5


Ways of Looking at Roma[1] : The Case of Czechoslovakia (1975)

Will Guy


THE IMPORTANCE OF A HISTORICAL APPROACH


The Relevance of Historical Experience


Class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and
articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose
interests are different from and usually opposed to theirs.... Class-consciousness is the way in
which these experiences are handled in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value-systems,
ideas, and institutional forms.[2]^

^

What Thompson writes about class is equally relevant to minority communities if the positions of
being a minority and also a dominated stratum or class coincide, as they so often do. If anything,
historical experience can often play an even more crucial role for such minorities in helping them
understand their present situation.

The situation of Roma in what is now Czechoslovakia has long been that of a dominated minority.
Being a Rom meant for many centuries seeing the world as hostile; as a place where gaining a
livelihood was a precarious business, where you were always liable to be beaten up and driven away,
where perhaps you and your family might even be drowned, hanged at the crossroads, or burned alive
in your hut. It didn’t happen all the time, of course, but it had happened in the not too distant
past and might happen again perhaps quite soon – who could know?

Even in “good times,” being a Rom meant seeing perhaps half of your children die young, of hunger
and disease. To spare a weak child the prolonged agony of an inevitable death, nomadic Roma in
Czechoslovakia used to plunge their newborn babies into icy water. If they could survive that, they
had a chance on the road.

All this must have been given these people a rather special way of looking at the world.



Nomadism and Persecution

When writing about Roma in general; two central problems always arise and are, of course, linked –
nomadism and persecution.

Despite presenting a wealth of comparative historical data, Jean-Paul Clébert is still able to
write that “the Gypsy is primarily and above all else a nomad. His dispersion throughout the world
is due less to historical or political necessities than to his own nature.”[3]^

Where settling has occurred, it is explained as being due to degeneration.


The sedentary Gypsies are generally “excluded” people, groups or families or couples who have
founded a family and who have been banned from the clans or made “marimé,” that is, “unclean,”
because of serious violations of the Tradition.[4]^

^

When you realize that the countries with the largest numbers of Roma are in Eastern Europe and that
the majority there are “sedentary” and therefore that Clébert’s “groups or families or couples” in
fact number hundreds of thousands of people, you begin to feel a little uneasy with this
explanation. Was it really like that? Who is excluding who? Perhaps Clébert is more a self
appointed custodian of the “authentic Gypsy culture” as he conceives of it rather than a chronicler
of choices actually made by Roma in concrete historical situations?

In his careful assessment of the problems facing Europe’s Roma today, Grattan Puxon writes of
anti-Romani prejudice as “a Europe-wide phenomenon which permeats all strata of society, regardless
of political, ethical or religious systems.”[5]^ As a way of stressing the extent and continuity of
anti-Roman hostility this is excellent, but it also carries the suggestion that persecution of Roma
is somehow undifferentiated and consequently inexplicable in historical terms. If no matter what
the conditions, the situation, it was always there, how can you start trying to understand it? And
what would be the point anyway, for perhaps it will always be there?

A more fruitful approach to both these problems would seem to be to probe rather the variety of
Romani experience in specific historical situations rather than stressing its universal nature. For
example: Under what conditions did Roma settle? In what circumstances were Roma persecuted in
certain ways?

General answers are difficult to provide but even particular answers are not easy to give, largely
because of the way in which much previous data have been presented. Writers on history almost
invariably, and understandably, ignore Roma. Writers on Roma frequently, and unforgivably, ignored
history. They wrote myopically about these people almost as if the Roma were the sole arbiters of
their fate whereas, as a small and vulnerable minority, it was far more likely that their history
would be more a tale of what was done to them than of what they themselves had done. Even the tale
of what was done to them must be seen in a broad context, for most authorities had far more
pressing problems to deal with than complaints against a few Roma, so when they did act against the
Roma perhaps they were playing a deeper game. The possibility is worth bearing in mind.

In an important sense the study of Roma is worthwhile not so much, for its own sake but for what it
reveals about the nature of the societies in which they lived and still live.

To take just one example, the romantic stereotype of the Gypsy, as an exotic and noble primitive,
wandering unconstrained as the mood takes her or him, tells us very little about the ways Roma
managed to exist in England during the nineteenth century. Yet it comes as a shock to realize that
this stereotype was cherished by members of a class which collectively owed its comfortable
existence (including the leisure to fantasize about “Gypsy freedom”) to the systematic imposition
of long hours of daily, repetitive, soul-destroying factory labor on other human beings. This was
not perceived as a contradiction.

Fanon (a Black) commented aptly on a comparable romanticizing of Blacks:


To us, the man who adores the Negro is as “sick” as the man who abominates him. ... In the
absolute, the black is no more to be loved than the Czech, and truly what is to be done is to set
man free.[6]^

^

The Important Case of Czechoslovakia

The territory now known as Czechoslovakia should be significant for those interested in Romani
history for at least four main reasons. First, it straddles the frontiers of what might be termed
the “Western” and “Eastern” areas of Romani development in Europe.

In the Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia, the development pattern is similar to those of Germany,
France, and England, where Roma were more usually seen as useless pests by the authorities, who
ignored them or legislated savagely to expel them and deter new immigration. In these areas the
Roma remained largely nomadic.

In Slovakia, however, which until 1918 was part of the Hungarian lands, the pattern resembles those
of the Danube lands and the Balkans, where Roma were often seen as useful and from their first
appearance were permitted, encouraged, and even forced to settle. They were also taxed by local
authorities or the state. It is these countries that have the larger Romani populations.

It is not suggested of course that all Roma or all authorities always conformed to these patterns,
but that as a model these rough generalizations prove helpful in understanding the varied trends of
Romani history in Europe, including developments in particular countries since the Second World
War. For this reason a fairly detailed account is given of Romani history in Czech lands and
especially Slovakia, the homeland of virtually all of contemporary Czechoslovakia’s adult Roma.

Probably the general differences between “Western” and “Eastern” development are related to more
fundamental modes of economic development (capitalist industrialization feudal ruralism) and
related methods of state formation (nation-states/multinational states), but this would need
careful demonstration.

Second, on this territory were made probably two of the most widespread and systematic attempts to
assimilate Roma – by the Hapsburg monarchs Maria Theresa and Joseph II in the second half of the
eighteenth century, and by the government of socialist Czechoslovakia from 1958 onward.

Third, we are fortunate in having fairly full documentation of both these attempts as well as
having a number of general studies of Romani history in Czechoslovakia. At present the most
outstanding work is Emília Horváthová’s excellent and painstaking Cigáni na Slovensku,[7] which the
following section is greatly indebted.

Finally, Roma are relatively well integrated into Czechoslovak society, especially in comparison
with the capitalist countries of Western Europe. For those interested in speculating on possible
future developments of Romani communities, die situation in Czechoslovakia, where the majority of
Roma participate in the labor market and where there is a small but growing Romani intelligentsia
who still see themselves as Roma, should prove stimulating.


THE HISTORY OF ROMA ON CZECHOSLOVAK TERRITORY UNTIL 1945


Roma in the Czech Lands before 1918

 Shortly after the first undisputed reference to Roma in the Czech lands (1399), a large group
arrived from the east in 1417 who were later to arouse the attention of Western Europe partly
because of their numbers, novelty, and apparent nobility of their leaders but also since they had
been granted impressive letters of safe-conduct. After passing through Bohemia[8] they divided and
various subgroups traveled to north Germany, Bavaria, Rome, Paris, and Barcelona. They were
magicians, fortune-tellers, horse dealers, and apparently petty thieves – occupations compatible
with, or even requiring, nomadism.

Their obvious difference from Roma previously settled in Eastern Europe has usually prompted the
explanation that they were simply a different tribe of Roma. Štampach, a noted Czech Gypsiologist,
believed that they had not come from the Balkans but directly from Asia Minor with the Turks.
However, a straightforward account of their appearance as the unplanned intrusion of a primitive
nomadic tribe practising their traditional occupations is inadequate, as Horváthová has
convincingly argued, because the newcomers seem more, rather than less, sophisticated than most
Roma in the Balkans at that time.

It almost appears as if they made a careful market survey before their arrival, for they knew
Western European languages and soon possessed accurate maps and almanacs indicating fairs[9] and
they included craftsmen who could make seals and write official letters. Even more remarkable was
their initial success in obtaining powerful letters from such rulers as the Holy Roman Emperor
Sigismund[10] and Pope Martin V by means of an explanation of their origin and nomadism which was
not only plausible but even meritorious in terms of current European values: they claimed to be
religious penitents.

Poissonier[11] even suggested that the apparent great difference in wealth between Romani leaders
and followers was not so much a reflection of internal social divisions but a collective tactic to
give these groups a better negotiating position. Although highly speculative, this view is
partially supported by the fact that in France at least Roma imitated aspects of the beggars’
guilds, which were, in turn, a parody of feudal society, having their own courts, kings, social
divisions, and systems of justice.

Whatever the origin of these Roma, it is important to recognize that in any case contemporary
conditions in Western Europe probably would not have permitted them to follow the pattern of Roma
in Eastern Europe. In particular the more developed craft industries were better organized to
resist penetration by intruders. Likewise, prospects for settling would have been bleak during a
period when hordes of beggars, discharged soldiers, and peddlers often wandered the roads.[12]^

Although legislation expelling Roma as alleged Turkish spies had been enacted at the end of the
fifteenth century in neighboring German lands, it was not until the mid-sixteenth century that
similar measures were taken in the Czech lands, when Roma were accused of aiding the Turks by
starting the fires which broke out in Prague in 1541. Official lethargy in implementing such laws
is evident from their frequent renewal and despite a not unrealistic fear of hired incendiaries, it
is probable that the legislation was intended largely as a sop to public fears, a convenient way of
demonstrating that the authorities were taking some positive action against the growing Turkish
threat. At times popular feeling must have been extreme, for in 1556 it was necessary to forbid the
drowning of Romani women and children, yet during the same period there are records of alms and
letters of commendation granted to Roma by town councils. Although some Roma were killed or driven
out, others continued to travel the Czech lands supplying their usual services of horse trading,
fortune-telling, and the like.

The late seventeenth and early eighteenth century is known as the “Age of Darkness” to the Czechs,
for the devastation of the Thirty Years War had left the country depopulated, plague-ridden,
starving, and continually troubled by serf uprisings and robber bands recruited from discharged
soldiers. Meanwhile the Turks (and French) mounted new and more menacing attacks. It was a terrible
period for Roma.

Once more the activities of foreign-paid incendiaries, including Roma, in Prague led to the
expulsion of Roma, but this time they were accompanied by mass killings. Whole groups were hanged,
shot, or drowned and to discourage further immigration scores of Romani bodies hung from trees
along frontier roads. Later, signs were erected depicting gallows and bearing the inscription:
“This is the penalty for Gypsies entering Bohemia.”[13] Youths and girls under eighteen were
mutilated; in Bohemia the right ear was cut off, in Moravia and Silesia, the left.

This period of savage persecution came to an end some time after the accession of Maria Theresa to
the Hapsburg throne. Starting in 1761 she and her successor, Joseph II, made a systematic attempt
to assimilate all Roma by settling them throughout the Hapsburg lands and making serfs of them by
prohibiting them from nomadism, horse dealing, having their own leaders, and even from speaking
their own language, Probably the most drastic measure was the forcible removal of children from
their parents, fostering them with non-Roma to ensure a Christian upbringing.

Compared with what had gone before, these measures were enlightened, being based on the principle
that integration would succeed only by settling, employing, and educating the Roma, or, as they
were officially renamed, Neubauern (new farmers) or Ujmagyar (new Hungarians). In the Czech lands
several colonies were founded to provide adequate accommodation, with apparently little enduring
effect, although one colony in South Moravia remained until the 1930s. But in any case the total
number of Roma involved was relatively small; in Slovakia, however, the situation was quite
different.

