72 ROSSIYA
where 'schisms', 'sects', 'noxious individuals', 'foreigners', and 'frontiers', not
to say 'false banknotes' or 'occurrences', were specially prevalent. In an Empire
paranoid about security, the site of repeated Polish Risings was bound to attract
special attention.
The police system was supported by a network of state fortresses and
prisons. In Warsaw, the mighty Alexander Citadel, built in 1832.-5 at the city's
expense, soon became a symbol of Tsarist oppression. Its notorious Tenth
Pavilion, the seat of the Permanent Investigatory Commission, was the first des-
tination, and sometimes last resting-place, of all political prisoners.
The Empire's frontiers, whose European stretches ran through the middle of
the former Polish lands, were guarded incessantly. Especially in the railway era,
when the numbers of travellers increased rapidly, the precautions taken had no
parallel anywhere in Europe. Here, the Army and Police were assisted by the
green-coated Corps of Frontier Guards. They were deployed in three distinct
zones. The first zone was manned by military detachments stationed at fixed
intervals along the full length of the frontier line. At points of expected tension,
there were soldiers posted every ten yards for mile after mile, as far as the eye
could see. The second zone covered an area some two or three versts behind the
frontier, and was patrolled by mobile mounted units. The third zone stretched
for a further 150 versts from the frontier, and included almost all the main cities
of Poland and Lithuania. All ports,. roads, railway stations, and hotels were
liable to peremptory search; all travellers were subject to investigation and ques-
tioning; all people with foreign contacts were treated as potential law-breakers.
The Poles, whose cultural life spanned the three Partitions and who frequently
possessed estates or relatives on all sides of the frontier came in for special sus-
picion, and responded in style. Villages and small towns near the frontier with
East Prussia, Silesia, or Galicia developed thriving agencies for smuggling and
illegal travel. Secret paths and dark nights were exploited to the full. Officials
and soldiers could be bribed. Conspirators and revolutionary literature was
brought in; Jews and other illegal emigrants were smuggled out. Every rabbi in
Russia knew that the Jews of Plock or of Brody would see their coreligionists on
their way to America along 'the moonlight road'. Every revolutionary knew that
a platform ticket bought in the morning rush-hour at Sosnowiec, would see him
safely across to Kattowitz in Germany. Every desperate refugee hoped that the
helping hand of a Polish peasant would be waiting on the southern bank of the
Vistula between Sandomierz and Cracow. Meanwhile, normal traffic was need-
lessly hindered. Baedeker warned western tourists that they should not line their
suitcases with newspapers if they wished to avoid unnecessary delay.
The Censorship was equally elaborate. It had first been introduced by Peter the
Great for theological works, and was raised into a general system in 1803. Under
Nicholas I, and again at the end of the nineteenth century, it assumed the
proportions of a major industry. It had twelve separate agencies - general, eccle-
siastical, educational, military, theatrical, literary, press, postal, legal, inter-
national, foreign, and security - and a supreme secret committee charged with