The Hajj and Socialist Revolution 175on the floor. There was no water on the trains for pilgrims to drink and perform
ablutions. The train cars lacked stepladders, which made it difficult for the
many elderly pilgrims. Most had never ridden a train before, and climbed on
and off while the was moving. In one awful case, an elderly man slipped under
the train and the wheels amputated both of his legs.^62 Baggage was lost as well.
Boxes and cases belonging to Kashgar pilgrims got held up in customs in
Odessa. They arrived in Kashgar late and spoiled—there were split-open boxes
of rotten dates, and the names were rubbed off the packages.^63
Planning and communication among Soviet officials had been poor. This is
not surprising. The hajj campaign was carried out against a backdrop of domes-
tic chaos and upheaval caused by Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan, which involved
forced collectivization of agriculture and fast-paced construction of new cities
and factories across the country. Preoccupied with these enormous tasks, at a
time when Soviet internal borders and institutions were still under construc-
tion, Soviet officials were slow to coordinate and cooperate in organizing the
movement of transit pilgrims through the country that summer.
Perhaps the greatest problem was foreign resistance to Soviet involvement in
the hajj. Writing to the NKID in fall 1927, Ivanov lamented the “colossal diffi-
culties” that Chinese pilgrims from Sinkiang had experienced making the hajj
through Odessa. The Chinese authorities and British steamship companies had
done all they could to discourage the pilgrimage through Soviet territory. The
steamship companies had persuaded Chinese officials not to issue passports to
the USSR; and to lure pilgrims to Indian routes and British ships, they had
slashed their rates by fifty percent. To compete, Sovtorgflot had been forced to
drop its rates, but British ships were still far superior to Sovtorgflot’s in terms of
comfort, service, and amenities.^64
Additionally, officials in the Commissariat of Finance discovered that pil-
grims had illegally taken valuables out of the country. In August officials at the
Commissariat’s Hard Currency Division wrote to Sovtorgflot to complain.
While Kashgar pilgrims were registering and depositing their rubles with the
authorities in Odessa, the authorities had discovered on them large amounts of
precious metals and stones, which they had bought with rubles during their
travels through the USSR. The division ordered Sovtorgflot to remind its agents
in China of Soviet laws regarding currency and valuables, so that they could
inform hajj pilgrims: it was illegal to take Soviet rubles out of the country, and
to export gold or other “hard-currency valuables” that had been bought in the
country with rubles. And those with transit visas through the USSR were not
allowed to exchange rubles for hard currency or precious metals. The division