The revolution of 1917 was tragic for many peoples in the Russian Empire, especially the Crimean Karaites. Being prosperous merchants, manufacturers and loyal subjects of the Empire, they suffered more than others. The new ruling Bolshevik Party deprived them of their homes and public buildings and of the possibility to confess their religion; some were shot or perished in the chaotic events of the revolutionary period; many of them joined the White Guards fighting to save the Empire; others emigrated to Turkey, France, Germany and other countries. Those who survived had to now assume the status of Soviet citizen (Kizilov 2011: 289–294, 297–30). The Karaite population decreased from 12 894 in 1897 (Pervaya Vseobshchaya perepis' 1905) (and about 13 600 in 1913) (Sarach and Kazas 2000. Part 1. Vol. 6: 27) to 8 324 in 1926 (Vsesoyuznaya perepis' 1928–29), and it continued to drastically decline during the Soviet period from 1920 to 1991 (5 727 Soviet Karaites in 1959,131 4 571 in 1970,132 3 341 in 1979,133 2 602 in 1989134). Although the decline was implicitly drastic, we should keep in mind the various methods of counting (how the question 'who is a Karaite?' was answered in certain periods). The first census conducted in the Russian Empire gave us the name Karaite based on a religious definition. However, all subsequent Soviet censuses were based on how persons self-identified; hence, we should take into account the frequent number of mixed marriages in Soviet times and the influence of political factors (see below), when many Karaites probably preferred to hide their real identity and registered as Russians.
However, there was a positive side to ethnic policy in the first years after the revolution. The new government realised quite well that one of the reasons for the disintegration of the Russian Empire was its unsuccessful national policy, in which the interests of non-Russian ethnicities had been ignored. That is why after the revolution, the Provisional Government (March–July 1917) made an attempt to resolve ‘the ethnic question’. The Bolsheviks lifted confessional and ethnic limitations, started preparing a language reform and considered the possibility of extending self-government to certain ethnic groups.135 They carried out cultural and language reforms: they established ethnic schools with studies in native languages and published newspapers, periodicals 131 RGAE RF (byv. TSGANH SSSR), fond 1562, opis' 336, ed. khr. 1566a-1566d (Tables 3 and 4 Raspredelenie naseleniya po natsional'nosti i rodnomu yazyku).
132 RGAE RF, fond 1562, opis' 336, ed. khr. 3998-4185 (Table 7c. Raspredelenie naseleniya po natsional'nosti, rodnomu i vtoromu yazyku).
133 RGAE RF, fond 1562, opis' 336, ed. khr. 6174-6238 (Table 9c. Raspredelenie naseleniya po natsional'nosti i rodnomu yazyku).
134 Rabochiy arkhiv Goskomstata Rossii (Table 9c. Raspredelenie naseleniya po natsional'nosti i rodnomu yazyku).
135 Although, these activities were too late to satisfy ethnic leaders and the revolution had already angered various strata of society in the outlying districts of the former empire. However, national minorities ‘the inner Russia’, having obtained ethnic self-government, supported the Bolsheviks, a factor contributing to their victory in the Civil War.
and fiction books in local languages. In the 1920s, the Bolsheviks continued in the same direction, implementing the Korenizatsia policy (from Russian koren' – root, literally 'rooting', meaning 'nativisation' or 'indigenisation'), a Soviet nationalities policy designed to support and develop the cultures and languages of non-titular (i.e. non-Russian) nationalities and minorities. The purpose was the introduction of local languages into all spheres of public life and the usage of local languages to the greatest possible extent, particularly in education, publishing, culture and government (Shalygin 2010). Within the context of this ethnic policy, there was increasing interest in the ethnic minorities of multinational Crimea, including the Karaites, during the first years of the Soviet regime (Polkanov 1995: 3). Karaite culture was studied within the framework of numerous ethnographic expeditions, launched by The Commission for the Study of the Tribal Composition of the Population of the Borderlands of Russia (Komissiya po izucheniyu plemennogo sostava naseleniya SSSR) (established as a part of the Russian Academy of Science in 1917). The results were published by the Commission in its proceedings (1917–1930) (Trudy komissii 1917–1930). In this publication, the Karaites were placed in the section on ‘Turks’ (Турки) (Spisok narodnostey 1927: 21, 27), whereas the Krymchaks were placed in the section on ‘Semites.
In the 1930s, national politics in the USSR took a turn for the worse. Already in 1930, Stalin had proclaimed that the ultimate goal would be to create an international workers’ culture with a common language (Sixteenth Party Congress 1931). So, at the beginning of the 1930s, the Korenizatsia campaign was largely abandoned and the ‘struggle against bourgeois nationalism’
began, with purges launched against the leaderships of the national republics.136 At the end of the 1930s, a policy of Russification and attempts to assimilate the various minorities began. Ethnic social organisations were eliminated, and it was difficult to openly study different cultures.
