The Hajj and Socialist Revolution 165through word of mouth, slowly attracting hajj traffic, and turning deficits into
profits over many years. Lashanovetskii noted how much the context, chal-
lenges, and political goals had changed in the late 1920s. ROPiT and the Volun-
teer Fleet in the early 1900s had only needed to overcome economic competition,
but the Soviets were now engaged in that as well as a “nasty political struggle,”
in which their opponents tried all kinds of “dirty tricks.”^27
Luring pilgrims to Soviet routes would require thoughtful planning by
Sovtorgflot. The state needed to develop a flexible apparatus staffed with
experienced people, and organize the hajj in a serious, systematic way. The
fleet had no idea how many pilgrims to expect, but it needed to be prepared
to accommodate as many as possible, and it should plan to use its best
ships—Lashanovetskii suggested the Kursk and the Lakhta, which together
could accommodate 1,850 passengers. He strongly advised against chartering
foreign ships to help with transport. This would defeat a key part of the Soviet
campaign, to “treat very well” the first groups of pilgrims so that they would
gain a positive impression of the USSR and Sovtorgflot, and would spread the
word to other pilgrims, and in this way increase interest and inflow of pilgrims
along Soviet routes. This could not be achieved using foreign ships and crews.^28
A growing body of work explores the early Soviet state’s development of
domestic tourism as a form of cultural diplomacy. To showcase the socialist
state and build international support for Soviet communism, the USSR in 1925
created the All-Union Society for Cultural Ties Abroad (VOKS). Tasked with
promoting a positive image of the USSR in the world, VOKS engaged in, among
other things, hosting and guiding foreign visitors to the Soviet Union, most of
them from Western Europe and the United States.^29 There was economic moti-
vation for Soviet tourism as well, as the historian Michael David-Fox has shown.
Against the backdrop of the Stalinist campaign to rapidly industrialize the
country and “build socialism,” the Soviet government increasingly saw foreign
tourists as a source of much-needed hard currency. The development of Soviet
tourism—including the creation of Intourist, the iconic Soviet travel agency—
accelerated in the late 1920s. This happened in the years of what Stalin called
the Great Break (velikii perelom), 1928–31, a period distinguished by its acceler-
ated, coercive, top-down, and utopian drive to industrialize. In this context,
economic considerations became more central to Soviet state building, while
cultural diplomacy became more radical in nature. This produced bitter ten-
sions within the state between those more pragmatic and those more ideologi-
cal, with the latter largely opposed to the development of “hard-currency
tourism.”^30