14 8 Chapter Four
Liberals writing in the pages of the Kadet Party mouthpiece, Russkoe slovo, for
instance, pushed for government organization of the hajj as a matter of justice
and civil rights, directly related to Russia’s promise of religious freedom and
support for its Muslims.^115
Conservatives, for their part, supported organization for other reasons.
Writing in Novoe vremia, the leading paper of the conservative movement in
the Duma, the politician M. O. Menshikov strongly supported the idea of gov-
ernment support for the hajj.^116 He claimed to have studied piles of documents
about the hajj in Russia, given to him by “representatives of various sides of this
issue,” and he proclaimed that Saidazimbaev’s attempted “monopoly” was a sig-
nificant step in the right direction but “nowhere near final.” There were obvious
nationalist and anti-Semitic overtones to his view: he pushed organization of
the hajj so that Muslims would “finally be wrested from the predatory claws of
Jews, Greeks, and Armenians and other predators, including the Turkish police
and others.” And he seemed to have little sympathy or respect for Muslims or
their sacred ritual of the pilgrimage. He described them as “dim,” and those
who followed strict dietary laws “fanatics.”
Figure 4.6. Hajj pilgrims with Russian medical staff and officials, on the stairs of the
khadzhikhane in Odessa. 1913. (Odesskiia novosti)