Moreover, the number of officially recognised nationalities was greatly reduced in the 1939 census compared with the 1926 census. The Karaites disappeared from the list of ethnicities.137 (However, in the next All-Union censuses of 1959, 1970, 1979 and 1989 they appeared once again.) Nevertheless, preparation for the publication of academic entries with the summarising of previously accumulated materials continued. Thus, an article on the Karaites was published in Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopedia). Unfortunately, the Great Patriotic
136 The charge against non-Russians was that they had instigated national strife and oppressed the Russians or other minorities in the republics. Although the purges had started earlier, in 1937 it was proclaimed that local elites had become hired agents and their goal had become the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism. From 1930s onwards, the central press started to praise the Russian language and Russian culture. Mass campaigns were organised to denounce the ‘enemies of the people’. ‘Bourgeois nationalists’ were new enemies of the Russian people, who had helped suppress the Russian language. The policy of indigenisation was abandoned. In the following years, the Russian language became a compulsory subject in all Soviet schools.
‘The pre-revolution era Russian nationalism was also rehabilitated. Many of the heroes of Russian history were glorified. The Russian people became the “elder brother” of the “Socialist family of nations”’
(Vihavainen 2000: 84).
137 RGA (byv. TSANKh SSSR), fond 1562, opis' 336, ed.khr. 966–1001 (Razrabotochnaya tablitsa f. 15A.
War interrupted the work in 1941, and no other summary publication on the Crimean Karaites appeared during that time.138
During World War II, the Karaites were more fortunate than the Jews because the Nazis did not target them for extermination. Already before the war, on 5 January 1939, the Department of Genealogical Studies (Die Reichsstelle für Sippenforschung (RFS)) concluded on the basis of a petition by the heads of Paris and Berlin communities (as well as the publications by Szapszał, Firkovich, Mardkovich and other Polish-Lithuanian Karaites) that the Karaites were not Jews.
However, they did so after much hesitation and, hence, the Nazis have never agreed on the question completely and continued to study it until the end of the war (Kizilov 2011: 305).
In Nazi-occupied Simferopol, the Russian scholar A.I Polkanov139 wrote the first Russian language review of the Karaites. This significantly influenced the content of the work (Polkanov 1995). This publication deserves special attention because many modern Crimean Karaite writers continue to reference the work. I am going to look briefly at the prehistory of the work’s composition (which was presented in the introduction to the work by Yu.A Polkanov, A.I.
Polkanov's son) due to its great impact on the character of the publication. A.I. Polkanov worked in the regional museum in Crimea when the war started. According to the introduction by Yu.A.
Polkanov, written in January of 1942, the German officer, Fürer Karasek, a professor at the University of Vienna (?!) (as he said), had requested information about the Crimean Karaites. He stated that he had received a report from the head of the Labour Registry Office (for the deportation of the labour force to Germany) that the Karaites were ethnically Jews. The officer demanded relevant literature on the subject and wanted to know the opinion of the Russian scholar Polkanov, who was an expert on the history, culture and religion of the ethnic minorities of Crimea, including the Karaites. He asked Polkanov to write an article about the Crimean Karaites, which was to be completed by 17 March 1942 and would be sent to Berlin. He warned that if the article did not meet the deadline, the Karaites would be exterminated (Polkanov 1995: 4). Although Polkanov had previously simulated hand pain in order not to collaborate with the occupational newspaper (he had asked a Karaite doctor named V.O. Sinani to write him a certificate documenting his injury), he now agreed to write the review (Polkanov 1995: 4).
Shortly before the war, the Academy of Science ordered Polkanov to write an article about the Crimean Karaites for the compendium ‘Peoples of the World’. He was able to further use the material he had previously collected. Additionally, he consulted with ‘patriarchs’ of the Karaite community: Sinani, Szapszał and E.I. Kalfa. They helped him expand on the material. Thus, Polkanov managed to complete a typescript (about 1 000 pages) before the deadline. The conclusions of the article apparently coincided with the information already possessed by German
138 Ibid.
139 Aleksandr Ivanovich Polkanov (1884–1971) (a non-Karaite himself, but his wife was a Karaite) was a Crimean regional specialist, historian and ethnographer. Yu.A. Polkanov, a Karaite activist and writer, was A. Polkanov’s son (see Chapter 4). See more in the appendix ‘Biographies’.
scholars and satisfied the heads in Berlin. Several months later, articles about the Karaites by German authors appeared in a local newspaper. Later it became known that a special German anthropometric expedition had studied the Karaites and Tatars in Lithuania during the war, and the preliminary results were published in a scientific journal (?) in Germany in 1944 (Polkanov 1995:
5).
