The Lutsk Karaites and the Cultural and Educational Activities of the Karaite Minority in Poland in the Interwar Period

Abstract

Of the four Karaite communities lying within the borders of newly independent Poland the Lutsk community was the smallest. However, it was here that efforts to preserve the Karaim language and identity were most intense, as a consequence of which Lutsk became in the 1930s a major centre of Karaite intellectual and cultural life. Lutsk activists, such as the writer and editor Aleksander Mardkowicz and the poet Sergiusz Rudkowski, strove to preserve the Karaim language and strengthen ethnic self-identity. Their efforts served as inspiration for similar endeavours in other Karaite communities. The present paper endeavours to shed light on the circumstances that led to this cultural eudaimonia in Lutsk.