The nineteenth century, like the fifteenth, is remarkable for its lack of reports of Roma. Attempts
to assimilate them lapsed with Joseph II’s death in 1790, and they were left to wander around the
rapidly industrializing Czech lands, apparently causing little more than occasional local
aggravation.

Gypsies often visited the villages, the men selling chains, axes and gimlets, the women telling the
fortunes of senseless women from cards or palms and casting spells.[14]^

In 1887, however, a “modern” policy of official registration and harassment was introduced. Similar
measures were adopted by other Western European countries (for example, Bavaria and France).


Roma in Slovakia before 1918

Many early Romani immigrants to the Balkans (for example, Serbia) managed to integrate themselves
into the wider society, often forming their own quarters in towns and specializing in a limited
number of occupations like other ethnic minorities. The commonest early settlement pattern in
fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Slovakia, however, was around feudal castles. There are frequent
references to Roma as castle musicians and metalworkers, but an even more common occupation was
that of soldier, and Hungarian kings commented favorably on Romani troops in 1476, 1487, 1492, and
1496.

Not all Roma settled, for fifteenth-century sources refer to nomadic bands who lived by
fortune-telling, magical healing, and theft. Social differentiation was therefore extreme among
Roma from their first appearance in Slovakia, for while some lived the precarious life of robbers
in the woods, others sought service and protection with the ruling nobility and were fortunate that
conditions permitted their skills to be utilized. However, the isolation of each newly settled
group of Roma from the Slovak and Hungarian peasantry made them vulnerable to manipulation by their
protectors, a situation which feudal lords were not slow to exploit.

In 1514 a major Hungarian peasant uprising was crushed by the Palatine Ján Zápolský. The peasant
leader was gruesomely executed by being seated on a heated iron throne and having a red-hot iron
crown placed on his head. These torture implements were forged by a group of Romani smiths.

Zápolský was later (1526) an unsuccessful contender for the throne of Hungary and to revenge
himself on the Slovak towns which had supported his opponent, he used Roma to set fire (in 1534) to
four important East Slovak towns. Some of the Romani incendiaries were caught and confessed that
they had orders to burn a further nine Slovak towns.

Such manipulations of Roma in class struggles must have worsened relations with peasants and
burghers, but evidently not to the extent of preventing further settlement during the sixteenth
century. Roma were generally granted permission to settle beyond the outskirts of towns and
villages, where they often made simple implements for local farmers, weapons for night watchmen,
and so forth. Larger-scale and more profitable metalworking was monopolized by non-Romani
craftsmen.

As in the Czech lands conditions rapidly deteriorated during the seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries as a consequence of the Thirty Years War. There was an influx of vagrants and nomadic
Roma fleeing the savage measures of the Czech lands, which in turn provoked retaliatory legislation
in Slovakia. Regional authorities passed numerous measures which although referring formally to all
Roma, were usually only enforced against “foreign” nomadic groups. The difference between the Czech
lands and Slovakia is well illustrated by the signs erected on the borders depicting the execution
of Roma. In the Czech lands this fate awaited any Rom who entered the country, while in Slovakia
the threat was to “all nomadic Gypsies who did not settle within three weeks.”[15]^

This differential treatment of Roma cannot be explained by greater devastation in the Czech lands,
for Slovakia too was a battleground in the strange triangular struggle between Turks, Hungarians,
and Hapsburgs, further complicated by peasant uprisings. However, an economic explanation is
strongly supported by contemporary documents showing the extensive taxation of Roma in Slovakia
would have meant a loss of revenue; this deterrent did not apply in the Czech lands.

The accession of Maria Theresa did not lead to any dramatic change in policy toward Roma in the
Hungarian lands but rather to an intensification of efforts to assimilate them by settling and
employing them under an altered administrative structure. In 1758 the Imperial Council made local
Diets of gentry responsible for Roma in their area, reserving a coordinating function for itself.

In spite of a wealth of statistics, it is difficult to assess the success of the policy for, as J.
H. Schwicker demonstrated, Diets deliberately falsified their progress reports in the safe
knowledge that the Imperial Council had no way of independently evaluating their work.[16]^

In any case they enjoyed considerable autonomy, for “Hungary, even in periods of absolutism, was
administered by elected committees [Diets] of the country gentry, and these would never operate
measures which ran against their privileges.”[17]^

There is good reason to suppose that the policy was not entirely welcome to the gentry, for
although it might appear advantageous to landowners to gain new labor power and feudal rent, this
would only be the case if nomadic Roma could be successfully settled and put to work. The initial
prohibitively high costs (new housing and training as well as regular payments to foster parents of
young Romani children) were to be met entirely by the landowner, while the first rewards went to
the Imperial coffers in the form of tax. In view of these factors it is likely that many gentry
made a careful assessment of investment prospects before trying to settle groups of nomadic Roma;
those who appeared a bad risk were simply moved on, despite Council instructions to admit them to
serfs’ villages.

Nor is it likely that many Roma were enthusiastic about the policy, for while it is probable that
some nomads would have welcomed the opportunity to settle (as they had previously), the harsh
conditions, such as losing their children, would have been quite unacceptable. In fact Schwicker
found statistical evidence of movement of Roma from regions where the policy w as more vigorously
enforced to those which were more lax. As well as the nomads, however, those Roma already settled
opposed the policy since they probably saw any increase of their numbers in a particular place as a
threat to their precarious social position and also to their livelihood through increased
competition. They occasionally petitioned Diets to move bands of nomadic Roma from the district,
usually with justifying accusations of theft.

The simplistic assessment that “Maria Theresa had very good feelings [but]...a complete lack of
understanding in regard to Gypsies and their way of life,”[18] fails to appreciate that many Roma
were not at all opposed to settling per se, but, more important, overlooks the practical
considerations behind the policy. Allowing Maria Theresa her “good feelings,” her efforts must also
be seen on a different level, as yet another move in the continuous struggle by the Hapsburgs to
extract money from their wayward Hungarian lands. As an important part of their jealously guarded
autonomy, the gentry paid no direct imperial taxes, although their serfs and the commoners did. To
raise money from these lands, therefore, Maria Theresa was forced to use a variety of indirect
means, including the imposition of heavy taxes on imports to Hungary. To maximize these taxes
Hungarian home industry was intentionally neglected.[19]^

While the gentry were prepared to sacrifice the economic development of their country to maintain
their own privileged position, they actively resisted more direct ways of raising imperial
revenues, and therefore an failure of the policy toward Roma was probably as much nomadic Roma.

As in the industrializing Czech lands, the nineteenth century is remarkable for the lack of
official attention paid to Roma in Slovakia. The country remained predominantly rural under the
control of the gentry, but there was a little industrialization (mainly mining) in the east,
although not enough to create much hope of a better life among the Slovak peasantry. “Over half a
million Slovaks, nearly one-fourth of the population, emigrated to the United States in the
quarter-century preceding the First World War. Others streamed to Canada, South America and
Russia.”[20]^

Meanwhile, the numbers of Roma had greatly increased and an 1893 census revealed 36,000 Roma in
Slovakia, of whom 2,000 were seminomadic and only 600 nomadic (less than 2 percent). Even though a
certain number of nomads must have escaped the census, it is clear that by this time the vast
majority of Roma were already settled.


Roma in Czechoslovakia 1918-1945

Although Roma were recognized as a nationality in 1921, little was done to alleviate their poverty.
This is hardly surprising, since Slovakia and Ruthenia (now part of Ukraine), where most of them
lived, were left undeveloped and in general “were regarded more or less like colonies”[21] during
the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1939).

In 1924 a Slovak local authority complained: “The penalty of imprisonment has no effect on them,
because imprisonment only improves their living conditions. It often happens that a Gypsy without
resources commits a crime only to escape the pangs of hunger.^”[22]

Yet the situation of many peasants was often little better, especially in Slovakia where some were
forced to become itinerant peddlers and artisans, often working for food, not cash, and sometimes
simply bartering fruit for grain. It was against such itinerants, as well as against nomadic Roma,
that the 1927 law controlling nomadism was directed. This was based on the old 1887 regulations and
required all officially permitted nomads to be registered and carry a nomad’s pass, which could be
withdrawn at any time. Apparently 36,696 such passes were issued up to 1940[23] although a 1927
census of Roma in Slovakia had shown 60,315 to be settled and 1,877 nomadic.

Some newspapers justified the law as a new and humane approach, but a more reliable picture of the
situation of Roma in these times of general unemployment and hunger is given by other contemporary
events such as the 1928 Pobedim pogrom where, in reprisal for pilfering crops from the fields,
Slovak villagers wounded eighteen and killed six Roma-including two young children. Commenting on
this massacre, the influential daily Slovák wrote, “the Pobedim case can be characterized as a
citizens’ revolt against Gypsy life. In this there are the roots of democracy.”[24]^

A year later a Romani robber band was accused of murder and cannibalism. The second charge was
eventually dropped but not before the press had inflamed public opinion with sensational and
inaccurate coverage reminiscent of its role at a 1782 trial where forty Roma were tortured and
executed, being accused of identical crimes, before an investigation ordered by Joseph II
discovered that all of the supposed victims were still alive.

While there is no evidence to suggest that the hostility against Roma was deliberately fomented by
the government, nevertheless there appeared little official  resistance to such developments and
perhaps even some elements within the  government welcomed them to divert some of the acute public
bitterness over social  and economic conditions. It is important to notice that since 1926 the
dominant party in the bourgeois coalition had been the A P which eventually took office in 1932.
Since this party represented the interests of predominantly landowners and farmers,  it was
unlikely to have had much sympathy for Roma.

It is a commonplace to point to the manipulation of minorities as scapegoats in times of severe
crisis. As might be expected, therefore, pogroms against Roma were not limited to Czechoslovakia
during this period but occurred also in Austria, France, and Germany.[25]^

Despite the generally bleak outlook it would be wrong to see the situation as entirely hopeless
during this period for remarkable, if isolated, efforts were made to integrate Roma, especially in
the field of education. After 1925 special schools for Roma were established in several towns in
Ruthenia and East Slovakia, and in 1929 a group of Slovak doctors founded what was later known as
the “Society for the Study and Solutions of the Gypsy Problem.” As well as concerning itself with
health matters, the society organized theatrical and musical performances by Roma in principal
regional theatres in Slovakia and inspired the formation of a flourishing Romani football club
which toured abroad.

The events of the Second World War are simple to relate, but less easy to forget for the Roma.

Soon after the start of the war, a register of Roma (1940) showed 60,000 in Slovakia, while only
6,500 (about 11 percent) lived in the Czech lands.[26] Although some Roma in the Czech lands
managed to escape the register, these figures reflect the overwhelming prewar concentration of Roma
in Slovakia.[27]

Of those 6,500 “Czech” Roma only a few hundred returned from the Nazi concentration camps to which
they were sent,[28] while under the puppet Slovak state Roma had been more fortunate. Some had been
sent to labor camps; there had been occasional pogroms, burning Roma alive in their huts and
machine-gunning them as they burst out with their clothes aflame; fascist Slovak Hlinka Guards had
delighted in beating them up – but there had been no mass extermination. The war had ended too soon
for that.



ROMANI EQUALITY-BY ASSIMILATION OR INTEGRATION


The “Gypsy Problem” and the 1958 Assimilation Campaign

Immediately after the war what can only be described as a mass migration began as thousands of
Roma, often as families, left their isolated settlements in rural Slovakia for the Czech lands.
There they settled mainly in the industrial conurbations of north Moravia and north Bohemia, in the
larger towns, and in the border areas from which the former inhabitants, Sudeten Germans, had been
expelled in 1946. For the first time Roma were participating in the general labor market on a mass
scale, usually as unskilled factory or construction workers.

