The article analyses the dialogue of Lithuania’s Karaim community in the first half of the 19th century with the Vilnius governor administration and the supreme authorities of the Russian Empire. Through this dialogue, the small Trakai community, which acted in their own name and that of the Naujamiestis [New Town] community, sought to recover their former legal and social status which had formed in the 14th–18th centuries in the period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
In the first half of the 19th century Russian imperial social policy sought to unify the social groups of the annexed lands; therefore it paid little consideration to their diversity and different statuses. A specific feature of imperial social life was that the state promoted the division of society into big strata, which defined rights and duties to the state. It supported the concentration of the strata into communities and corporations with self-rule functions and collective responsibility, which were more or less expressed. This allowed it to more effectively control society, ensure tax revenues into the state treasury, shape the army, maintain village and city infrastructures, demand laws be obeyed, etc. The state regulated society’s vertical social mobility by defining the conditions which would allow people to improve their social status. In this, they applied different norms to Christians and non-Christians.
Lithuania’s Karaim community was assigned to the stratum of non-Christian city residents. In consideration of their origin and professed faith, the laws intended for the Jewish community were applied to the Karaims in public discourse. But the governance of both communities differed in respect to morals and morality (this leitmotiv constantly accompanied the relations between the state and the Karaim community), therefore some social and economic privileges were additionally granted to the Karaims. In turn, the Karaim community whose consciousness included a tradition of being special, a tradition which had formed in GDL times, aspired to conform to the norms which would allow to recover its former status and maintain its ethnic identity. It started a dialogue with
the authorities, which lasted for over a half a century, requesting and sometimes even demanding that favourable conditions be created for the community’s existence and that its separateness and right to survive without losing its collective identity be recognized. In respect to minorities, the traditions of the former GDL rulers and Russian imperial monarchs clashed in resolving the conflict between definition and identity. The Karaims contrasted the imperial laws with somewhat more favourable royal privileges and were able to convince the authorities that they were justifiably demanding close attention. The result of the dialogue was a certain compromise: there was no recognition for Karaims of a specific status bringing them closer to the privileged strata of society, a status which they hoped to win for themselves, but they were separated by law from the Jews and acquired the rights of a community of Christian city residents while their clergymen acquired those of the clerical stratum. Conditions were created for Lithuania’s Karaim community to have a separate spiritual authority and to enlighten and educate their youth.

Numeriai:

2011 - T.57
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2010 - T.56
Nr.1-4

2009 - T.55
Nr.1-2, Nr.3-4

2008 - T.54
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2007 - T.53
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2006
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2005
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2004
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2003
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2002
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2001
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