All-Russian Romani Union (1925-1931)

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

So I am re-posting this from revleft's Romani Solidarity Group 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, 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 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", 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 and pogroms, 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

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

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 !!

[Ismail]

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 !!

As with all nationality threads, it's quite simple: as Terry Martin notes in his book The Affirmative Action Empire, ethnic groups not associated with the USSR and its territories were considered breeding grounds for spies and saboteurs. Even Russians who worked in Manchuria were under suspicion simply for having connections outside of Soviet territory. It was no different for Finns, Germans, Koreans, etc.

As for Soviet nationalities policy, last time I checked ethnic groups gained in strength in each SSR, ASSR, etc. throughout the 1930's as educational opportunities opened up. So if you were Kazakh, Tuvan or Ukrainian you'd be fine. If you were Romanian, Iranian or from America then you weren't going to fare too well.

I don't see how the economic base of society is altered by the deportations, nor can I see how it shows that the revolution "degenerated," much less "betrayed."

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

As with all nationality threads, it's quite simple: as Terry Martin notes in his book The Affirmative Action Empire, ethnic groups not associated with the USSR and its territories were considered breeding grounds for spies and saboteurs. Even Russians who worked in Manchuria were under suspicion simply for having connections outside of Soviet territory. It was no different for Finns, Germans, Koreans, etc.

How were Romani people not associated with the USSR or its territories? They had been there for hundreds of years. Who exactly would Gypsies be spying and sabotaging for? The Nazis whose goal was to exterminate all of them?

For that matter, how were Volga Germans "not associated with the USSR and its territories" considering that they had their own soviet republic up until 1941?

Why were not all Russians suspect because their ethnic group had connections outside of Soviet territory?

As for Soviet nationalities policy, last time I checked ethnic groups gained in strength in each SSR, ASSR, etc. throughout the 1930's as educational opportunities opened up. So if you were Kazakh, Tuvan or Ukrainian you'd be fine. If you were Romanian, Iranian or from America then you weren't going to fare too well.

Oh, so under a genuine socialist system, your ethnic background determines how well you will fare.

I don't see how the economic base of society is altered by the deportations, nor can I see how it shows that the revolution "degenerated," much less "betrayed."

The deportations indicate that Soviet society was no longer under a dictatorship of the proletariat; instead the bureaucracy reverted to a dictatorship based on national interests. The working class is unique to no one nation, so a dictatorship which places the interests of one nation above those of other nations is no longer proletarian, no longer genuinely socialist. When policies were made on the basis of Russian national chauvinism instead of international working class interests, the state no longer had the best interests of the international proletariat in mind, and it is thus was degenerate and had betrayed the original principals of the socialist revolution.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Though i dont know much about the situation of soviet Roma, there was a youth's revolutionary/civil war tribute film "The Elusive Avengers" in which a leading role was a Roma youth. I believe it was a Kruschchov or Brezhnev era film.

[Ismail]

How were Romani people not associated with the USSR or its territories? They had been there for hundreds of years. Who exactly would Gypsies be spying and sabotaging for? The Nazis whose goal was to exterminate all of them?

Well in the case of Iranians, Afghans, etc. they were accused of being British agents. In the case of Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese they were accused of being agents of Japan. In the case of Germans they were accused of being associated with Nazi Germany. Poles with Poland, etc., etc.

For that matter, how were Volga Germans "not associated with the USSR and its territories" considering that they had their own soviet republic up until 1941?

They were seen as being particularly susceptible to Nazism. There's no evidence of discussions on dissolving their republic pre-1941.

Why were not all Russians suspect because their ethnic group had connections outside of Soviet territory?

It did? I'm pretty sure Russia was the heart of the USSR.

Oh, so under a genuine socialist system, your ethnic background determines how well you will fare.

No, under the conditions of the Soviet Union, that's the way things were.

The deportations indicate that Soviet society was no longer under a dictatorship of the proletariat; instead the bureaucracy reverted to a dictatorship based on national interests.

How? People accuse Lenin of "genocide" based on how the Don Cossacks were handled. The national interests were subordinate to socialist interests, which was why nationalist deviators were executed during the Great Purges.

When policies were made on the basis of national interests instead of class interests, the state no longer had the best interests of the international proletariat in mind, and it is thus was degenerate and had betrayed the original principals of the socialist revolution.

It didn't make policies on "national interests." They were seen as spies and saboteurs, ergo they were shot. Simple as that. Nazi Germany shouldn't have invaded the USSR, Finland should have not adopted a pro-German foreign policy, the British and French should not have conducted intrigues in Soviet territory, etc. But they all did, and nothing could stop them; they were capitalist states opposed to the USSR. The Soviet state replied in kind, and nationalities sharing ties with those states were subsequently targeted as well. Thus Finnish was denounced as a "fascist language" and banned for about two years.