By 1947 of a total Romani population of 101,190, there were 16,752 in the Czech lands. They
comprised over 16 percent, a marked increase over the prewar proportion, although for an obvious
reason they were virtually all migrants from Slovakia. It was noted that these new migrants were
forming Romani concentrations, or even minor ghettos, in the Czech towns rather than dispersing
among non-Roma. Probably this was more the result of Councils’ policy in allocating houses than
anything else.

Also there was considerable re-migration to home settlements in Slovakia where conditions began to
improve dramatically as migrants invested their earnings in new brick-built family houses.

Meanwhile, an estimated 6,000[29] nomadic Olach Roma (who regarded themselves and were regarded by
other Roma as ethnically distinct) still traveled the republic with horses, carts, and tents.

The migration was viewed officially with mixed feelings. On .the one hand, it was acknowledged that
it was partially a positive response to new opportunities “which they made use of... by taking
regular employment and settling permanently,”[30] but on the other hand there were fears that a
concentration of Roma, both in their home settlements and in towns, would “perpetuate the backward
Gypsy way of life.”^

Eventually it was decided in 1958 to mount a massive national campaign to raise the socioeconomic
level of the Roma by assimilating them into wider Czechoslovak society. To accelerate this process,
a policy aim of maximum dispersal was adopted. However, this could only be achieved by adequate
control of migration, and for this reason most major measures there after related directly to
population movement.

The timing of the campaign can be explained partly by the fact that the government was previously
preoccupied with more important problems, partly by the fact that in the late 1950s Czechoslovakia
was preparing for the transition from a People’s Republic to a Socialist Republic (declared in
1960), which entailed, among other things, a cultural revolution. Yet “we would not be able to talk
of achieving a cultural revolution.., if we left the group of our Gypsy citizens with low cultural
and living standards.”[31]^

To make matters more embarrassing, Roma were becoming increasingly visible largely as a result of
migration but also because of their rapid population growth. In 1966 the first really reliable
census of Roma showed 221,526 (1.55 percent of the whole population). Another census in the
following year showed an annual increase of Third World proportions in the Romani population of
between 2.6 and 2.8 percent in contrast to the overall national rate of 0.4 percent, itself one of
the lowest rates in the world. Stated another way, in 1967 every eleventh baby born in
Czechoslovakia was a Rom.

The campaign started with “Law 74/1958 on the permanent settlement of nomads.” Although this
appeared nominally to be aimed at the 6,000 nomadic Olach Roma, a register of nomads compiled in
1959 also included those non-Olach Roma judged by local authorities to be “seminomads” as well as a
few non-Roma. Paragraph one of the law stated that


local authorities shall provide comprehensive assistance to persons who lead a nomadic life to
enable them to adopt a settled way of life; in particular they are obliged to help such persons in
finding suitable employment and accommodation and by educational means to aim at making them
orderly working citizens. (Law 74)


This was clearly different from the 1927 laws where the livelihoods of Roma were often removed at a
stroke without any alternative being offered.

Registered “nomads,” who numbered between 20,000 and 27,000, had their identity cards stamped and
were to be refused employment in any place other than where registered, unless by mutual agreement
between local authorities. If they moved without permission, therefore, they were subject to up to
three years’ imprisonment as parasites.

The elimination of Olach nomadism appears to have been remarkably effective, although some
officials were unprepared for the quick-witted Roma. “What do the comrades from Nitra report?”
asked a handbook for local authorities. Nitra reported:


In solving how to settle nomads, we came up against the question of horses. Horses enabled Gypsies
to move easily from place to place. We bought them but soon afterwards... [some Gypsies] used this
money to acquire new horses from agricultural cooperatives that had a surplus as a result of
increased mechanization and were selling them off cheaply. We learned a lesson from this.[32]^

^

In a few years, however, it was obvious that Law 74 was singularly ineffective in controlling the
movement of “seminomads.” This was because employers needing labor usually turned a blind eye to
the regulations but more importantly because nonregistered Roma migrated too. Local authorities
were usually unwilling to use their powers to register them, since this involved supervising them
and providing them with jobs and accommodation. It was simpler to ignore them.


Postwar Romani Population Movement: Nomadism or Migration?

“The Gypsy is primarily and above all else a nomad,” we are told. Clébert’s view appears to have
been shared by many Czechoslovak administrators, although since the key terms “nomadic” and
“wandering” were used without any precise discussion of their meaning,[33] it is difficult to
impute any firm theory underlying their use.

     The 1958 classification of Roma into “nomadic,” “seminomadic,” and “sedentary” suggests a
historical, evolutionary model-a set of progressive stages through which sections of Romani society
passed on their road to “ultimate assimilation.” Yet the study of Romani history in Slovakia
suggests that many Roma settled as long ago as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In any case,
most Roma appear to have been settled by the time of Maria Theresa, and the 1893 census showed less
than 2 percent of Slovakia’s 36,000 Roma to be in any way nomadic-and this at a time when nearly a
quarter of all Slovaks were emigrating to the United States!

Given this historical development it is absurd to need to discuss “Romani nomadism” any further,
but official and popular beliefs about Roma as incorrigible nomads linger on, despite historical
evidence to the contrary. It is true that after 1965 government and ministry documents replaced the
term “nomadic” with “migrating,” and one major 1965 Government Committee report clearly recognized
Romani population movement as rural to urban migration.[34] However, this frank treatment was
exceptional and as recently as 1971 a Federal Ministry of Labor report explained Romani population
movement by the “historically rooted proneness to nomadism in Gypsies.”

Local government documents are often little better, although a firm grasp of local history might
have been expected. Some list Romani settlements in Slovakia allegedly founded in the 1930s yet
which local informants, both Romani and non-Romani, remember as already long established in the
1890s and which parish records show to be at least one hundred fifty years old. There they are in
the records, the same Romani family names as nowadays. As for the Roma themselves-you ask them:
“When did you first settle here?” Shrugs and puzzled looks. “I don’t know – we’ve always been
here.”

When-after how many years of being settled-do you cease to be “sedentary” and just become “normal”?
If you are a Rom, the answer seems to be-Never!

A leading sociologist of migration wrote:


A social group at rest, or a social group in motion (e.g., nomads) tends to remain so unless
impelled to change; for with any viable pattern of life a value system is developed to support that
pattern. To analyse the migration of Gypsies, for example, in terms of push and pull is entirely
inadequate-no better, in fact, than to explain modern western migration, as Herbert Spencer did, in
terms of “the restlessness inherited from ancestral nomads.”[35]^

^

Accepting Petersen’s point, if it can be shown that certain Roma have been settled for a long
period, the positions are reversed, and it is as inadequate to explain their subsequent movement as
“ancestral nomadism” as it is to explain anyone else’s.

In addition to the historical evidence, data from fieldwork strongly support the idea that postwar
Romani population movement in Czechoslovakia is a fairly typical case of rural-to-urban migration
rather than any resurgence of nomadism.

Particularly relevant is the prominent feature of chain migration, although official documents (and
popular opinions) sometimes give the impression that Romani population movement is an aimless
swirling over the face of Czechoslovakia, where any destination is as good as any other. This is
well illustrated in a joke told about Roma.


Gypsy (buying train tickets)                       “Two to Bohemia.”

Booking office clerk                                     “To where?”

Gypsy                                                          “To Bohemia!”

Clerk (now irritated)                                 “Yes-but to where exactly?”

Gypsy (turning resignedly to wife)           “You see how stupid these Slovaks are-they

                                                                   haven’t even heard of  Bohemia!”


In a recent study of Romani migrants in a Czech city[36] it was clearly demonstrated that certain
areas in East Slovakia were heavily overrepresented. Similarly, fieldwork in Romani settlements in
Slovakia revealed that for each village there were only two or three main destination areas and
that outmigrants originally migrated with relatives and later usually to destinations where
relatives were already established.

In fact, there is nothing unique about such migrations and to give one example of this point, much
of an account of the migration of Kentucky mountaineers (in no sense nomads) is equally true of
Czechoslovak Roma. In both cases there was chain migration of relatives and considerable movement
between source and destination areas.

Many...families facilitate and encourage migration and provide in crises “havens of safety.”
Furthermore “branch families” in the new communities provide a socio-psychological “cushion” for
the migrant during the transitional phase.[37]


Other comparable factors are that:

(i) The pattern of extended families in the home area is related to the social isolation of these
people from wider society.

(ii) Migrants travel direct to industrial centers, avoiding intervening farming areas, and perform
unskilled labor.

(iii) Although not a pariah group to the same extent as Roma, Kentucky mountaineers are denigrated
as ignorant rural primitives beset with social problems (for example, drunkenness, illiteracy).

(iv) This continued although lessened social isolation in towns has tended to broaden bonds among
these migrants, gradually replacing extended family networks by wider regional-based ones.


If this categorization of Romani population movement is correct, the implications are profound, for
characteristically the main motive for such migration has been the desire for improved economic and
social status. Here emphasis must be placed on the migrants’ comprehension of their previous poor
conditions, their perception of the possibility of changing them, and their desire to better
themselves, all concretely expressed in the fact of migration, Petersen explained the puzzling
paradox that in certain periods few migrants to the United States came from those European
countries where conditions were objectively the worst by stressing that poor conditions, in
themselves, are insufficient to trigger off migration. Also necessary is some improvement in
conditions in the source country to awaken hope in the would-be migrant of something better.[38]^

As has been indicated, the history of Roma in Slovakia shows them not so much as nomadic tribes
fiercely defending their independence and “tradition” as settled immigrants seeking a securer place
in wider society. What happened in Czechoslovakia, then, to change the objective conditions and to
raise the hopes of Roma?

The simple answer is the postwar dominance of the Communist Party. This is not theoretic
population, it is what many Roma have said – and it makes good sense. In 1927 the Party had opposed
the law on nomads and already recruited Romani members during the First Republic. Later Roma fought
alongside Communist partisans, and the arrival of the Red Army is still remembered with affection –
the open friendliness of the soldiers toward them and especially their children. These things are
important – the Slovak Hlinka guards had beaten them. A Romani woman expressed it all charmingly:
“In the castle nearby lived a miserly lord who treated Roma badly. So God sent the Russian army to
punish him and drive him out. I think he lives in Vienna now with his rich relatives.”

The 1944 Košice government program proclaimed that there would be no more discrimination and while
the Roma still preserved their deep suspicion, they felt it was worth taking a chance. When
Gottwald (the first Communist president) took power in 1948, the main Romani settlement studied in
Slovakia almost emptied as migrating families set off for the Czech lands and a new life.


The 1965 “Dispersal and Transfer” Scheme and Its Aftermath

In 1965 a new “Dispersal and Transfer” scheme was introduced to speed up the stagnant dispersal of
what were termed “undesirable Gypsy concentrations.” The aim was to replace the continuing “natural
migration” by a system of planned population transfers from Romani settlements in Slovakia to parts
of the Czech lands with a low density of Roma, that is, to spread them as thinly as possible
throughout the Republic. To coordinate the whole operation and Romani affairs in general, a special
government committee was established, although it had no powers to control local authorities, only
to report to the government on the basis of information supplied to it by local authorities.

