Forging a Russian Hajj Route 105Iurʹev argued that transporting hajj pilgrims would require special steamships
and hefty government subsidies, and the government should take it upon itself
to organize the transport of pilgrims on Volunteer Fleet ships.^53
Clearly the job of organizing the hajj was too great for the Volunteer Fleet or
ROPiT to manage on its own, or even together. In 1903, then minister of inter-
nal affairs V. K. Pleve acknowledged as much. That year he submitted to the
State Council a proposal titled “Temporary Rules for the Muslim Pilgrimage.”^54
This was the first formal proposal for government involvement in the organiza-
tion of the hajj. It was also the latest in a series of ministry initiatives to manage
Russia’s migrations by the introduction of new laws and policies.^55 It called for
broad government patronage of the hajj, through incentives and privileges, and
organization of services.
Pleve had been made minister of internal affairs in 1902, after serving in
several other leading roles in the ministry, including head of the Police Depart-
ment. From this work he would have been well aware that the hajj was an inter-
nal issue for the empire. And his concern for organizing the hajj no doubt was
informed by a broader concern for imperial stability and the need to manage
the various peoples of the empire. 1903, the year Pleve proposed the new
“Temporary Rules for the Hajj,” was also the year of the Kishinev Pogrom, one
of the most deadly and destructive episodes of anti-Semitic violence in modern
Russian and Jewish history—a sign of growing anti-Semitism in the empire.
The pogrom revealed popular Russian intolerance for Jews, against a backdrop
of upheaval and revolutionary violence in the empire. An assassin had killed
Pleve’s predecessor, Sipiagin; and Pleve would soon come to a similar end. In
July 1904 socialist revolutionaries threw a bomb into Pleve’s carriage in central
St. Petersburg and killed him.^56
Pleve is perhaps best known for repression of radical political groups, his re-
sistance to liberal measures (which put him at odds with Witte many times),
and his anti-Semitism.^57 But in this case we see him trying to ease Muslims’
access to Mecca by way of the Black Sea routes: in effect, facilitating their
cross-border movement and improving the conditions of their travel. His pro-
posed rules tacitly acknowledged that conditions along the Black Sea routes
needed improvement, and that more needed to be done to entice Muslim pil-
grims to use them. To do this, Pleve proposed three measures.
The first was that Russia provide free, easily accessible passports to its Mus-
lims who wanted to make the hajj. This was a special privilege that had also