Dimitrov recorded in his diary Stalin speaking of the Soviet Union and its relationship with the Russian Empire. Here are Stalin's words from November 7, 1937:

The Russian tsars did a great deal that was bad. They robbed and enslaved the people. They waged wars and seized territories in the interests of landowners. But they did one thing that was good—they amassed an enormous state, all the way to Kamchatka. We have inherited that state. And for the first time, we, the Bolsheviks, have consolidated and strengthened that state as a united and indivisible state, not in the interests of landowners and capitalists, but for the benefit of the workers, of all the peoples that make up that state. We have united the state in such a way that if any part were isolated from the common socialist state, it would not only inflict harm on the latter but would be unable to exist independently and would inevitably fall under foreign subjugation. Therefore, whoever attempts to destroy that unity of the socialist state, whoever seeks the separation of any of its parts or nationalities—that man is an enemy, a sworn enemy of the state and of the peoples of the USSR. And we will destroy each and every such enemy, even if he was an old Bolshevik; we will destroy all his kin, his family. We will mercilessly destroy anyone who, by his deeds or his thoughts—yes, his thoughts—threatens the unity of the socialist state. To the complete destruction of all enemies, themselves and their kin!

(The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov: 1933-1949, p. 65.)

[Per Levy]

Well in the case of Iranians, Afghans, etc. they were accused of being British agents. In the case of Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese they were accused of being agents of Japan. In the case of Germans they were accused of being associated with Nazi Germany. Poles with Poland, etc., etc.

so because you happen to have roots in an other nation its ok to be accused(and probally punished) of being a spy, even though 99,9% wernt even thinking about becoming a spy or saboteur in any way. that is nationalism as it worst.

It didn't make policies on "national interests." They were seen as spies and saboteurs, ergo they were shot. Simple as that. Nazi Germany shouldn't have invaded the USSR, Finland should have not adopted a pro-German foreign policy, the British and French should not have conducted intrigues in Soviet territory, etc. But they all did, and nothing could stop them; they were capitalist states opposed to the USSR. The Soviet state replied in kind, and nationalities sharing ties with those states were subsequently targeted as well. Thus Finnish was denounced as a "fascist language" and banned for about two years.

please tell you're not supporting these actions, a "fascist language" thats so bs. you know what we call this in germany? "sippenhaft"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sippenhaft

[Ismail]

Obviously I don't endorse the concept of a "fascist language." I also fail to see how what the Soviets did was some sort of Russian nationalism.

As for the German thing, collective punishment isn't something unique. In Albania if someone was convicted of sabotage, anti-communism, etc. their entire family was usually targeted as well.

[Per Levy]

Obviously I don't endorse the concept of a "fascist language." I also fail to see how what the Soviets did was some sort of Russian nationalism.

i didnt say russian nationalism, i said nationalism. i mean what is it then when human beings are judged by their "national heritage", because of that heritage being punished(without commiting a crime) being purged. isnt that nationalism, judging people because of "their nation"? really what else is it? the only other word that omes to my mind when i read about this is racism.

As for the German thing, collective punishment isn't something unique. In Albania if someone was convicted of sabotage, anti-communism, etc. their entire family was usually targeted as well.

i know its not unique but its bad and terrible, and i dont see collective punisment as a good tool for socialism in any way. things like collective punishment should be one of the first things to go in a socialistic society. what good can it bring to punish someone because of their family, their heritage?

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

How were Romani people not associated with the USSR or its territories? They had been there for hundreds of years. Who exactly would Gypsies be spying and sabotaging for? The Nazis whose goal was to exterminate all of them?

Well in the case of Iranians, Afghans, etc. they were accused of being British agents. In the case of Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese they were accused of being agents of Japan. In the case of Germans they were accused of being associated with Nazi Germany. Poles with Poland, etc., etc.

And the Roma were accused of being disloyal, backwards, nomadic thieves with no nation-state to call a homeland and no stable culture? We see where such stereotypes lead...

For that matter, how were Volga Germans "not associated with the USSR and its territories" considering that they had their own soviet republic up until 1941?

They were seen as being particularly susceptible to Nazism. There's no evidence of discussions on dissolving their republic pre-1941.

This is just another stereotype though, "Germans = Nazis". I find it unbelievable that every last Soviet German was a secret Nazi spy.

Why were not all Russians suspect because their ethnic group had connections outside of Soviet territory?

It did? I'm pretty sure Russia was the heart of the USSR.

As you said, there were Russians with connections in Manchuria, therefore their ethnic group had connections outside Soviet national territory. One can only chalk it up to Russian national chauvinism that all Russians "themselves and their kin" were not suspected of disloyalty to socialism.

Oh, so under a genuine socialist system, your ethnic background determines how well you will fare.

No, under the conditions of the Soviet Union, that's the way things were.

The way things were wasn't guided by socialist principles then. Nor can you say that it was only due to the war that deportations happened, since they continued after the war.