Quotas were agreed upon and transfers began. As a Romani spokesperson later expressed it: “They
plan how many there should be in each village: horses, cows, and Gypsies.”[39] In practice the plan
proved difficult to operate and ground to a virtual standstill by the end of 1968. In 1966 the
transfer plan was 85 percent fulfilled, in 1967 51 percent, and in 1968 only 20 percent. In all
only 494 Gypsy families were transferred from Slovakia to the Czech lands in the period 1966-1968.
Meanwhile, control of natural migration had again proved inadequate, for in the same period, 1,096
unplanned family migrations took place.[40]^

There had been an attempt to modify Law 74 to make unplanned migration virtually illegal, but the
Parliamentary Committee for Constitutional Law had decided: “the proposed solution of restricting
the movement of the Gypsy population in fact limits their freedom of residence and therefore is not
in harmony with article 31 of the Constitution.”[41]^

Despite this hostile ruling, the government committee’s 1996 “Principles for Organizing Dispersal
and Transfer” instructed local authorities that “every unplanned, unorganized, unconfinned transfer
of a Gypsy person or family should be considered as undesirable migration of Gypsy persons and
consequently refused. The person or county who arranged the transfer should be changed the costs of
returning the Gypsy person or family to the original place of residence.”[42] Or in other words, if
you were a Rom and not among those 494 families transferred as part of planned quotas, you could
not move at all between the Czech lands and Slovakia-in theory anyway.

Little more than a year later, the same government committee reported critically that “local
authorities protect themselves . . . by refusing to register these citizens [that is, Romani
migrants as permanent residents. However, the Home Office directive on Law 54/1959Sb. about
population registration specifically states that registration as a permanent resident may not be
made dependent on any other conditions, especially accommodation, economic, financial, and so
forth.”[43] Yet these local authorities were only following government committee instructions in
refusing unplanned migrants; the committee seemed unaware that it was its own “Principles for
Organizing Dispersal and Transfer” which were in conflict with the Home Office directive.

The collapse of the “Dispersal and Transfer” scheme is difficult to explain-not because of the lack
of causes but rather their abundance. However, comparison with the previous Hapsburg assimilation
attempt is instructive, for then, as now, the main opposition probably carne no1 from the Roma but
from local authorities.

Many Roma were eager to exchange their overcrowded wooden houses in Slovakia for houses and flats
in the Czech lands. Although they wanted to move to an industrial center where they had relatives
and not to some bureaucratically decided agricultural area where they knew no one, these Romani
misgivings were not the determining factor. Crucial to the scheme were the Czech local authorities,
for they were to provide accommodation for the incoming Roma. Usually skeptical to begin with and
soon further discouraged by the cynical way in which some Slovak local authorities unloaded their
most troublesome Roma onto them, these authorities began to refuse transfers, pleading lack of
adequate accommodation. They often had some justification, for the overall transfer plan had been
prepared with little regard for the national building program, but in any case the government
committee, like its Hapsburg predecessor, did not have the resources to evaluate independently such
reports or the power to control the reporting local authorities.

With the ending of transfers in 1968, the government committee was disbanded and the whole policy
toward Roma reconsidered. As a result permission was given for Roma to form their own sociocultural
associations and organize economic cooperatives. This was a complete reversal of the 1958 position
that socioeconomic equality could only be achieved by assimilating Roma and instead “recognised
Romani national consciousness as a valid motivation for self help along the new socialist
path.”[44] For a time Roma were treated virtually as a national minority, although never formally
recognized as such, but the experiment was short-lived, and in April 1973 all Romani mass
organizations were dissolved.


Rom Identity and the “Gypsy Way of Life”

From 1958 onward official documents frequently referred to “the Gypsy way of life” as a mixture of
undesirable remnants of previous social orders, including such elements as nomadism, tribalism,
animism, and blood feuds. The 1959 handbook for local authorities declared: “The heavy heritage of
the past still stretches like a black cloud over the majority of our Gypsy citizens,” or more
prosaically:


As a result of oppression and persecution by the ruling classes, Gypsies were stamped with
characteristic features of a way of life and psychological nature which are nowadays an anachronism
and must be removed by a process of socialist education.[45]^

^

The argument was that the “Gypsy way of life” (embodying traditions, value systems, and attitudes)
which had been formed, or rather deformed, by bitter historical experience, had been carried over
into a period and form of society where it had no relevance. Resistance to change was perpetuated
merely by the fact that Roma usually lived with other Roma in “undesirable concentrations.” The
“Gypsy way of life” was no more than a contagious disease and the remedy was isolation from other
sufferers.

Looking at Roma in this way, the authorities naturally saw little point in preserving a separate
identity for these people. In any case it was felt to be in their own best interest to assimilate,
for:


experience shows that all forms which revive Gypsy national [sic] consciousness, their own special
organization and autonomy, preserve the present isolation and separation of Gypsies from the
remainder of the population, prevent the penetration of everything progressive from our environment
to the life of Gypsies and help conserve the old primitive Gypsy way of life with all its bad
habits.[46]^


This was the rationale behind the dispersal policy. Yet a theoretical justification was also
necessary, for what sort of group were these people?

How Roma should be characterized is a basic problem that faces all administrators and researchers
concerned with them. The former tend to describe them as a social rather than an ethnic group as
this gives them a freer hand with policy-they are less likely to be accused of discrimination.[47]
In this they are aided by the theoretical confusion of the latter, especially social
anthropologists who have pursued an inconclusive search for definitive objective criteria of the
ethnic group. Fredrik Barth has recently attacked this whole approach, arguing that the ascriptive
aspect is logically prior to any objective characteristics of the ethnic group which, for him,
consists in “a membership which identifies itself, and is identified by others, as constituting a
category distinguishable from other categories of the same order.”[48]^

To some extent the drafting of Law 74 on nomadism could be interpreted as such an administrative
attempt to define Czechoslovak Roma (or at least those who migrated) as a social group, for great
care was taken to specify a way of life and avoid mentioning the word “Gypsy.” However, the
associated ministry directives on implementing the law were not so oblique and soon a solution was
found to the problem of designating Roma without referring to them directly in the general adoption
of the formula “citizen of Gypsy origin,” which enshrined the contradiction in the official
attitude toward them. While Rom or Gypsy was no longer to exist as a valid identity, nevertheless a
series of measures were enacted which were directed specifically at Roma.

However, little was at stake in conceding Roma ethnic group status; the real problem was whether
they could be seen as a national minority, thus qualifying for guaranteed group rights under
Marxist-Leninist theory.

Writing of Roma in 1961, Jaroslav Sus, a Czech theorist, explained that


the assimilation of ethnic communities is one of the pre-conditions which hasten the elimination of
class society.... Marxism still recognizes at present the necessary existence of the most developed
ethnic units-nations... Marxism-Leninism recognizes as correct those actions which consciously
accelerate the naturally continuing assimilation process.[49]^

^

Sus claimed that since Roma lacked one or more of Stalin’s four defining characteristics of a
nation-common language, territory, economic life, and psychological makeup manifested in a common
culture-Roma were not a nationality but only an ethnic group and should therefore be assimilated.
In any case, he argued, they were assimilating naturally.

Although claiming the full authority of Marxism-Leninism, Sus did not give a single quotation or
reference from any of the Marxist-Leninist classics to corroborate his analysis. A more important
omission was his failure to point out that Stalin differentiated between nation and national
minority, the second being a far more flexible category not. requiring all four defining
characteristics. Nor did he mention the awkward fact that Roma had long been considered a
nationality in the Soviet Union, or consider the arguments of Soviet theorists such as Dzunusov,
whose position is close to that of Barth.

Not surprisingly, some Roma in Czechoslovakia remained unconvinced by Sus-type reasoning.

If the Gypsies have not been recognized yet as a nationality, the main cause has been fears of the
results of granting various rights to the Gypsies as a nationality. Arguments-like the lack of
several characteristics (territory, and so forth)-which were employed according to the precepts
valid until now, were only a means to prevent recognition of the Gypsies as a nationality.[50]^

Their membership in Romani associations was in itself a refutation of Sus, for these Roma were
often officially regarded as “assimilated,” the successes of the policy. Yet rather than seek to
conceal their origin, they believed that the best way to solve the social problems of Roma was to
strengthen the positive aspects of Romani identity by what amounted to a “Black Is Beautiful”
campaign, led by their own socialist-inspired organizations.

The need for such a campaign may puzzle some people, for it is commonly believed that Roma are
unequivocally proud of their identity. In Stigma, Goffman accepts that while it is difficult for
minorities to maintain positive self-evaluations in the face of denigratory judgments of them by
dominant minorities, the Rom might be “protected by identity beliefs of his own, he feels that he
is a full-fledged normal human being and that we are the ones who are not quite human.”[51]^

Fieldwork among Roma in Czechoslovakia does not confirm this; rather one encounters the same deep
ambivalence toward their identity that Fanon chronicled for Blacks and Sartre for Jews. Roma are at
the same time proud and ashamed of being Roma. Proud of their music and dancing into which they
pour their pain and joy; ashamed of their drinking and fighting – other ways of coping with the
same feelings and the situations that arouse them.

Righteously angry at the hostile stereotypes others hold of them: “We’re not the only ones who
drink! The council chairman used to lie drunk in the street, pissing in his pants.”

“They say we’re always in prison but we read the papers. We see what terrible crimes other people
do. Gypsies don’t do anything like that.”

Unable to resist this stereotype:

“She’s so white and beautiful you’d never think she was a Gypsy.” “We’re not going to tell lies
like Gypsies, are we?”[52]^

”I’m not drunk, you understand just in a good mood” (said by a Rom after collapsing into a
snowdrift on his way home from a wedding).


As Sartre put it:


They have allowed themselves to be poisoned by the stereotype that others have of them, and they
live in fear that their acts will correspond to this stereotype....We may say that their conduct is
perpetually overdetermined from the inside.[53]^

^

These ambivalent attitudes of pride and self hatred are the theme of many of their songs.


You were born, my brothers,

Of a black mother.

What are you ashamed of?

Perhaps that you’re not white?


You play at being gaje,

Your own blood isn’t good enough.

Couldn’t pride grow then

In a Gypsy heart?


People don’t treat people

Just by what they’re called.

The blood of blacks and whites

Is red just the same.[54]^

^

Understanding Romani Social Organization

The Romani population in Czechoslovakia is known to differ from non-Roma in many ways. Some of
these differences have been studied in detail, but no account has yet been given of Romani social
organization and its relation to their historical experience within the territory of
Czechoslovakia.

This short section is not an account of Romani social organization but an example of the
misunderstanding that can occur if Roma are simply seen as a closed community, whose social
isolation has led to the preservation of a static, “traditional” social organization. In fact this
is usually how they have been seen and also how I thought of them when starting my fieldwork. The
plan was to look first at a Romani community and see how it functioned as a whole, then look at an
associated non-Romani community and finally ask: What are the relations between the two? How are
they connected?

The first thing to look for was the formal power structure, having read about Romani chiefs (vajda
in Slovak and čibalo in Romanes). Yet things didn’t seem to work that way at all and questions to
Roma met with puzzled looks. Eventually someone remembered:


Oh yes, the Slovaks chose a vajda during the war. They sat him on a ladder, put a red sash around
him, and we had to carry him around the settlement.

Not too promising, but perhaps there would be better luck with tribalism and blood feuds. They were
there all right!

The main settlement studied in Slovakia was split into two hostile lineage groups-their houses
mostly faced each other across the track which served as a main street and the Roma talked of “our
side” and “their side.” Why was there this hostility? – “We’ve always hated each other.”

An old Slovak told with relish of an incident soon after the war, when the balance of power was
upset by migration. The lineage temporarily in the majority attacked their enemies, breaking
someone’s arm. Immediately a telegram was sent to the Czech lands and the next day the
trans-Republic express disgorged returning relatives of the defeated lineage-enough to fill two
“war-taxis.” The Slovak villagers knew what was coming but they didn’t tell the police-they were
looking forward to it. The battle raged all night and the next day ambulances were eventually sent
in to pick up the casualties.

