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Roma (Gypsies) in the Soviet Union and the Moscow Teatr ‘Romen’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Alaina Lemon
Alaina Lemon*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

The Moscow Teatr “Romen,” dating back to 1931, is famous throughout the Soviet Union, and its performers have been some of the country's best-known. The Teatr “Romen” connects Roma from all over the country, and many who work there are related; three generations of a family may appear on the stage at one time. These families, along with Roma working as professionals, make up an lite within the Romani community in Moscow. They are the most outwardly assimilated (wearing European dress, etc.), most fluent and literate in Russian as well as Romani. These families usually move in different spheres than do Roma who live in villages around Moscow and work in cooperatives or as independent merchants, although extended family networks may include Roma of all spheres. Most studies of Gypsies (including those of non-Roma, such as Irish Travellers in the United Kingdom) assume a certain homogeneity of culture and of class:

The refusal to acknowledge Gypsy upward mobility in the context of a dominant society has also prevented research of class difference within Gypsy groups and created a sense of marginalized homogeneity that does not reflect reality.

The Teatr “Romen” is a case that demands such acknowledgment. Yet, in a sense, these élite performers are doubly marginal, both as performers and as ethnic outsiders who “threaten the rhetoric and narratives of nationalism.” Currently in the USSR, such narratives are in flux, as many national minorities demand greater cultural and political autonomy. Roma, however, are not demanding their own republic, and requests for schools and radio shows are often tempered by the assertion that, “this country has been kind to Gypsies.” Roma élites are also in a peculiar position: charged with representing Roma to outsiders, they are also concerned about maintaining the integrity of the urban community as Roma. Because of this, they must negotiate the interstitial area between cultures.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 19 , Issue 3: Special Issue - The Gypsies in Eastern Europe , Fall 1991 , pp. 359 - 372
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities of the USSR and Eastern Europe, Inc. 

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References

Notes

1. “Élite” urban Roma work in the health professions—there are several dentists and nurses and one surgeon—in academic positions, and as performers. Others work as grocery store managers, factory workers, and gardeners in the cities, as well as running several small cooperatives that make shirts and jewelry (From interviews and field observations, March, 1991; see also V.I. Ivashchenko, “Tsiganskoe schast'e,” Komsomolets, July 6, 1990, p. 2.).Google Scholar

Some also work on the informal markets, selling chocolate, vodka, cigarettes and gold, or telling fortunes. In Tsarist Russia, rural Roma repaired cooking vessels, worked as blacksmiths and jewelers, and were also merchants, horsetraders, veterinarians, and entertainers (A.P. Barranikov, Tsygane SSSR: kratki istorikoetnographicheskii ocherk, Tsentrizdat, Moscow, 1931, pp. 145). Some of these were settled well before the revolution in 1917 (A. Danilken, “The first Gypsy collective in Ukraine,” unpublished manuscript, 1990). After the revolution, some groups took up farming and factory work (I.M. Andronikova, “Evolutsiia zhilishcha russkikh tsygan,” Sovetskaia etnografiia, Moscow, 1970:4, pp. 31-45; A. Germano, “Tsygane” Bezbozhnik, 1928, no.1, pp. 11'13).Google Scholar

2. Beck, Sam, Review of Gypsies and the Holocaust: A Bibliography and Introductory Essay, by Gabrielle Tyrnauer, 1989, in Anthropology of East Europe Review, 1990, pp. 44'47.Google Scholar

3. Bauman notes that “the association between performance and disreputability has often been marked.” Because the performer is both feared and admired for his skill, he is marginalized. Richard Verbal Art as Performance, Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House Publishers, 1978, p. 29. See also Steven Mullaney, The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in in Renaissance England, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988, p. 9.Google Scholar

4. Trumpener, Katie, “Goddam Gipsy: People Without History and the Narratives of Nationalism,” in The Voice of the Past. Anxieties of Cultural Transmission in Post-Enlightenment Europe: Tradition, Folklore, Textuality, History, p. 2'59. Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford, 1990.Google Scholar

