1571575
The Hajj and Socialist Revolution
The outbreak of World War I in August 1914 ended the tsarist government’s
involvement in the hajj. The war disrupted global communication networks
and patterns of human migration, including the flow of Muslim pilgrims to
Mecca. Having peaked at 300,000 pilgrims annually in the early 1900s, global
hajj traffic declined dramatically after 1914 and slowed to a trickle for the dura-
tion of the war.^1 War also contributed to the collapse of the tsarist regime in
1917 and the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, led by Vladimir Lenin. Over
the next decade the Marxist Bolsheviks would consolidate their hold on power
and reconquer most of the lands of the former Russian Empire to create the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the world’s first socialist state.^2
One might assume that the rise of Soviet power in Russia brought about the
closure of hajj routes through former tsarist lands, and the end of Russian
involvement in the hajj. After all, the USSR was governed by a communist
regime with global ambitions for socialist revolution and was the first state in
history ideologically committed to eliminating religion and imposing athe-
ism. To disenfranchise religious institutions and remove religion from public
life, the Soviets launched violent and destructive antireligion campaigns in
the 1920s and 1930s. They confiscated and secularized religious property,
harassed, exiled, and in some cases executed clergy, and taught atheism in
Soviet schools.^3 But instead of prohibiting the hajj traffic, the Soviets reopened
the old routes to Mecca through Russian lands in the late 1920s, and began to
organize cross-border transport for hajj pilgrims on now-Soviet railroads and
steamships. Soviet consuls in Persia, Afghanistan, and China issued passports