Lacrimi de Chiciură
2nd September 2011, 18:08
So I am re-posting this from revleft's Romani Solidarity Group (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=177) since it will probably not get much attention there.
I think the All-Russian Romani Union, sometimes called the All-Russian Gypsy Union, is an interesting aspect of history that is often overlooked and ignored. It goes to show the level of marginalization of Roma issues, in that, in other discussions of nationality issues/deportations in the Soviet Union I have had here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/german-soviet-republici-t115835/index.html?t=115835), while generally there is awareness of crimes committed against other nationalities, few would seem to even be aware of the plight of Soviet Romanies. For example, this (apologetic) article (http://web.archive.org/web/20020917111927/www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/AllianceIssues/All42-Settlements.html) on the issue of forced resettlement, highlights that Krushchev's secret speech left unmentioned Volga Germans, Crimean Tartars and Meshketian Turks, yet itself makes no mention of the repression against Romani people!
As the EU has declared 2005-2015, the "Decade of Roma Inclusion" (http://www.romadecade.org/about), and yet we are over half-way through this decade and all over Europe, Romani people continue to be one of the most highly marginalized, excluded, impoverished and repressed nationalities, continue to face unjust deportations (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11020429) and pogroms (http://www.ww4report.com/node/6385), it shows capitalism's utter incapacity to end Roma-Sinti marginalization. As Malcolm X said, "You can't have capitalism without racism." I hope that this old example of Roma people rising up with the rest of the international working class to embrace socialist revolution and liberation can serve as some form of inspiration that a better world is possible for Romani people and for everyone.
In the fifteen years after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Roma flourished. In 1925 the All-Russian Romani Union, led by Alexander V. Germano, was formed, and Gypsies acquired nationality status. In 1927 a Romani alphabet was devised by a group of Romani and Russian teachers. Four schools for Romani students were opened, and others offered some instruction in Romani. Texts, books, and collections of poetry and stories were published in Romany by Romany writers Ivan Rom-Lebedev, N. A. Pankov, Krustalev, N. Dudarova, and others. Two journals, Nevo Drom and Romani Zoria (New Road; Romani Dawn), were published in Romani from 1928 to 1937. In 1931 the Moscow Teatr "Romen" (Romani Theater) was created. For the first three years it performed in Romani; after that it played in Russian. For many years the theater was the center of a Romani cultural renaissance and drew Roma (and other Gypsies) to Moscow from all over the country.
In 1937, however, everything but the theater was "liquidated" (the Romani Union even earlier, in 1931), as Gypsies did not, according to Stalinist reasoning, have a territory or a "stable culture." In the late 1930s, thousands of Roma, under increased pressure to settle and collectivize, were sent en masse to Siberia or shot. Some all-Gypsy collectives were disbanded; the members were forced to integrate with other collectives. In the 1940s entire collectives were destroyed and at least 30,000-35,000 Soviet Roma were killed in the genocide during the Nazi occupation of 1941-1945. After the war, surviving collectives were disbanded by Stalin, and members were made to settle in mixed-nationality collectives. Even so, some Roma began to enter universities during this period, shifting from developing literacy in Romani to becoming educated in Russian. These intellectuals cut a path for some Roma to enter the Communist party and to build academic and professional careers.
Gypsies - History and Cultural Relations (http://www.everyculture.com/Russia-Eurasia-China/Gypsies-History-and-Cultural-Relations.html)
In 1926, the Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros) conceded that Gypsies posed serious challenges to the Soviet Union's all-encompassing modernization aims. In a memorandum detailing its recent successes in educating minority peoples, Narkompros singled out the empire's Gypsies as a people so peculiar, perplexing, and "backward" that they had thus far escaped the focused attention of political-enlightenment workers. "This nationality," Narkompros officials explained,
is extremely scattered--it leads a nomadic way of life and for now has settled only in small part. It lacks ... a written language and is almost universally illiterate; it is isolated from surrounding nationalities; as a consequence of economic needs and poverty, a number of Gypsies tend to such antisocial pursuits as horse-stealing, thievery, begging, and the like; and this provokes distrust among the settled population.