In his work Krymskie karaimy [The Crimean Karaites], Polkanov asserted that the Crimean and Polish-Lithuanian Karaites formed a common ethnic group. On the other hand, the Karaites of Egypt, Abyssinia, the Caucasus, Asia and other various places had nothing in common with them.
The commonalities ended with the shared name. Modern Karaite authors writing at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century often refer to this thesis. In Polkanov’s book, the Crimean Karaites are of Turkic origin. He referred to the anthropological research of the official statistical publications and to linguistic research. These recognised the Karaite language as very close, although not identical, to the language of the Codex Cumanicus. The author tasked themselves with supporting the conclusions of anthropologists and linguists on the Turkic origin of the Karaites by making reference to ethnology materials. Polkanov maintained that the Khazars, who confessed Judaism, had partly mixed with the Crimean Kipchaks and become the ancestors of the modern Karaites. Thus, the author excluded Semitic ancestors for the Karaites. He supported his conclusions on the Crimean Karaites being descendants of the Khazars by making reference to the statements by such well-known scholars as Grigoriev, Smirnov and Samoylovich (Polkanov 1995:
7–18, 70–75). Owing to the above-mentioned circumstances of the Holocaust, the imminent Polkanov advocated in his work the idea of continuous friendly contacts between the Karaites and the Crimean Tatars and other Turkic peoples, emphasising their close relationship. On the other hand, his occasional comparisons with Jews only emphasised the differences between the two peoples (see review of the book A.I. Polkanov Krymskie).
Polkanov was not the first, even among Karaite authors, (see, e.g. Szapszał in Chapter 4 of this study), to separate Eastern European and other Karaites from the Semitic ancestors of other Karaite groups, linking them instead to the Khazars and Kipchaks, but what he did do was make it into an official statement when writing to the German leaders. It would not have been wise for Polkanov to mention the Semitic background of the Karaites. However, current Crimean Karaite authors do not take this into account and reference Polkanov’s statements quite often for proof of the Turkic background of the Karaites. They do not take into account (or they do not want to) the purpose of Polkanov’s publication, which was to rescue the Karaites from the fate of the Jews during the Holocaust.
The article cost Polkanov his reputation: later he was accused by the KGB of ‘collaborating with the occupiers’. He was accused of parricide and was sentenced to prison, but fortunately he was rehabilitated in 1956 (Bibikov 1981: 125–126).
Despite being saved from the Holocaust, the Karaites still experienced other bad luck. The deportation of the Crimean Tatars and of other peoples at the end of the War (in May of 1944) for alleged collaboration with the Nazi occupational regime interrupted further ethnological research in Crimea for a significant period of time. The Karaites were fortunate compared to others and mostly left alone. However, some families were wrongly deported along with the Crimean Tatars, Armenians, Bulgars and Greeks. About 150 Karaite persons were exiled from Crimea. This number, of course, is not large in absolute terms, but it was quite noticeable given the small number of Karaites (V odnochas’e 19 June 2009).
Another misfortune occurred after the liberation of the peninsula from the fascist occupants.
This was when ethnographic material, which had been preserved during the difficult years of the war, was destroyed (V odnochas’e 19 June 2009). This included the entire department of the Simferopol Museum.
After the Second World War, short articles on the Karaites were published only in guidebooks and encyclopaedias, with much of the information based on the pre-war materials of the above-mentioned results by the Commission.
Such summary articles included entries in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
The first entry on the Karaites was published in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopedia – or BSE) before the war, in 1937 (Karaimy 1937: 435–437). The Karaimy (otherwise karaity or karii [the origin of the last name is not clear – D.M.]) were defined there as a Jewish sect, descendants of Anan from 8th-century Iraq. The historical origin of the Jewish sect was described at that time within the ideological context of class struggle. The anonymous author of the article argued that it was impossible to define precisely the time of the settlement of the Karaites in the Crimean Peninsula. However, he noted that a number of archaeological materials established that the Karaites had lived in Crimea since the 9th century, when the peninsula was under the control of the Khazars. The author mentioned the role of the Khazars in the Karaite ethnogenesis. He borrowed from the pre-revolutionary material of the above-mentioned Russian scholars: ‘The Karaites and Khazars intermarried and became mixed. After the Tatars occupied the Crimean Peninsula, the Karaites were influenced by the Tatars’. The author also mentioned that after the annexation of Crimea by tsarist Russia, the Karaites started to separate themselves from the Jews in order to avoid being persecuted at the hands of the tsars. The author concluded that thus a fabulous doctrine had been created to argue that the Karaites were the ancient population of the peninsula, who had settled there in the 6th century B.C., and therefore they did not participate in Christ’s crucifixion. Thus, the author supported and strengthened a pre-revolutionary statement that the Karaites, who were a Jewish sect (important!), had then mixed with the Khazars (not a Khazar/Turkic people with no Jewish background). In other words, he argued for the mixed
Jewish-Turkic ethnic background of the Karaites. However, he remained sceptical of their ancient settlement in Crimea before the 9th century.
