Tarptautiniai Lietuvos karaimų ryšiai

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Lietuvos karaimai; Kultūros paveldas; Karaims in Lithuania; Cultural heritage.

ENIn the long run, there were many investigations on the Karaim language as well as on the ethnology, culture and history done by foreign and Karaim scientists. But even in these cases Karaim scientists did not represent the Karaim community as such. During the Soviet period, to speak about the culture of ethnic minorities openly and widely was not allowed. The situation in Lithuania has changed during the movement of Sąjūdis and especially after 1990 when Lithuania gained its Independence. Then the possibility opened for Lithuanian Karaims not only to have contacts with other Karaim communities in the Crimea, Poland or in France, but also to be in touch with the wider Turkic world, with other Turkic nations. Representatives of the Lithuanian Karaim community started to participate in different events in other countries, representing there themselves, presenting their own history, investigations on different topics. They found themselves in the space of the Turkic world and culture, they noticed attention from the authorities and scholars of Turkey and other countries. I have described this situation very clearly in the World Turkic forum in Istanbul in 2010: “It is a great honour for me to be here today with you as a representative of Karay (Karaylar) – the smallest Turkic nation in the world. Since the ancient times we belong to the Turkic world as descendants of Kipchaks.When in 1997 the Director of the Turk Dil Kurumu listened for the first time to our mother tongue, he expressed his surprise by saying: “You are speaking as Turks in the 11th century”. The same thing was said in 1929 by the well-known Turkologist from Poland Professor Tadeusz Kowalski: “The Karay language is saved through the ages as a small insect in a piece of amber”. Although this comparison is very nice, it is important to underline that we are not lifeless insects. In reality, we are still alive, and we are proud to say that during the long ages, being a very small nation and living always among people of different and not Turkic nationalities, we managed to preserve our language which belongs to the Turkic family, we preserved our national identity, our traditions and habits, our objective to be together, closer to each other, to all Turkic world as well”. So we hope that lessons of the Karaim language recently started to be organized in the summer schools, in the academic programs of different universities and in the virtual space will be very fruitful for everybody who wants to learn the language or to use this knowledge in their investigations and will keep us undoubtedly in the space of the Turkic culture. [From the publication]