Yet despite their overwhelming "backwardness" and subversive tendencies, Narkompros declared, Gypsies were "still another people [naradnast'] that has begun to awake to conscious civic life and to lay their claim to cultural-enlightenment activity." (1)
That the Soviet Union's Gypsies were undergoing a national awakening--or any awakening at all--initially came as encouraging news to Narkompros and other Soviet officials. Soviet nationality policy, after all, did not provide officials with a detailed plan for the transformation of "backward" Gypsy nomads into conscious Soviet citizens. Yet nationality policy did promise minority peoples a generous platform from which even Gypsies could smoothly transition from backwardness to enlightened Sovietism. (2) In the first years of Soviet rule, few officials expected representatives of an unheard-of Romani intelligentsia to step forward as political entrepreneurs, let alone to demand that the Soviet state fulfill its promises to all nationalities, and to Roma in particular. Fewer still expected that an organization by the name of the All-Russian Gypsy Union would challenge reigning notions of what it meant to be Soviet. It even occurred to a few officials in Moscow that the appearance of a group of Romani intellectuals preaching the word of Lenin could be nothing more than a typical Gypsy ruse. For a brief period in the mid-1920s, however, many Soviet officials welcomed the MI-Russian Gypsy Union and its Romani youth activists as a potentially convenient answer to the empire's thorny "Gypsy question."
This article examines the short-lived All-Russian Gypsy Union and the political struggles of its organizers, the heirs of Moscow's prerevolutionary Romani intelligentsia. A product of the largely unscripted opportunities offered minority peoples by Soviet nationality policy, the All-Russian Gypsy Union provided Romani activists a space within which they fashioned themselves into citizens on a civilizing mission and developed the political, cultural, and social skills necessary for engaging the Soviet nationality regime. In their brief tenure as All-Russian Gypsy Union members, Romani activists assimilated the language and mores of Sovietism and learned to make effective political use of both their minority status and ascribed "backwardness." Through their embrace of Soviet nationality policy, Moscow's Romani activists assumed the Bolshevik mission to incarnate the merger between civilizer and civilized. Shrewdly asserting themselves not only as "backward Gypsies" but also as Soviet citizens, All-Russian Gypsy Union activists integrated themselves and others into the Soviet project. Although "Gypsiness" was officially regarded as the antithesis of the advanced civilization promised Roma by the October Revolution, the All-Russian Gypsy Union and its Romani activists nonetheless came to embody the Soviet ideal of a modern citizenry composed of conscious, disciplined, self-mastering, and enlightened individuals. (3)
"Backward Gypsies," Soviet citizens: the all-Russian Gypsy Union, 1925-28 (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6976/is_2_11/ai_n57449516/) I would also quite like to hear from our resident Stalinists how dissolving the union and declaring entire ethnic groups to be "enemies of socialism" could possibly be reconciled with genuine socialism. How clear a look at the evolution of Soviet national policy makes it to see that the revolution degenerated and was betrayed !!
I think the All-Russian Romani Union, sometimes called the All-Russian Gypsy Union, is an interesting aspect of history that is often overlooked and ignored. It goes to show the level of marginalization of Roma issues, in that, in other discussions of nationality issues/deportations in the Soviet Union I have had here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/german-soviet-republici-t115835/index.html?t=115835), while generally there is awareness of crimes committed against other nationalities, few would seem to even be aware of the plight of Soviet Romanies. For example, this (apologetic) article (http://web.archive.org/web/20020917111927/www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/AllianceIssues/All42-Settlements.html) on the issue of forced resettlement, highlights that Krushchev's secret speech left unmentioned Volga Germans, Crimean Tartars and Meshketian Turks, yet itself makes no mention of the repression against Romani people!
As the EU has declared 2005-2015, the "Decade of Roma Inclusion" (http://www.romadecade.org/about), and yet we are over half-way through this decade and all over Europe, Romani people continue to be one of the most highly marginalized, excluded, impoverished and repressed nationalities, continue to face unjust deportations (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11020429) and pogroms (http://www.ww4report.com/node/6385), it shows capitalism's utter incapacity to end Roma-Sinti marginalization. As Malcolm X said, "You can't have capitalism without racism." I hope that this old example of Roma people rising up with the rest of the international working class to embrace socialist revolution and liberation can serve as some form of inspiration that a better world is possible for Romani people and for everyone.
In the fifteen years after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Roma flourished. In 1925 the All-Russian Romani Union, led by Alexander V. Germano, was formed, and Gypsies acquired nationality status. In 1927 a Romani alphabet was devised by a group of Romani and Russian teachers. Four schools for Romani students were opened, and others offered some instruction in Romani. Texts, books, and collections of poetry and stories were published in Romany by Romany writers Ivan Rom-Lebedev, N. A. Pankov, Krustalev, N. Dudarova, and others. Two journals, Nevo Drom and Romani Zoria (New Road; Romani Dawn), were published in Romani from 1928 to 1937. In 1931 the Moscow Teatr "Romen" (Romani Theater) was created. For the first three years it performed in Romani; after that it played in Russian. For many years the theater was the center of a Romani cultural renaissance and drew Roma (and other Gypsies) to Moscow from all over the country.
