Listy do Łucka

One of the addressees of the letters of Prof. Ananiasz Zajączkowski was Aleksander Mardkowicz (1875–1944), a notary from Lutsk, who was one of the most affluent Karaim activists of the inter-war period. As a young man he moved to Yekaterinoslav, where he worked in a notary’s practice. There he made his debut publishing a few poems in Russian in some literary magazines. After Poland gained its independence, in 1921 Mardkowicz returned to Lutsk, where he started to play an important role in the life of the local Karaim community as a member and, for a time, a president of the Board of the community. But the major focus of his work were literary and editorial activities. As there was a need for literature which would encourage Karaim readers to develop an interest in their own language, tradition and past, towards the end of the 1920s Mardkowicz struck upon the idea of creating a Karaim publishing house. In ten years between 1930 and 1939 he published 15 brochures (most of them written by himself): four short stories, four poems, a collection of religious songs, a calendar, a Karaim-Polish-German dictionary, a grammar of the south-western dialect (written by A. Zajączkowski) and three brochures in Polish on the history and traditions of the Karaims. “Karaj Awazy”, a magazine entirely in Karaim, whose twelve issues appeared between 1931 and 1939, can be regarded as his major work. It had an enormous impact on the cultural life of Karaim communities not only in Lutsk, but in Halicz and in Lithuania as well. The letters written by Zajączkowski to Mardkowicz between the summer of 1933 and the spring of 1939 show us some unknown aspects of the relations between the editors of two Karaim magazines appearing in the same time: “Myśl Karaimska” in Vilnius and “Karaj Awazy” in Luck.