So after reading Tribes Without Rulers[55] by Middleton and Tait, I wrote the following:


Preliminary findings indicate that in formal organisation the Roma have something resembling a
segmentary political system: that is, “lacking ranked and specialised holders of political
authority that relations of local groups to one another are seen as a balance of power maintained
by competition between them.”[56] This has important consequences for understanding certain aspects
of Romani behaviour, currently defined as social problems. For example, the prevalence of fights
among Roma could be seen as an integral feature of social systems where violence is a form of
self-help and indeed may be “the recognized means of maintaining law in default of a superior
judicial authority.”[57] Although fighting is often between individuals, it appears from local
accounts that conflicts can often escalate into group warfare, where the original participants can
call on kinsmen to support them. Detailed study of such conflicts should provide revealing evidence
of Romani social organisation.

All that was needed to complete the picture was a leopard-skin chief.


Yet despite the similarities between Romani social organization and rulerless political systems,
the crucial point was that the studies in Africa had been made of “indigenous systems, unaffected
by European contact.”[58] Roma however have never been known as anything other than a pariah
minority, so perhaps this should be the starting point, not something to be considered later. As
Mick Lineton put it, writing of Travellers:


“Being a Traveller” does not consist simply in having been brought up and living among Travellers,
but also in a relationship to settled people.... An approach which began with an ethnography of
Travellers as a minority group and then related the internal workings and conceptions of the
minority group to the outside world would miss the way in which those very “internal” workings and
conceptions and the “outside” were part of a single situation, interpenetrating in many ways, as
mutual reactions, reflections and relationships. Yet many studies of minority groups do start as if
they were dealing with cultural or social entities instead of relationships, and while there may be
areas in which the context of the total situation can be ignored or added afterwards... the
situation of Travellers is [not] one that permits such an approach without loss and distortion. We
would therefore shift the focus from the minority as such to the point of articulation between the
minority and others.[59]^

^

Looking at things from this vantage point, it is clear that these initial explanations artificially
limited the total situation of the Roma as they perceived it. So what about chiefs, tribalism, and
feuds, bearing in mind the actual historical experience of Roma in Slovakia as a dominated
minority?

Horváthová suggests that while an elected vajda was important among nomadic Roma, this institution
took a changed form among settled Roma. “The vajda of a Gypsy settlement... was above all an
assistant to the village authorities in matters of local Gypsies.”[60] The non-Roma needed someone
through whom to exercise control.

Tribalism must be discussed on two levels. Ethnographically Czechoslovak Roma are usually divided
into four groups (Slovak [Slovak],[61] Olach [nomadic], Sinti [German], and Hungarian), each having
its own dialect of Romanes.[62] While these groups see themselves as distinct, this differentiation
seems closely linked to the various non-Romani majority groups among whom they lived. This is true
of other countries, for example, Britain.

”Tribal” settlements in Slovakia, where perhaps three hundred Roma share a handful of family names,
are far more obviously the direct product of their historical situation rather than an age-old
Romani tradition. A 1781 census in the region studied showed only one or two Romani families
settled near each Slovak village, the men generally working as smiths, the women and children as
servants. As described in the historical section above, both Roma and non-Roma would have usually
discouraged any influx of new Romani families, and so numbers grew by natural population alone to
present levels. It is ironic that these artificially highly immobile communities should later have
been characterized as inherently nomadic.

Even today in Slovakia the situation has similarities to that of Maria Theresa’s time. For example
it is extremely difficult for a Rom to move from one settlement to another unless by marriage, and
the reasons are more or less the same.


Rural Local Official: “There are lots of empty Gypsy houses here but if we were to start accepting
Gypsies that aren’t ours, we’d soon be swamped.”


A Rom: ‘We don’t want any ‘foreign’ Gypsies here it would only make things worse. It’s better when
there are less of us.”


The Slovak villagers don’t want too many Roma (a painful fact of which the Roma are well aware),
although some are useful for odd jobs-shoveling coal or housecleaning. Patron-client relationships
still exist as they did formerly, although progressively weakening as the continuing
industrialization of Slovakia makes alternative employment available, especially for Romani women.

Feuds possibly arose from competition between families for the desperately scarce resources doled
out by their employers. The “colonial” experience of the Roma in Slovakia, however, suggests that
such conflicts should not be interpreted as an institutionalized “means of maintaining law” but as
expressions of frustration in an unbearable yet insoluble situation. “In a colonial society all
violence is turned inward; the natives kill each other rather than the settlers.”[63]^

This approach is also relevant to contemporary disputes where previous direct exploitation has been
replaced by subtler forms of discrimination, justified by hostile stereotyping. Roma often see this
quite clearly. They don’t need to read sociology books to understand how stereotyping works; they
have more direct ways of learning.


Romani member of rural council: I’ve been round the village making a register (of cattle, and so
forth) and some of those outlying Slovak cabins-you should have smelled them! But the whites keep
quiet about their own bad examples-yet if any Gypsy is dirty, they point to him and say to us:
“That’s what you’re like, you Gypsies!”


Understanding doesn’t seem to help much, though; not if you can’t do anything effective to change
things. So what you do is silly things, despairing things-and the whites laugh at you all the more.
The same man took part in a Romani petition to demand the removal from the settlement of the three
families the Roma were most ashamed of. It was senseless, of course; who else would have them? The
outcome was predictable-afight-two Roma got six months in jail and the families still live in the
same settlement. And the stereotype was confirmed once more.

While this approach sees the “Gypsy way of life” as a product of their past experience, it also
throws some doubt on the claim that in a socialist society like Czechoslovakia this way of life is
nowadays entirely an anachronism.

In 1958 there were predictions of a speedy assimilation of Roma, but when these hopes were
disappointed the “Gypsy problem” was reported to need several generations for its solution. The
slow rate of progress was attributed simply to a cultural time lag, an undynamic view of how
traditions, value systems, and so forth, are transmitted. However, with class consciousness, young
people do not automatically adopt patterns simply because they are their parents, but also because
they find the patterns of their parents relevant to their own experience, they realize their own
situation is comparable to that of their parents.

The possibility must therefore be faced that within the socialist framework, which undoubtedly
offers better opportunities for Romani integration than have ever been known, there nevertheless
may be features which serve to perpetuate the deep-rooted hostility of Roma toward non-Roma, such
as continuing discrimination against Roma.

On a local level Roma sometimes encountered severe difficulties in trying to realize their
ambitions to buy flats in town or build new family houses, as Sus frankly admitted.


Frequently either entire local authorities or their individual members... try to prevent Gypsy
families from moving into empty flats among non-Gypsies. By means of bureaucratic methods they make
it difficult for Gypsies to build a family house outside of the Gypsy settlement . . . and often
make it impossible for them to obtain a building plot.[64]^

^

Although many complaints were made of such flagrant violations of the official policy, little was
done to punish offenders.

More seriously, despite the good intentions of its formulators, certain aspects of the 1958 policy
were unwittingly discriminatory. While Roma welcomed the possibility of better houses, they
resented the restrictions on their movements. When a recent national census of the whole population
was made, the immediate assumption of the Roma in the settlement studied was that it was another
“nomads’ register” aimed at controlling them. As the Gypsy-Rom Associations pointed out, decisions
were made about Roma but never by them.

Similarly, the outright rejection of Romani identity as completely worthless can have done little
to help these people to resolve their identity crisis but served to undermine further their
self-respect.

The situation in Czechoslovakia today is consequently a paradox. In some important respects the aim
of socioeconomic equality has almost been achieved. In 1970 the male employment rate for Roma in
the Czech lands equaled the national rate and since, as heavy manual workers in a socialist state
their wages are generally above average, a recent study showed them to be one of the wealthier
ethnic groups in Czechoslovakia.[65] Yet at the same time their rate of criminal convictions was
four times the national average (1967 figures) and their alcoholism was comparable.

Some still sing about their experiences-new songs as well as traditional ones-migrant and prison
blues to comfort themselves, not for customers. Perhaps they say more than statistics.


I don’t beg for bread

Even though I’m hungry.

Just give the Gypsy

A little respect.[66]^
^

References

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Afterword 1996:


A Brave New World

It is now over twenty years since I first wrote about the experience of the Roma in Czechoslovakia.
Then I had argued in favor of writing about Roma in specific historical contexts since “as a small
and vulnerable minority, it was far more likely that their history would be more a tale of what was
done to them than of what they themselves had done” (above, page 15). Developments since that time
confirm the validity of this approach since this is the only way the changing fortunes of Roma can
be fully understood.

At the time of my original article only a limited amount of attention had been paid to Roma by
Czechoslovak sociologists and social anthropologists, although some carefully researched historical
and ethnographic studies had been published. Meanwhile these people had long been scrutinized by
ministry and local authority officials, assiduously compiling statistics about population numbers,
housing conditions, level of assimilation and, most important, migratory movements. This almost
frenzied activity was driven partly by the fear that one day, in the not too distant future, parts
of their beloved country would be overwhelmed by the unruly, dark-skinned Roma, who were seen as a
foreign and alien race in spite of the fact that they had been settled on the territory of the
Republic for over half a millennium.

Since then the world has changed unimaginably for Czechs and Slovaks with the almost miraculous
collapse of Communist rule without bloodshed in what they called the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989.
For Roma, too, life changed dramatically after the fall of communism for, as so often in their
past, they found themselves the pawns of powerful political processes beyond their control. As the
new, fledgling states exposed their cumbersome inherited economic structures to the unsentimental
forces of market pressures in pursuit of the holy grail of a “market economy” and eventual
incorporation into the European Union, the impact on Roma was immediate.

Like their fellow citizens Roma had welcomed the democratic principles of post-communism, but for
them the first tangible experience of this brave new world was not of a sudden expansion of civic
liberties but of harsh economic realities as many were flung out of their predominantly manual jobs
in the now virtually redundant heavy industries. As part of the same broad process some Romani
women were driven to take up prostitution, joining the growing numbers of women offering themselves
for sale on city streets or at the roadside of main routes leading to the West-the first visible
advertisement to tourists and truck drivers of the new freedoms on offer.

It seems ironic that formerly I saw my writing about Roma as bearing witness to the worthily
intentioned yet oppressive Communist policy toward Roma and yet now I find myself looking back to
this era with a certain measure of nostalgia. This is in spite of the fact that formerly many of
the administrative measures were blatantly discriminatory and demonstrably illegal. At times they
breached not just the Czechoslovak constitution but amounted to a denial of basic human rights.

But what would the new freedoms bring? An intelligent and highly articulate Rom in his early
thirties felt, in 1991, that he could see the writing on the wall, even though he and his wife
still had their jobs. “I am going to vote Communist at the next elections,” he declared, “and so
are all my family and friends. The Communists are the only people who ever cared about the Roma”
(Guy 1991). He had not forgotten what had preceded the often forcible attempts to control Romani
migratory movement during the years of communism. While Czechs fondly remember the interwar
republic as a period of humane liberalism, for most Roma these had been years of grinding poverty,
sharpened by the terror of unpredictable racist beatings which occasionally escalated into pogroms.
The eventual culmination had been the holocaust when almost all Roma living in the Czech lands had
been annihilated.


The Final Years of Communism

Unlike other reforms during the Prague Spring of 1968, the strengthened  position of Slovakia
survived the reimposition of strict Party control (or “normalization”) after the Soviet-led
military invasion in August that year. To some extent it was a matter of divide and rule. In this
case the devolution of federal powers actually worked directly against Slovak interests for the
likelihood of pursuing any nationwide policy toward Roma almost vanished.