I agree with Roman Freund who wrote that the encyclopaedia of 1937 presented a picture of the Karaites according to the established political line. It aimed at ‘dissociating the Karaites from the Jews, and the outspoken anti-Zionist approach dominating Marxist ideology – an impact of hypo-tactic political and ideological considerations’ (Freund 1991: 23). However, Freund also emphasised that the interwar Great Soviet Encyclopedia edition of 1937 also acknowledged that the Karaites were, in fact, a Jewish sect, one which had not participated in the deicide (‘A fantasy that the Karaite bourgeoisie exploited’ (Freund 1991: 23) to gain certain privileges from the tsar, such as equating themselves with the Russians (Freund 1991: 23).
The anti-cosmopolitan campaign (1945–1953)140 that dominated Russia in the post-war period, together with the anti-Semitic (end of the 1940s–1953) campaigns, could not help but influence the public representations of identity by the Karaites. The anti-cosmopolitan campaign was directed at the Soviet intelligentsia, who were accused of expressing pro-Western feelings and, allegedly, of a lack of patriotism. The source of the campaign arose from the propaganda surrounding Russian patriotism, which had started during the war in 1943. In this way, by the end of the war Soviet society was divided into patriots and cosmopolitans. Jews probably suffered the most from the anti-cosmopolitan campaign. The reason had to do with the establishment of the state of Israel and the failure to make it a Soviet satellite in the Middle East. Soviet Jews, and especially the Jewish intelligentsia, aroused suspicions among the Soviet administration by their enthusiasm for its establishment and by their supposedly pro-Western feelings in general, which were perceived as disloyalty towards the ‘Soviet Motherland’. In the period of 1948–1953, a few thousand Jews were arrested on the charge of Zionist activity (or of ‘Jewish bourgeois nationalism’) (Sovetskiy Soyuz 1996: 236–256).
On the grounds of this political campaign, it is not surprising that the Karaites wanted to hide their cultural-religious Jewish background. In connection with this, the article about the Karaites in the second post-war edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1953 (Bolshaya Sovetskaya Encyclopedia 1953: 110) represents a crucial turning point in the representation of Karaites. The article was shorter than the previous one and more important in that the Jewish background of Karaite history was omitted.
The article made the following statement:
The Karaites are descendants of the ancient Turkic tribes, which were a part of the Khazar Kaganate in the 8th–10th century. (Bolshaya Sovetskaya Encyclopedia 1953: 110) (my translation)
140 The chronology of the anti-cosmopolitan campaign is disputable; however, many accept that it began with Stalin's toast to the health of the Russian people, who ‘are the leading force of the Soviet Union’, at a festive banquet on the
Then, it provided brief and ideologically safe information on their way of life and material culture in Crimea and Lithuania (since the 14th century). It concluded by noting that the ‘abundant folklore of the Karaites reflects their connections with the Khazars’ (Bolshaya Sovetskaya Encyclopedia 1953: 110).
The article was anonymous, as were other entries in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia;
however, now we know (according to an article titled ‘Karaimskie obshchiny. Karaimy Moskvy’) that A.I Fuki, a Karaite, wrote the article. Two other articles in the 1953 edition of the BSE were also written by Karaites: ‘Karaite language’ by O.Ya. Prik and ‘Chufut-Kale’ by Szapszal.141 A Russian Soviet scholar named Nikolay Baskakov also made a significant contribution to the articles.142
As Freund noted, in contrast to the interwar editions of the BSE, the post-WWII edition stated briefly that the Karaites constitute ‘a particular numerically insignificant ethnicity’ and thus avoids drawing any links with the Jews and Judaism. He noted that this statement was ‘the official standpoint imposed for decades on Soviet historiography’ (Freund 1991: 23).
The article in the 3rd edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia of 1973 (Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya 1973: 379) assigned no value to the study and repeated instead information from the previous 1953 edition, but in a more condensed form.
Thus, the article in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1953 officially validated the Turkic origin of the Karaites. When thinking about the reasons that the Karaites tried to avoid any links with Jews, we should remember that the article was written by a Karaite in the period of the Soviet
Thus, the article in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1953 officially validated the Turkic origin of the Karaites. When thinking about the reasons that the Karaites tried to avoid any links with Jews, we should remember that the article was written by a Karaite in the period of the Soviet