188 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
Thus it suffices if the capitals, a number of provincial centres
and the stretches along the main roads are adapted to foreign
"invaders": a few miles away there is no need for any change.
The secret police—and this was also true to a certain extent
before the war—takes care that when visitors stay in the
capitals or in the provincial centres they learn practically
nothing from the local population. They are left under the
illusion that they can move anywhere at any time and have
access to the inhabitants in order to obtain any information
they may desire, and to a certain extent the illusion is based
on fact. Visitors can do as they like; the system at present
employed by Moscow does not consist in any open restric-
tion of their liberty of movement. It operates not upon
the visitors but upon the local inhabitants, whose every
word and movement, while in contact with visitors, is
strictly controlled. The presence of an Ogpu official in the
humble role of a hotel servant or an "Intourist" clerk is
enough to remind the inhabitants of the consequences which
may follow any careless word spoken to, or, indeed, of any
contact with, a stranger. The unhappy inhabitants would risk
their liberty and even their lives if they explained their
dreadful position to a visitor; and it is not from them that
information can be obtained. Even from leading professors at
Leningrad (Petrograd) and Moscow and members of the
Academy of Science, just as from representatives of the local
population, the foreigner will always hear what the Ogpu and
its agents want them to hear. If anyone tells them any other
story, his fate is sealed.
Another means employed to prevent news of the real position
from being spread abroad and creating alarm there is the
procedure employed—quite apart from the control of the
Russian press—in dealing with foreign correspondents stationed
in Moscow. Practically these have freedom of movement only
in the capitals, the provincial centres and along the chief lines
of communication, where any local inhabitants dealing with