THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE KARAITES IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE AND THE CREATION OF KARAITE SELF-GOVERNMENT BODIES (END OF THE 18TH – FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY)

The article analyzes the complex of legal and regulatory documentation developed by the Russian government in the course of measures to change the legal status of the Karaite population in Russia. The beginning of the first stage of transformation of the legal status of the Karaites dated back to 1795, when Catherine II signed the law “On the exemption of Taurida Jews, called Karaites, from taxes imposed on all Jews in general”. In accordance with this document, Karaites were exempt from paying the double trade tax, which became mandatory for Rabanite Jews. Subsequently, secular and spiritual leaders of the Karaite communities of Crimea and the provinces of the North-Western Territory of the Russian Empire repeatedly sent various petitions to higher authorities in order to provide the Karaites with economic and other benefits. In these petitions, their authors pointed out the differences between Karaites and Rabanite Jews in the ethnic and religious context. Decrees of the Senate, resolutions, definitions and orders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, circulars of the Department of Religious Affairs of Foreign Denominations and other documentation reflect the history of the first stage of the Karaites’ struggle for their civil rights. In 1837, a project for the creation of the Spiritual Board of the Karaites in Eupatoria, which became the first official institution of confessional self-government of the Karaites of the Russian Empire, was approved. The second stage of documenting the civil status of the Karaites dates back to the 1840s–1860s and it is characterized by further measures for legislative regulation of various aspects of the socio-economic life of the Karaites.