In 1937, however, everything but the theater was "liquidated" (the Romani Union even earlier, in 1931), as Gypsies did not, according to Stalinist reasoning, have a territory or a "stable culture." In the late 1930s, thousands of Roma, under increased pressure to settle and collectivize, were sent en masse to Siberia or shot. Some all-Gypsy collectives were disbanded; the members were forced to integrate with other collectives. In the 1940s entire collectives were destroyed and at least 30,000-35,000 Soviet Roma were killed in the genocide during the Nazi occupation of 1941-1945. After the war, surviving collectives were disbanded by Stalin, and members were made to settle in mixed-nationality collectives. Even so, some Roma began to enter universities during this period, shifting from developing literacy in Romani to becoming educated in Russian. These intellectuals cut a path for some Roma to enter the Communist party and to build academic and professional careers.
Gypsies - History and Cultural Relations (http://www.everyculture.com/Russia-Eurasia-China/Gypsies-History-and-Cultural-Relations.html)
In 1926, the Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros) conceded that Gypsies posed serious challenges to the Soviet Union's all-encompassing modernization aims. In a memorandum detailing its recent successes in educating minority peoples, Narkompros singled out the empire's Gypsies as a people so peculiar, perplexing, and "backward" that they had thus far escaped the focused attention of political-enlightenment workers. "This nationality," Narkompros officials explained,
is extremely scattered--it leads a nomadic way of life and for now has settled only in small part. It lacks ... a written language and is almost universally illiterate; it is isolated from surrounding nationalities; as a consequence of economic needs and poverty, a number of Gypsies tend to such antisocial pursuits as horse-stealing, thievery, begging, and the like; and this provokes distrust among the settled population.
Yet despite their overwhelming "backwardness" and subversive tendencies, Narkompros declared, Gypsies were "still another people [naradnast'] that has begun to awake to conscious civic life and to lay their claim to cultural-enlightenment activity." (1)
That the Soviet Union's Gypsies were undergoing a national awakening--or any awakening at all--initially came as encouraging news to Narkompros and other Soviet officials. Soviet nationality policy, after all, did not provide officials with a detailed plan for the transformation of "backward" Gypsy nomads into conscious Soviet citizens. Yet nationality policy did promise minority peoples a generous platform from which even Gypsies could smoothly transition from backwardness to enlightened Sovietism. (2) In the first years of Soviet rule, few officials expected representatives of an unheard-of Romani intelligentsia to step forward as political entrepreneurs, let alone to demand that the Soviet state fulfill its promises to all nationalities, and to Roma in particular. Fewer still expected that an organization by the name of the All-Russian Gypsy Union would challenge reigning notions of what it meant to be Soviet. It even occurred to a few officials in Moscow that the appearance of a group of Romani intellectuals preaching the word of Lenin could be nothing more than a typical Gypsy ruse. For a brief period in the mid-1920s, however, many Soviet officials welcomed the MI-Russian Gypsy Union and its Romani youth activists as a potentially convenient answer to the empire's thorny "Gypsy question."
This article examines the short-lived All-Russian Gypsy Union and the political struggles of its organizers, the heirs of Moscow's prerevolutionary Romani intelligentsia. A product of the largely unscripted opportunities offered minority peoples by Soviet nationality policy, the All-Russian Gypsy Union provided Romani activists a space within which they fashioned themselves into citizens on a civilizing mission and developed the political, cultural, and social skills necessary for engaging the Soviet nationality regime. In their brief tenure as All-Russian Gypsy Union members, Romani activists assimilated the language and mores of Sovietism and learned to make effective political use of both their minority status and ascribed "backwardness." Through their embrace of Soviet nationality policy, Moscow's Romani activists assumed the Bolshevik mission to incarnate the merger between civilizer and civilized. Shrewdly asserting themselves not only as "backward Gypsies" but also as Soviet citizens, All-Russian Gypsy Union activists integrated themselves and others into the Soviet project. Although "Gypsiness" was officially regarded as the antithesis of the advanced civilization promised Roma by the October Revolution, the All-Russian Gypsy Union and its Romani activists nonetheless came to embody the Soviet ideal of a modern citizenry composed of conscious, disciplined, self-mastering, and enlightened individuals. (3)
"Backward Gypsies," Soviet citizens: the all-Russian Gypsy Union, 1925-28 (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6976/is_2_11/ai_n57449516/) I would also quite like to hear from our resident Stalinists how dissolving the union and declaring entire ethnic groups to be "enemies of socialism" could possibly be reconciled with genuine socialism. How clear a look at the evolution of Soviet national policy makes it to see that the revolution degenerated and was betrayed !!