A record of the living Karaim folklore of Crimea. The copybooks of Yosif Kefeli
Journal: Almanach Karaimski
Year: 2016

Following the annexation of the Crimea by the Bolsheviks, traditional Karaim folklore found itself endangered by the ongoing process of Sovietisation which intensified after WWII and the deportations of the Crimean Tatars. Following a request from Józef Sulimowicz, a Polish collector of Caraimica, in the early 1960s, Yosif Kefeli (1900–1976), a Karaim from Simferopol, started to write down or copy various works of Crimean Karaim popular literature. He filled a few copybooks with popular songs, p