Since 1965 a main policy aim of federal officials dealing with the Romani population had been to
lighten Slovakia’s load by the planned dispersal of families to the Czech lands. Now the Czech
government was able to take advantage of the new arrangements. First it dismantled the existing
administrative structure and then canceled the previous policy by revoking, unilaterally, a major
federal government directive intended to apply to the whole territory of the Czechoslovak state
(Czech Socialist Republic 1969 & 1970). The Slovaks protested impotently as these new arrangements
were being drafted, regarding them as legitimation at national level of the earlier, near-illegal
resistance by Czech local authorities to the dispersal program and, more ominously, as a statement
of intent that the Czechs would refuse in future to take equal responsibility for a problem of
whole-state dimensions.


[These changes] . . . perhaps suit the Czech regions where there are about 40,000 Gypsies. In
Slovakia, where today we have 170,000 (of which perhaps 100,000 live in quite inhuman conditions),
the latest administrative structure for solving the Gypsy question is utterly unsuitable. (Slovak
Socialist Republic 1968)

The administrative division of Slovakia from the Czech lands had the further effects of weakening
central control over local authorities and disrupting the systematic collection of nationwide
statistics. In spite of these developments, attempts were still made to coordinate policy toward
Roma in the now separate parts of the Republic under the leadership, in the Czech lands, of the
Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and, in Slovakia, of a special Government Commission
for Questions of Gypsy Inhabitants (Komise vlády SSR pre otázky cigánských obyvatelov). Slovakia,
indeed, returned to the administrative system which had overseen federal policy from 1965 to 1968.
Consequently the treatment of Roma in the twenty years of normalization up to the end of Communist
rule is a partially chronicled story of sporadic and uneven development-often dependent on local
initiatives rather than stemming from directives sent from the capital cities of Prague and
Bratislava.

On reflection, the actual differences that official policy made to the lives of Roma during the two
decades between 1969 and 1989, compared with the decade that preceded them, are less distinct than
might be thought. Although there was a concerted campaign to disperse and assimilate Roma in the
earlier years, these sweeping nationwide policies had been largely ineffectual in achieving their
aims, bringing a mixture of benefits, frustrations, and occasionally worse to the Roma caught up in
them. The later, more piecemeal approach, due to more disjointed administrative structures,
resulted in a pattern of patchy development that matched the reality of the earlier period.

It can also be argued that throughout the years of Communist rule much of the gradual improvement
in the living conditions of Roma was due largely to their own efforts in taking advantage of the
opportunities provided by economic expansion. Rather than conforming to the Czech and Slovak
stereotype of them as passive recipients of state aid, many Roma used their initiative in moving to
places where their labor was needed, putting aside much of their earnings and investing these
savings in new family houses or flats. In this endeavor they were often opposed by local
authorities and reaped the usual bitter rewards of migrant workers (Guy 1975).

In the late 1970s another organization took a keen interest in the situation of Roma in
Czechoslovakia and published a report on their conditions. However, this was no official body but
Charter 77, a dissident group established in 1977 to bear witness to violations of human rights
safeguarded by the 1975 Helsinki Accords to which Czechoslovakia was a signatory. This major report
(Charter 77 1979) took a caustic view of the whole of Communist policy toward Roma as well as
listing specific aspects of human rights abuses. It maintained that the denial of national minority
status to Roma, which underpinned the policy’s rationale, “was dictated by the desire of the ruling
powers to reduce the size of the minority problem, and subordinate its handling to the alleged
interests of the whole of society” (Charter 77 1979a&b).

Most of the contemporary official measures condemned by the report were not new but rather a
perpetuation of long-established practices. The illegitimacy of using the 1958 law on nomadism to
control the movement of Roma, “who, while not nomads, are forced to migrate on account of living
conditions not of their own making” was branded as “racist repression” (Charter 77 1979a:7). In
practice this law had failed to stem the continuing flow of economic migrants, although the
consequences of being registered as a “nomad” were certainly unpleasant for the 20,000 or more Roma
wrongly identified in this way. The most pressing problem for migrants to the Czech lands remained
the frequent and illegal refusal of local authorities to register them as residents, debarring them
from eligibility for municipal housing and forcing them either to squat in derelict buildings or
crowd in with relatives already established in the town (Guy 1975; Charier 77 1979a:7-8).

In Slovakia the perennial problem was that of the primitive living conditions in the many
segregated and isolated settlements. The plan had been to eliminate them all by 1990 but there was
no hope of this goal being achieved. In the meantime many Slovak councils continued to refuse
permission for Roma either to buy existing Slovak-owned village houses or build their own among the
Slovaks (Guy 1975).

One dramatic and innovative housing initiative in the 1970s and 1980s was the “experiment” of
moving Roma from their previous concentrations in dilapidated urban ghettos or in overcrowded,
unsanitary settlements on the edge of town directly into brand-new housing projects. The motivation
behind the initiative was to rid the towns concerned of their aggravating eyesores at a stroke, but
there had been little practical planning or consultation before the move. Those relocated had
little choice in the matter and were often combined in ways that soon led to friction and
disillusionment. Although the new blocks of town flats were often spacious and of high quality, the
new developments were intended to maintain the segregation of Roma and consequently remained
ghettos.


[Many] of these housing projects, among them Chanov in Most (Northern Bohemia), Lunik 9 in Kosice
(Eastern Slovakia), and Duzavska Cesta (also called “Black City”) in Rimavska Sobota, were
demolished by some inhabitants and have become highly publicized examples used by non-Roma to
justify initiatives to prevent Roma from moving into non-Romani neighborhoods. (Tritt 1992:56)


Some of the fiercest condemnation in the report was directed against the growing practice of
sterilizing Romani women which it characterized as a “planned administrative policy” (Charter 77
1979b:22). There is considerable evidence that during the 1970s and 1980s Romani women were either
offered financial inducements to undergo sterilization, or were pressured into agreeing to this
procedure, or were even sterilized without their knowledge or consent after giving birth by
cesarean section or when having an abortion. While Romani women with several children were the most
frequent victims, this was by no means always the case (Tritt 1992:19-32).

A 1972 Decree on Sterilization, issued by the Ministries of Health of the Czech and Slovak
Socialist Republics, was careful not to mention Roma by name, but other evidence makes it clear
that this ethnic group was a prime target. A 1977 briefing paper for the Slovakian Government
Commission referred to what it called the “high unhealthy” level of the Romani population and urged
increased grants for sterilization to counterbalance the income from child benefits, since “even a
backward Gypsy woman is able to calculate that, from an economic point of view, it is more
advantageous for her to give birth every year” (quoted in Tritt 1992:20). In the East Slovakia
Region the proportion of all sterilizations involving Roma rose from 25.8 percent in 1983 to 36.6
percent by 1987, while in the Czech lands 25 percent of all sterilization grants in the late 1980s
were made to Roma, even though this group constituted only 2 or 3 percent of the total population.
The fullest discussion of this topic is in the 1992 Helsinki Watch Report (Tritt 1992) and in a
1990 report investigating Charter 77 charges for the Lau Mazeril Foundation in Amsterdam (Pellar
and Andrs 1990).

As with official attempts to control migration, sterilizations were not a new occurrence – but from
the early 1970s they did appear to have become more widespread and readily sanctioned. The same was
true of other practices condemned by Charier 77. Romani children continued to be transferred to
special schools intended for those with severe learning difficulties, creating for many what
amounted to an educational ghetto which complemented the physical segregation of their dwellings.
An official report revealed that by 1990/91 of all children at such schools in Czechoslovakia 40.7
percent were Roma, while in Slovakia this proportion was a massive 65.3 percent-two out of three
(Institute for Educational Information 1991 ). In Slovakia, even when Romani children attended
ordinary schools, they were often seated separately from Slovaks (Tritt 1992:42-44). Meanwhile, in
a process familiar in the West, “black” Roma were more likely than “whites” to be sent to prison
for the same offense and their prison sentence was likely to be longer (Charter 77 1979b:22; Tritt
1992:91-93).

In spite of well-documented evidence of discrimination against Roma at every level during the
period of normalization, this was flatly denied by Rudé právo, the Communist party daily (21 June
1986). In language reminiscent of the strident tones of earlier assimilationism, the newspaper
dismissed Roma unwilling to adapt to socialist society as “victims of capitalist ways of thinking
and vestiges of the past” (Kalvoda 1992: 103). The main purpose of the article, however, was to
support the government’s rejection of the appeal of the World Romani Congress for Roma to be
recognized as a national minority as had happened long before in the Soviet Union and more recently
in Yugoslavia (1981). At this time Hungary, too, was taking cautious steps in this direction (Puxon
1987:9-12).

Such intransigence was not to last for within little more than a year there were signs, emanating
from the higher political ranks, of a more relaxed approach to “questions of Gypsy inhabitants.” As
it turned out these encouraging signs were irrelevant. Slight shifts in official policy were soon
to be overwhelmed by far more momentous changes, which would transform the political map of Central
and Eastern Europe and pose a whole new set of problems for the Roma of Czechoslovakia.


The Early Years of Post-Communism

At first the omens seemed promising for Roma when the demoralized Communist leadership relinquished
power without a struggle in the face of determined popular resistance. This time, unlike 1968, the
hard-liners knew that no help would come from Moscow to shore up their unloved regime.

Roma played an active part in bringing about the changes by joining the mass demonstrations of the
1989 Revolution and the newly formed Romani Civic Initiative Party (ROI) was a partner in the
coalition parties which swept to victory in the first post-Communist elections-Civic Forum (OF) in
the Czech lands and Public against Violence (VPN) in Slovakia. In 1990 Romani deputies were elected
to Federal, Czech, and Slovak Parliaments – and not only as candidates for ROI but for other
parties as well. These parties included the Communist party, and it is worth remembering that there
had been Rom deputies during the Communist period.

Matching their new political representation the formal status of Roma was reconsidered, and in
April 1991 the Slovak government passed resolution 153 “to acknowledge the Roma to be a nationality
in the contemporary terminology and to guarantee their political and legal equality of rights”
(Tritt 1992:14-16). The Czech and Federal authorities, while moving some way in the same direction,
were more hesitant about making such a forthright declaration. At the same time there was a
flowering of Romani culture. Newspapers and magazines in the Romani language soon appeared and
throughout the Republic over thirty cultural organizations applied for official registration. A
museum of Romani culture was founded in Brno, the capital of Moravia, while in East Slovakia a
Romani theater opened its doors in Prešov, and an innovatory department of Romani music was
established as part of an existing conservatory in Košice. This new beginning was celebrated in
Brno, in July 1990, by staging the first World Romani Festival, attended by President Václav Havel.

The election of Havel to the presidency to wide popular acclaim at the end of 1989 was another
hopeful sign that life would be better for Roma after the Revolution. Havel had been the leading
figure in the Charter 77 movement and soon reaffirmed his earlier commitment to the plight of Roma
by speaking out on TV at this festival. Yet Havel’s scrupulous adherence to moral principles, which
had made him the conscience of the nation during the last decade of communism, now seemed strangely
at odds with the thrusting, devil-take-the-hindmost atmosphere of post-communism where his credo of
“living in truth” had little place.

Havel’s compassionate attitude to Roma was deeply unpopular since the rapid growth of thus minority
was perceived as an ever encroaching threat. In 1991 a comparative international poll found that 91
percent of Czechoslovaks held unfavorable views of Roma, a far higher degree of antipathy toward an
ethnic group than was expressed by any other European nation included in the survey (Times Mirror
1991). This widespread dislike found public expression in many ways, even emerging in the unlikely
context of a beauty contest. When asked on national TV about her ambitions in life, a contestant
for the title of Miss Czech-Slovak 1993 replied simply: “I want to become a public prosecutor so
that I can cleanse my town of all its brown-skinned inhabitants.” In the storm of publicity which
followed, university entrant Magdalena Babicka explained that it had all been just an embarrassing
misunderstanding (Stewart 1993).

