Lefortovo prison, where American journalist Evan Gershkovich has been jailed on espionage charges, dates from the czarist era and has been a terrifying symbol of repression since Soviet times.
The inconspicuous, pale yellow complex in eastern Moscow was built as a military penitentiary in 1881 and was used for low-ranking convicts sentenced to relatively short terms. But it gained its notoriety after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, when it became a top detention facility for the Soviet secret police.
