the
Poles of Russia, whether they liked it or not, were subjects of the Tsar. They
were not ruled by the Polish tradition, but by the Russian tradition, whose
supremacy in the Polish provinces of the Empire was not effectively challenged
between the First Partition and the First World War. What is more, the Russian
tradition was not something which existed in the abstract. The threefold prin-
ciples of Russian government were embodied in laws and institutions, and were
operated by a host of officials, whose workings over more than one and a half
centuries cannot possibly have left the people either indifferent or unscarred.
Of these institutions, the Russian Army was of capital importance. It was
the ultimate reservoir of autocratic power, and made a constant impact on the
life of all the Empire's inhabitants. Its influence, through the establishment of
permanent garrisons and military districts, was particularly prominent in those
Polish areas which formed the Empire's border with Europe. It offered an hon-
ourable career to the sons of noble families, and demanded 2.5 years' service
from its peasant conscripts. Its role in domestic affairs was not inferior to that
in external defence. Throughout the nineteenth century, it maintained the
largest military establishment in the world, reaching a maximum in 1916 of
some seven million men. It was a major instrument of social integration, throw-
ing generation after generation of Russian and non-Russian soldiers together
into the hardships and comradeship of army life. It was also the centre of an
important sector of the economy. In Russian Poland, it maintained huge gar-
risons at Warsaw, Lublin, Vilna, Grodno, and Belostok (Biatystok), and con-
structed major fortresses in Warsaw, at Novo Georgiyevsk (Modlin), at
Ivangorod (Iwangrod, Deblin), at Brest-Litovsk (Brzesc Litewski), forming the
so-called Polish Trilateral. Although care was taken to avoid forming
regiments of exclusively Polish composition, many Poles served with distinction
in all the Empire's wars. There were large numbers of Polish nobles in the
'Byelorussian Standards' of the Napoleonic period. There were Poles in
Suvorov's army in Italy, Poles both with Kutuzov and against him, Poles in the
Turkish wars, Poles in the Caucasus, Poles in the Crimea, Poles who reached the
walls of Constantinople in 1878, Poles who fought in Manchuria against
the Japanese in 1904-5, Poles who in the Russian army fought against Poles in
the armies of the Central Powers on the Eastern Front of the First World War.
There were Poles in each of the Russian armies which crushed each of the Polish
Risings.
The civil bureaucracy of the Empire was organized on military lines. It con-
sisted of fourteen hierarchical grades, each equivalent to a given military rank
and each wearing its own distinctive uniform and insignia. Together with the
army, it was considered the proper resort of the nobility, whose estates were
supposed to be held less in private possession than in return for state service. In
a centralized autocratic state, personal initiative was blighted; whilst the com-
petence of petty officials extended into all spheres of everyday life. If Gogol's