The antagonism was not limited to verbal assaults. The confused conditions of rapid economic flux
and an uncertain legal interregnum encouraged the emergence of neo-fascist groups which had more
direct ways of expressing their feelings. These ranged from skinhead gangs to a Ku Klux Klan and a
“White League” (Bílá liga). Racially motivated attacks and even murders of Roma began to
increase-with accusations that the police sometimes looked on as disinterested bystanders (Tritt
1992:93-109). One neo-Nazi skinhead, proud owner of a Wehrmacht helmet, boasted of shooting Roma
with a rifle from his Prague balcony-for sport (David and Serotek 1991 ).


On November 24, 1991, several hundred skinheads marched down Wenceslas Square shouting “Gypsies to
the gas chamber!” “Blacks raus!” “Czechs for Czechs!” “Oi, oi, liquidate ROI!” (the Romani Civic
Initiative Party), “Sčuka [the chair of ROI] will hang!” Eventually they marched through Žižkov, a
neighborhood where many Roma live, shouting “White Žižkov!” As they walked, some non-Romani
inhabitants clapped and waved out of their windows. (Lidové noviny, 25 November 1991, quoted in
Tritt 1992:3)


Apart from the racist attacks the most direct and widespread effect of post-communism for Roma was
unemployment. In spite of the relatively low overall unemployment rate in the Czech lands-around 3
percent in 1992-this actually represented a rise of 3 percent from the full-employment economy of
communism. This meant real hardship for those who were victims of the shake-out-mainly the old, the
young, women, and unskilled workers. Many Romani workers came into these categories and, of all
ethnic groups, the Roma undoubtedly suffered worst of all.

The situation was even starker in Slovakia with an unemployment rate up to five times that of the
Czech lands (Plichtová 1993: 18). Here, too, Roma were often laid off and formed high proportions
of the newly unemployed. At the end of 1991 in the large town of Rimavská Sobota (Central Slovakia)
where Roma were in the minority, almost two-thirds of the 6,530 persons known to be unemployed were
Roma (Tritt 1992:78).

Apart from being among the first to lose their jobs, Roma suffered major difficulties in restarting
work. On the whole Roma were unskilled workers with few qualifications and therefore at a
disadvantage in seeking any new employment resulting from restructuring. A more important factor
was that they now suffered discrimination on an unprecedented scale when applying for advertised
vacancies-even for unskilled jobs. In spite of regulations forbidding discriminatory hiring
practices, many local employment offices openly displayed job details which included stipulations
that applicants should not be Roma. This practice was widespread both in the Czech lands and
Slovakia (Tritt 1992:76-90; Guy 1991).

These developments had been predicted with chilling accuracy as long ago as 1979 in the Charter 77
report, which accused the Communist administration of deliberately perpetuating the disadvantaged
situation of Roma in order to use them as a flexible and compliant reserve pool of industrial
labor.


In the current economic situation, the powers-that-be need the Romani minority to remain in the
position which it is in now: uneducated, without clear prospects, and ready to move from one end of
the republic to the other in search of unskilled work without knowing where they are going to live.
The existence of unskilled labor is not, however, a normal or inevitable consequence of economic
development.... The demand for unskilled labor will then fall, threatening the Roma with massive
unemployment which will expose this ruthlessly urbanized minority to extreme pressures, and fuse
their social ostracism and material oppression with a new ethnic consciousness, all the stronger
the more cruelly it is today suppressed. (Charter 77 1979b:7)


Political tensions between the two partners in the Republic had been mounting throughout 1992 and
were eventually resolved by still further separation in what was dubbed the “Velvet Divorce.” On 1
January 1993 the country was divided and Slovakia became a sovereign state for the first time in
its history. All too soon these political changes were to have major implications for the life of
Roma. In the early 1970s I wrote that Slovakia was “the homeland of virtually all of contemporary
Czechoslovakia’s adult Roma” (above, page 16) but by the early 1990s Roma had been established in
the Czech lands for well over forty years and, in spite of complex patterns of migration,
settlement, and remigration, perhaps as many as two-thirds of those living in the Czech lands had
been born there (Gross 1994:vi).

The 1991 Census might have thrown light on this matter as Roma were given the right to identify
themselves as such for the first time since the interwar republic. As it turned out, less than a
third of the estimated 400,000 Roma in Czechoslovakia took this option (Plichtová 1993:17). This
small proportion was explained partly by “a low level of ethnic awareness” (ibid.) but, far more
plausibly, by the realistic fear that to label themselves in official records as Roma was to invite
further bureaucratic repression in the future. Many Roma simply thought it safer to camouflage
themselves as Czechs, Slovaks, or Hungarians.

Roma were right to fear more trouble ahead. But, in the event, the strategy of adopting another
nationality proved of little help to those living in the Czech lands when a carefully drafted
citizenship law came into force with the creation of the new state. As a bizarre consequence of the
previous citizenship rules, anyone under forty whose parents were registered as Slovak, was deemed
to be Slovak also. Consequently almost all Roma living in the Czech Republic at the start of 1993
were regarded as Slovak citizens, irrespective of where they were born and even of whether they had
ever been to Slovakia in their lives (Gross 1993; Borger 1994:13).

For anyone other than an ethnic Czech it was necessary to make a special application and meet
stringent conditions in order to gain Czech citizenship. These requirements included proof of
permanent registered residence in the Czech lands for at least two years, no criminal record for
the previous five years, no criminal proceedings pending in Slovakia, and no taxes owing in
Slovakia. All of these posed considerable problems far Roma. Difficulties in obtaining residence
registration had not eased with the ending of communism and many were technically ineligible on
this count, even though they had lived in the Czech lands for longer than the required period.
Likewise many adult Roma, estimated as up to 50 percent, had convictions-though mostly for minor
offences such as pilfering state property-while the last two criteria involved obtaining the
relevant documentation from Bratislava. In some cases personal visits were needed and a wearisome
trek from office to office to plead with unhelpful officials. This involved process was complicated
immeasurably for the Roma by their lack of technical expertise, financial resources and-in many
cases-basic literacy (Gross 1993).

This law did attract a limited level of international protest. The CSCE High Commissioner on
National Minorities “strongly urged that such legislation be changed,” and U.S. Congress members
asked the prime minister to alter what they described as “the most extensive revocation of
citizenship since the end of the Second World War.” Czech Premier Václav Klaus scornfully dismissed
these condemnations as “insignificant,” and even Havel, now reelected as Czech President, publicly
defended the law (Gross 1994).

Reaction to these new measures was very mixed. In Cheb (West Bohemia), where officials were said to
be sympathetic, less than 10 percent of the town’s Roma appeared to have applied for Czech
citizenship seven months after the changes, while in the nearby large industrial town of Plzeň,
this figure was estimated to be between 3 1 and 62 percent (Gross 1993). More important, though,
was the response of Czech officials to the many Roma without Czech citizenship. What would happen
to them?

Surprisingly, the consequences of national legislation seemed to depend on local interpretation,
which varied widely. Shortly before the division of the state a Czech ethnographer, working for the
Federal Presidency at the Department of Human Rights and Humanitarian Issues, clearly identified
the problem. It stemmed from devolution following the ending of Communist centralism since now
“[t]he Federal Government has no legal form by which it can force local authorities to change their
decisions, especially in the Czech Republic. Sovereignty of the local government exists in most
fields” (quoted in Tritt 1992: 10). In this case the democratic transfer of power to local level
had resulted in a situation where the constitutional rights of Romani citizens now depended on the
opinions of minor functionaries.

Although no wholesale deportations of Roma back to Slovakia were envisaged, some officials hoped
that similar results might be achieved by attrition. Various local authorities throughout the Czech
Republic told human rights lawyers that Roma without Czech citizenship “would be treated like
foreigners in future and would lose their benefits under the law.” These could include
unemployment, health, welfare, and insurance benefits as well as the loss of rights to vote, obtain
passports, and purchase privatization coupons (Gross 1993 ). A later report showed that these
threats were being put into practice (Gross 1994:vi).

In parallel with the new citizenship law the Prosecutor General submitted a national “migration
law” in December 1992 to protect places “endangered by migration.” This was justified by
unsubstantiated reports that month that 2,000 Roma had migrated from Slovakia to beat the deadline
for the breakup of Czechoslovakia. The proposed law required visitors to be approved by local
councils, to pay a tariff if they stayed for more the five days, and to be subject to police
inspection. Unauthorized visitors were liable to eviction and their hosts to imprisonment or fines
of more than £2,000. After an outcry from Czech legal experts and accusations of Stalinism, the law
was withdrawn, but local authorities still had recourse to their own migration bylaws to carry out
evictions. Meanwhile the Minister of the Interior, former dissident Jan Ruml, speculated about
reintroducing the previous regulation from Communist times requiring foreigners, now “including
Slovaks,” to register with the police if they remained longer than three days in spite of
assurances about freedom of movement when the “divorce” was being negotiated (Greenberg 1993a).

I had argued earlier that postwar Romani population movement to the Czech lands was best understood
as that of migrant workers flocking to work opportunities (above, pages 28-32). Twenty years later
here was the corollary of a developed industrial state which had first encouraged such workers,
then had outgrown the need for them, and now was attempting to deny them the right to remain where
they had labored, raised families, and, in many cases, had been born. It is sadly appropriate that
at a time when the Czech Republic is seeking to emulate and join the European Union, it displays
some of the most inhuman yet characteristic features of its leading member states. It is
significant that in June 1993, the Council of Europe set no conditions on minority rights for
admitting the Czech Republic as a member-but it was otherwise for Slovakia.

In Slovakia the effects of the political division of the country were more muted. But here,
although Roma were not faced with immediate withdrawal of state benefits as a consequence of the
removal of their citizenship, they remained vulnerable to similar threats to be realized in other
ways. In September 1993 the Slovak Premier, Vladimir Meciar, paid a visit to the town of Spišská
Nová Ves in East Slovakia, the administrative center of a district with one of the highest
proportions of Roma in the whole of Slovakia. There he proposed that family allowances of Roma
should be lowered to help cut “extensive reproduction of the socially unadaptable and mentally
backward population.” In the furor that followed international Romani organizations and the Simon
Wiesenthal Center accused Meciar of adopting “the thinking and diction of nazism” and called on the
Council of Europe to reconsider the membership of Slovakia, its newest member. Meanwhile the Slovak
journalist Karel Hirman, who had reported the story for the official Czech news agency (ČTK), was
condemned by Meciar as a tool of an international plot to bring about the “disintegration” of
Slovakia and threatened with a libel action and two years in prison (Greenberg 1993b).

Since that time Meciar has been more mindful of his public image in the West. In September 1995,
for example, he attended a ceremony in the village of Nálepkovo, East Slovakia, where the
foundation stone for a new settlement was being laid. Whether such symbolic gestures signify
practical intervention to improve the real prospects for Roma is doubtful, as the news report made
clear.


The settlement of forty-six wooden houses [at Nálepkovo] is intended for Roma, who make up half of
the unemployed in that area, where factories that once employed them have been closing down or
turning to labor from Ukraine. The ČTK report did not say whether Romani organizations considered
the project to be a welcome relief and sign of support from the government, or to be a
segregationist solution. (Lemon 1995)


Nálepkovo lies only seven miles from Spišská Nová Ves and the surrounding district provides good
examples of the wide range of conditions that still exists following the uneven development of the
Communist era. When I had undertaken my original research in this district in the early 1970s, the
settlement at Letanovce had been one of the most remote with a complete lack of basic amenities. In
March 1991, twenty years later, things had hardly changed. In spite of a visit by Havel the
previous year with promises of improvement, living conditions were appalling. A cluster of about
forty ramshackle wooden huts stood isolated in a sea of mud. A rough field track linked the
settlement to the Slovak village over a mile away. In the other direction lay an attractive area of
wooded hills and ravines called, by a strange irony, the “Slovak Paradise” (Slovenský Raj). There
was still no electricity or sanitation and-even worse-no safe drinking water. Numbers living in
these shantytown conditions had increased in the past year since rising unemployment among Roma in
the Czech lands had driven some to remigrate to their original settlements where living was cheaper
(Guy 1991).