5. cf. Fabian, Johannes, Power and performance: Ethnographic explorations through proverbial wisdom and theater in Shaba Zaire, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.Google Scholar

6. See Bauman, p. 28. The challenge, as Bauman poses it, is to establish, “the continuity between the noticeable and public performance of cultural performances and the spontaneous, unscheduled, optional performance contexts of everyday life.”Google Scholar

7. The Bolshaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopedia of 1974 asserts that the Teatr “Romen” was to facilitate policies such as the Order of the Supreme Soviet of 1926, which provided land for those wishing to settle. (On these policies, see Bednota “Nadelenie zemlei tsygan, perekhodiashchikh k trudovoi zhizni, “ July 13, 1928; “Obo vsem, “ June 17, 1928; “Tsyganskie kolkhozy, “ July 18, 1929). The Order of 1956 was more strict, and forbade wandering completely. It is said to be the “only Soviet law which defines a crime on the basis of nationality” (N.G. Demeter, “Tsyganskoe schast'e”, Nedelia, September 4-10, 1989)Google Scholar

8. Rom-Lebedev, I.I., Ot tsyganskovo khora k Teatru “Romen”. Moscow: Isskustvo, 1990, p. 165.Google Scholar

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11. On tsiganshchina and Soviet popular music, see Robert Rothstein, in Slavic Review, 1980: 39/3, pp. 373'88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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14. Mikhailov, Semion, Tsyganskaia zaria, Moscow: Literatura i Voina, 1932.Google Scholar

15. Demeter, N.G., Semeinaia obriadnost’ tsigan v kontse xix-xx V. (Na primere etnicheskoi gruppy kelderari) Moscow: Dissertation of the ANSSR Institute of Ethnigraphy, 1987, p. 40; and Izvestiia, “Pervyi obrazets tsyganskoi pis'mennosti,” August 11, 1928, p. 4.Google Scholar

16. Indeed, the Romani tongue is a low-status language, considered a “forbidden gibberish” or “secret idiom” (Diane Tong, “Romani as Symbol: Sociolinguistic Stategies of the Gypsies of Thessalonika,” The Fifth Annual Meeting of the Gypsy Lore Society, 1983, pp. 179'187). It is, of course, not that Roma speak a “secret” language, but that the peoples around them do not learn it.Google Scholar

17. Nevo Drom, Romani language journal, Moscow, 1930-36.Google Scholar

18. Dudarova, N. and Pankov, N., Nevo Drom—Bukvario vash Bare Manushenge (Romani text), Moscow: Sentrizdat, 1928.Google Scholar

19. These are catalogued in the Lenin Library; Germano also records publications up to 1930, including articles.Google Scholar

20. Demeter, N.G., “Tsygane,” in Nedelia, September 4-10, 1989, p.Google Scholar

21. Rom-Lebedev, p. 174.Google Scholar

22. See also Yoors, Jan, Crossing, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971, which describes activities of Roma in the French resistance of World War II.Google Scholar

23. Malnick, Bertha, “The Moscow Gypsy Theater, “Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 1959, pp. 80'85.Google Scholar

24. Critical bricolage not only has “accompanied capitalist penetration into the Third World, “ (Jean Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance, University of Chicago Press, 1985 p. 198), but is present in socialist countries.Google Scholar

25. cf. Silverstein, Michael, “Language structure and linguistic ideology,” in The Elements: A Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels, April 20-21 ed., Paul R. Kline et al. Chicago Linguistic Society, 1979, and “Are Cultures Texts All the Way Down?” University of Chicago Seminar, Department of Anthropology, Feb 5, 1990.Google Scholar

26. Hill, Allette Olin, Mother Tongue, Father Time: A Decade of Linguistic Revolt, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986, ch. 2.Google Scholar

27. See Fitzpatrick, Sheila, “The Problem of Class Identity in NEP Society,” published in French translation in Annales , vol. 44, no. 2, 1989, pp. 251'272, for ways citizens adopted certain language and behavior in specifically Soviet institutional settings in order to project a proletarian identity. See also Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, New York: Overlook Press, 1973.Google Scholar

