110 Chapter Three
organization of transport of Muslim pilgrims to the Hejaz on Russian steam-
ships. The commission was chaired by the ministry’s Medical Department,
indicating its sanitary concerns with relation to the pilgrimage.^71 The commis-
sion met, and the members agreed on a number of issues. One was that govern-
ment assistance should not involve force or restrictions. They agreed that local
Russian authorities should help steamship companies advertise their services,
and that railroad and steamship companies should once again coordinate to
link their services and provide direct travel. This, again, amounted to covert
government intervention that put transport officials in front of government
efforts to organize the hajj.^72
At a conference convened by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1904, tsarist
officials gathered to draft plans to organize the hajj. The conference brought
together representatives of Russian railroads, ROPiT, and the Volunteer Fleet,
as well as the Ministries of Trade and Internal Affairs. A concrete goal laid out
by the 1904 conference was to concentrate Russia’s hajj traffic on the railroads
and through Russia’s Black Sea ports. While officials widely agreed on this goal,
they disagreed on how best to achieve it. The records of this conference reveal
the extent to which officials continued to disagree on a way forward. The group
acknowledged that as many as 10,000 Muslims made the hajj from Russia every
year. Most took Turkish, Egyptian, British, or Greek ships. Tsarist officials
lamented that the sea transport of hajj pilgrims was “passing by” Russia’s
steamship companies, just as the transport of Jewish émigrés to America had.^73
The Ministry of Internal Affairs proposed trying combination tickets again.
But many officials from Russia’s state railroads opposed this. They said it had
not worked in 1899, and that they could not give out any more discounts (they
already gave discounts to Orthodox pilgrims and the blind, among others).^74
But officials realized that something had to be done: as things stood, the market
rates were not attracting hajj pilgrims to the railroads or to ROPiT’s service.
The government responded by providing a generous subvention to its rail-
ways and steamship enterprises to subsidize hajj transport. In 1904 it created a
tariff for the transport of hajj pilgrims that set an artificially low rate for tickets
on Russian railroads and steamships. This tariff was not widely advertised,
doubtless out of concern about a backlash such as that provoked by Pleve’s orig-
inal measures, since it amounted to a secret incentive granted by the govern-
ment to Muslim pilgrims.
A 1 9 04 ministry circular to Russia’s governors revealed comprehensive and
ambitious plans for the hajj transport. It also revealed that the ministry had
joined forces with the Ministry of Transport to address many of the logistical