The Hajj and Religious Politics after 1905 141have argued that in the aftermath of revolutionary activity and social upheaval
during the 1905 Revolution in Odessa—including the worst anti-Jewish pogrom
in the city’s history, which killed 400 people—Tolmachev largely blamed the
city’s Jewish population for the disorder, and made anti-Semitism “de facto city
p o l i c y.”^84 His backing of Saidazimbaev and the hajj complex appears to be an
example of this.
In correspondence with the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ director of the
police, N. P. Zuev, Tolmachev blamed the disorder around the hajj in Odessa on
“mostly Jewish” agents and brokers who owned hotels and rented rooms to pil-
grims and exploited them terribly. Their exploitation began in train stations
just before Odessa, where they went to “catch” pilgrims and lure them to their
places in the city, often robbing them and leaving them with no money. Indi-
gent, homeless pilgrims were a growing problem for city officials in Odessa, and
were “costing the government money.” In an effort to “order” the hajj in Odessa,
Tolmachev told Zuev, he was supporting Saidazimbaev’s plan. The city’s Jews,
he told Zuev, were “storming and raging” (rvut i mechut) over the plan and new
measures, because it was putting an end to their moneymaking schemes and
exploitation of pilgrims.^85
And yet while Tolmachev aimed to establish order around the hajj traffic, his
measures instead created greater disorder and new problems. His instructions
provoked a backlash from all sides. Locals who made a living off the hajj traffic
were among the first to resist. They included people like Rylka Zekhtser, pre-
cisely the type Tolmachev hoped to put out of business by supporting Saida-
zimbaev. A young Jewish widow with seven children, Zekhtser had supported
her family for the past fifteen years by renting rooms to Muslim pilgrims during
hajj season. In August she wrote Tolmachev, assuring him that she was not a
“swindler,” and that the local mullah, Safarov, could vouch that she had “always
dealt honestly with pilgrims.” She described the twenty rooms she rented to
pilgrims as “light-filled and clean,” and begged him to let her continue her busi-
ness, which was her “only source of income” for her family. Zekhtser, like many
others, was forbidden to rent rooms to pilgrims that fall.^86
ROPiT also complained that the exclusive deal between Saidazimbaev and the
Volunteer Fleet was unfair, and a threat to its business interests. ROPiT had a
longer and more successful history in passenger transport out of the Black Sea. It
owned the railroads to Odessa, had helped build the elevated railway connecting
to the Quarantine Harbor, and leased large plots of land from Odessa’s port
authority for its offices, warehouses, and permanent piers for its ships. It also had