28. Interview, 1990.Google Scholar

29. Manush, Leksa (“K probleme muzykkal'novo fol'klora tsygan (istoki muzyki v Evrope”. Sovetskaia etnografiia, 1985:5, pp. 46'56) writes that Gypsies are “innately musical.” To give the name “innate” to an occupation that developed through historical specific events is misleading. See also Franz Liszt, The Gypsy in Music. Trans, by Edwin Evans, London: Willaim Reeves.Google Scholar

30. Gypsies are often assumed a priori to be criminals. However, accusations of kidnapping, for instance, are unfounded (Sheila Salo, “‘Stolen by Gypsies': The Kidnap Accusation in the United States” in Papers from the 8th and 9th Annual meetings of the Gypsy Lore Society, North American Chapter, 1988, pp. 25'41. See also A.V. Germano, Bibliografiia o tsyganakh, Moscow, 1930). Police surveillance and identification of Gypsies (including children) on principle as “potential criminals” is a common practice (Morten-Gotthold's review of: Polizei und “Zigeuner” : Strategien, Handlungsmeister und Altagstheorien im Polizeilichen Umgang mit Sinte und Roma, by Wolfgang Feuerhelm in Newsletter of the Gypsy Lore Society, vol. 13, no. 4, 1990, pp. 4'5).Google Scholar

31. Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 1983.Google Scholar

32. See Bourdieu, Pierre, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Translated by Richard Nice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33. Barranikov, A.P, p. 47.Google Scholar

34. Interview, 1990.Google Scholar

35. Interview, 1990 Google Scholar

36. Demeter, N.D., 1987 (above).Google Scholar

37. “Gypsies” and “Tsygane” are used to describe almost any travelling people: “Gypsy” is used to cover such groups as Irish Travellers, who are not Roma. Similarly, in Russia, “Tsygane” may be colloquially classed with Georgians or others as “Tatars” or “Chernie (Blacks).” Mandel describes a similar lumping of groups “targeted for assimilation” in West Berlin, as on a poster depicting a “generic foreigner.” (Ruth Mandel, “Ethnicity and Identity among Migrant Guestworkers in West Berlin” in Conflict, Migration and the Expression of Identity, ed. Nancie L. Gonzalez, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1989.)Google Scholar

Attempts to define the “pure Gypsy” is another analytic error (cf. Thomas Acton, “The Social Construction of the Ethnic Identity of Commercial Nomadic Groups,” Fourth Annual Meeting of the Gypsy Lore Society, ed. Joanne Grumet, pp. 423, 1982). Such logic may be based on pseudo-biological categories, such as those which characterized Third Reich policy when people classified as “pure Gypsies” were set aside for “cultural preserves,” while “mixed breeds” went to the camps. This logic may also be based upon behavioral or occupational categories.Google Scholar

The stigma of these modes of categorization help explain why it is so difficult to determine how many Gypsies, Roma and non-Roma, there are in the USSR. Officially, the number is 209,000, the highest concentrations being in Russia, Ukraine and Moldavia (Naselenie SSSR 1987, Statisticheskii Sbornik: 1988, p.99). As this number includes only those who carry passports marked “Tsygan” the actual population may be double the official figure. Many people claim a different nationality in order to avoid discrimination for being marked as a Tsygan (Gratton Puxon, Rom: Europe's Gypsies, Minority Rights Group, London, 1979, pp. 14'15).Google Scholar

38. Hancock, Ian, The Pariah Syndrome: Account of Gypsy Slavery and Prosecution, Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers, 1987.Google Scholar

39. Demeter, N.G., 1989.Google Scholar

40. See Trumpener, above.Google Scholar

41. Interviews, 1990; and Danilken (above), 1991.Google Scholar

42. Ivashchenko, V.I, “Tsiganskoe schast'e,” Komsomolets, July 6, 1990, p. 2.Google Scholar

43. Demeter, R.S. and Demeter, P.S., Obraztsy fol'klora keldera Moscow, 1981, and Tsygansko-Russki i Russko-Tsyganski slovar’ (Kelderarskii Dialekt) , “Russkii Iazik”: Moscow, 1990.Google Scholar