ROMA
There are around 200,000 Roma (Gypsies) in the former Soviet Union and they are divided in groups based in language or dialect, culture and way of life. In the 1990s, about half of them were in Russia, and around 30,000 were in the Ukraine, 7,000 in Belarus, 5,000 in Latvia 11,000 in Uzbekistan and 8,000 in Kazakhstan. In Russia they are found throughout the country with the highest concentration in European Russia. The actual size of the population is unknown because many Roma do not register their nationality; experts assume that the true number is much higher than the official estimate.
There are Roma villages in the Vladimir region north of Moscow. Many also live in the Roma quarter of Savyolovo, northwest of Moscow. Describing Savyolovo Kim Murphy wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “The local baron’s house stands taller than the rest on a nearly deserted street...Hardly anyone seems to be at here. The streets are deserted, and knocks on doors go unanswered, except for some furtive peeking from behind drawn curtains. Late model cars without licence plates stand in several driveways. Playing cards lie scattered along te street.
The wide dispersion of the Russian Roma population—there are at least six distinct groups, with little contact among them—has limited their ability to organize. In the 1990s, some Russian Roma have participated in international movements to gain support abroad. The various groups have widely varying political views. The elite musical performers and intelligentsia, for example, supported the socialism of the Soviet Union, but the wealthy Lovari group, which the government persecuted in Soviet times, is strongly antisocialist.
History of Roma in Russia
Roma have entered Russia mostly in two main waves: 1) via the Ukraine and the Baltics in early 16th century; and 2) via Moldavia and Romania in the 18th and 19th centuries. Most of the Roma currently in Russia are descended from people who migrated from Europe in the eighteenth century; they now call themselves Russka Roma. Another group, called the Vlach Roma, arrived after 1850 from the Balkans.
In the tsarist era, Roma were widely persecuted. Special taxes were imposed on them to limit their movements and their choice of occupations. Some were enslaved until the mid 19th century Some traveled on circuits that extended from Moscow to Siberia. