14 2 Chapter Four
a shipbuilding yard there.^87 But it did most of its business transporting hajj pil-
grims from Sevastopol, where it also had extensive facilities and a large shipyard.
ROPiT officials complained that Saidazimbaev was sabotaging their efforts to
transport hajj pilgrims. Saidazimbaev had sent agents into Kharkov and other
stations deeper in the empire, where they harassed ROPiT agents, preventing
them from selling tickets to hajj pilgrims or even getting near them. To route
pilgrims through Odessa and onto Volunteer Fleet ships, Saidazimbaev’s agents
were spreading lies about cholera and plague outbreaks in Sevastopol, urging
pilgrims to avoid it that year.^88
Although Stolypin had hoped that Saidazimbaev’s plan would build imperial
affection and loyalty, in execution the plan was consolidating discontent
instead. In St. Petersburg, the Ministry of Trade had begun to complain to the
Ministry of Internal Affairs on behalf of ROPiT. From Odessa, Tolmachev
wrote a frantic letter to Zuev, saying that ROPiT was refusing to collaborate
with Saidazimbaev in transporting hajj pilgrims and was trying to “sabotage”
the plan to “order” the hajj by threatening to open a second, competing hajj
complex in Odessa.^89 Meanwhile, from within the hajj complex, there were
reports of pilgrims rioting and assaulting staff. Pilgrims were enraged over not
being allowed to leave the complex and being forced to buy Volunteer Fleet
tickets at rates higher than those charged by other fleets.^90
Worse still for Stolypin, by October a backlash against the Odessa hajj com-
plex had started in the press. What had looked like a beautiful, antiseptic facil-
ity, on paper and in photographs, and to certain people, looked and functioned
like an instrument for Muslim oppression and exploitation to others. One of
the first articles to criticize Saidazimbaev’s hajj complex appeared in the liberal
Kadet newspaper, Rech’, published in St. Petersburg. Titled “Khadzhikhane:
Letter from Odessa,” the article reached both Russian and Muslim readers—it
was translated into Tatar and published also in the major Kazan daily Va g i t. It
accused Saidazimbaev and Tolmachev of violating Muslims’ civil rights.
It claimed that Tolmachev was “using” the threat of cholera and the premise of
“protecting” Odessa from disease to force pilgrims into the hajj complex, to
enrich both Saidazimbaev and the Volunteer Fleet. It was strange, the writer
noted, that only in Odessa—the end point of a long journey through the Rus-
sian Empire for many Muslims—was such a facility established.^91 This article
suggests the extent to which the issue of the hajj was becoming associated with
questions about Muslims’ civil rights in Russia, not only among Muslims, but
also among liberal-minded Russians.