In contrast two-thirds of the Roma living in the equally dilapidated settlement at nearby Žehra,
perched on the steep hillside above the main road, had been resettled in October 1990 into a small
estate of attractive low-built blocks of family flats. This development was located on the edge of
the Slovak village and even included a cultural center for communal use. The Slovak village
officials seemed genuinely pleased with what had been achieved-but pointed out that the estate
represented the completion of a phase of an earlier Communist project. Now no new funds were
forthcoming to improve the situation of those families left stranded in the original settlement
(Guy 1991).


Prospects for the Future

One Saturday in May 1995 in the quiet town of Žďár nad Sázavou three youths spent the evening
drinking and chatted about trying out a new baseball bat. Soon after they broke into the home of a
Romani family and started smashing the furniture. When Tibor Berky, the house owner, tried to
intervene they beat him to death in front of his wife and children with repeated blows to the back
of the head. In this town, about 70 miles east of Prague, there were only 120 Roma out of a total
of 26,000 inhabitants. There was no reason why the victim should have been singled out, other than
the fact that he was a Rom and lived nearby. When questioned the attackers told police they
supported a right-wing skinhead movement (Lidové noviny 1995).

This incident was yet another in the spiraling toll of racially motivated attacks in the Czech
Republic, 160 during 1994 alone according to a recent Interior Ministry report. The report stated
that “most of the crimes were perpetrated by skinheads or youths affiliated to right-wing
movements. Most of the victims were Gypsies” (ibid.). The brutal murder of Tibor Berky was widely
reported at home and abroad, prompting Premier Klaus to convene a special meeting of government
ministers where he gave vent to his frustration: “The situation is untenable and must not
continue.... [This is] the straw that broke the camel’s back.” In response the Justice Minister
proposed stiffer penalties-life sentences for racially motivated murders and increased sentences
from three to five years for hate attacks (ibid.).

Whether such measures make much of an impact remains to be seen but in any case they deal with only
the most extreme manifestations of racism. Attacks on Roma by skinheads and others might be
dismissed as aberrations of a small and deviant minority were it not for the extent to which
virulently racist views are held and expressed at every level of Czech and Slovak society. The
Helsinki Watch report is one of many sources to give a selection of these, often returning to the
recurrent theme of gas chambers. In this context the Czech citizenship law and Meciar’s comments
about measures to reduce unhealthy overpopulation should be seen as deliberate attempts by both
states, sanctioned by the wishes of the majority of their citizens, to use administrative methods
to rid themselves of “their” Roma once they had become a burden. Skinhead attacks and the
citizenship law are located on the same continuum, and the distance between them is less than might
be assumed.

I well remember a conversation in 1986 with the mother of a Czech friend who sharply condemned
racism in the West. Fully agreeing with her criticisms I then mentioned discrimination against Roma
in Czechoslovakia. Without hesitating for a moment she carefully explained that this was a
different matter altogether since “Gypsies are not really human-you only have to see how they
behave.” She was no skinhead youth but a well-educated, respectable medical specialist in her
fifties and in other respects a likeable and intelligent person-yet it was not hard to see where
her arguments could lead.

The 1979 Charter 77 report had accused the Communists of deliberately preventing the upward social
mobility and integration of Roma in order to keep them as a separate, highly vulnerable pool of
unskilled labor. According to this view the Communists could be blamed for the predicament of Roma
who had been thrown out of employment in post-Communist conditions. While this was undoubtedly the
practical outcome of policies ostensibly aimed at assimilation, it is a partial view of Communist
intentions. While the Czechoslovak Communists did have a continuing and expanding need for
unskilled labor, they had other means of securing this-by attracting labor from less-developed
neighboring Communist states and eventually by importing what amounted to indentured workers from
Vietnam and Cuba in exchange for arms deals. These dark-skinned workers, too, were to become the
target of racist attacks in the new conditions of post-communism (Tritt 1992:2).

The mistake of the Communists was not that they attempted to draw Roma into the labor market,
albeit at the lowest level-indeed tens of thousands of Roma were already choosing this path to a
better future. The real failure lay in their complete inability to appreciate the extent to which
racism at every level of society, including within the Party, was acting to prevent truly effective
help reaching the Roma, which alone would enable them to move out of their social and economic
ghetto in significant numbers. Even more seriously, in denying any positive value to Romani
identity they validated and strengthened existing denigratory attitudes, inflaming the problem
rather than sweeping it out of existence as had been the intention. In this way it can be argued
that racism lay at the heart of the Communist policy and undermined its many positive achievements.

As in so many other aspects of Communist practice it was felt that going through the motions of
building socialism according to correct principles was enough to ensure success while consciousness
was left unexamined. Beneath the outward conformity the old pernicious attitudes lay undisturbed
and unchallenged, waiting to reemerge into the open with the ending of Communist rule. This was the
true legacy of the Communist regime and one which its successors seem equally unfit to resolve.

Legal frameworks and human rights were as much part of the Communist statute books as they are now,
enshrined in the new legislation of the democratic Republics. But, as before, the outward semblance
of legality is meaningless without the rigorous and conscientious enforcement of constitutional
law, combined with an extensive education program to help many Czechs and Slovaks come to an
understanding of the endemic racism of their society. Some progress has been made, as in the
cessation of coercive sterilizations, but in many other respects the signs are far from reassuring.

As part of this process some protection must be given to the Roma to shield them from the most
savage effects of current changes. The danger, already being realized, is that the tumultuous
transition to a market economy will reduce many of the most vulnerable Roma to penury, driving them
in ever larger numbers to crime, prostitution, and abject dependency on state benefits. This would
only serve to confirm the negative stereotype, setting back the time scale for harmonious
coexistence by years. Romani political parties, cultural organizations, and media have a crucial
part to play at this decisive moment, but there is a fear that they will continue to be vulnerable
to the factionalism that has severely weakened their effect in the past.

Looking to the future the potential outcomes for the Roma are symbolized by two diametrically
opposed views-the chilling dismissal of their humanity by the well-educated Prague doctor set
against the quiet pride of the unsophisticated Slovak village officials from Žehra, who spoke of
how the council had acted to transform immeasurably the conditions of  “their” Roma. Perhaps the
officials’ attitude betrayed traces of patronizing condescension, but, more important, it
acknowledged that, in Žehra, Slovaks and Roma were fellow villagers and-more broadly- showed a
clear recognition that somehow the fate of their two peoples was bound up together.

In both republics the demographic time bomb ticks on as Roma continue to grow in numbers at a far
faster rate than Czechs and Slovaks. The problems this expanding minority poses for the proud
possessors of their newly minted nation-states will not go away by themselves and must be solved
one way or other. It is the “other” that is terrifying.

References

Borger, Julian. 1994 “How Many Forms Must a Czech Gypsy Fill In?” The Guardian, 23 September 1994.

Charter 77. 1979 “Dokument 23 o situaci Cikánů v Československu.” Listy 2, 47, Prague: Charter 77,
and in English trans. by Mark Jackson in Labour Focus, I 979 March/April (cited as Charter 1979a) &
May/June (cited as Charter 1979b).

Czech Socialist Republic. 1969 Zákon č.2/1969 Sb. ČSR o zřízení ministerstev a jiných ústředních
orgánů (Law no.2/1969 of the Czech Socialist Republic on establishing ministries and other central
bodies), 8 January 1969.

----------. 1970 Usnesení vlády ČSR č.279 ke zprávě o současném stavu řešení otázek cikánského
obyvatelstva v ČSR (Government decree no. 279 of the Czech Socialist Republic in relation to the
contemporary state of affairs in solving questions of Gypsy inhabitants in the CSR), 25 November
1970.

David, Tomáš, and Filip Serotek. 1991 Punks in Prague, documentary from an evening of punk films,
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Greenberg, Susan. 1993a “Victims of the Velvet Divorce.” The Guardian, 26 January.

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In: D. Tong (ed.). Gypsies. An Interdisciplinary Reader. New York. Garland. 1998. pp. 13-68.


________________________________

[1] “Rom“ (plural “Roma” is the name used by these people to refer to themselves. Names like the
more familiar “Gypsy” and so on were coined by non-Roma.

[2] Thompson 1968: 9, 10.

[3] Clébert 1967: 246.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Puxon 1973.

[6] Fanon 1970: 8.

[7] Horváthová 1964.

[8] Hence the French term “bohémien” for Roma.

[9] Clébert 1967: 68.

[10] At Spiš castle in Slovakia.

[11] Poissioner 1855, quoted in Horváthová 1964: 48.

[12] Clébert 1967: 63, 134.

[13] Jamnická-Šmerglová 1955: 50, 51. Similar treatment was sometimes given to vagrants (Horváthová
1964: 57).

[14] Drobil, quoted in Horváthová 1964: 73.

[15] Horváthová 1964: 113.

[16] Schwicker 1883: 69, quoted in Horváthová 1964: 100.

[17] Taylor 1964: 17.

[18] Clébert 1967: 102.

[19] Taylor 1964: 19.

[20] Straka 1964: 77.

[21] Nováček 1968: 22.

[22] Horváthová 1964: 155.

[23] Jamnická-Šmerglová 1955: 65.

[24] Nováček 1968: 25.

[25] Ibid., 87.

[26] Jamnická-Šmerglová 1955: 80.

[27] However, a 1939 police report estimates this figure at 13,000. (Kenrick and Puxon 1972: 135).

[28] Ibid.

[29] 1958 estimate.

[30] Práce mezi cikánským obyvatelstvem (Prague ÚJPV, 1959) (hereafter cited as “Handbook”).

[31] “Handbook,” 5.

[32] Ibid., 12.

[33] Law 74’s definition is little help here: “§2. A nomadic life is led by someone who, whether in
a group or individually, wanders from place to place and avoids honest work or makes his living in
some disputable way…”

[34] “The departure of the Rom population to industrial centers is an objective process.”

[35] Petersen 1970: 50.

[36] Davidová 1970a.

[37] Brown, Schwarzweller, and Mangalm 1970: 116.

[38] Petersen 1968: 287.

[39] Quoted in Hübschmannová 1968.

[40] Czech Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs 1969.

[41] Quoted in Davidová 1970a: 306.

[42] Quoted in ibid.: 296.

[43] Quoted in ibid.: 295.

[44] Puxon 1973: 13.

[45] “Handbook,” 6.

[46] Ibid., 28.

[47] For example, in English law Gypsies are defined as a social group, whereas researchers see
them as an ethnic group.

[48] Barth 1970:11.

[49] Sus 1961: 98.

[50] Svaz Cikánů-Romů 1969.

[51] Hoffman 1968: 17.

[52] The colloquial verb “to tell lies” in Slovak is cigánit (literally “to Gypsy).

[53] Quoted in Fanon 1970: 82.

[54] Quoted in Hübschmannová 1960: 65.

[55] Middleton and Tait 1958.

[56] Ibid., 6.

[57] Ibid., 20-1.

[58] Ibid., 1.

[59] Lineton 1973.

[60] Horváthová 1964: 239.

[61] The vast majority and the subjekt of this essay.

[62] Davidová 1970b.

[63] Geismar 1971: 191.

[64] Sus 1961: 111.

[65] Machonin et al. 1969: 537.

[66] Quoted in Hübschmannová 1960 and in a different translation in Penrick and Puxon 1972: 209.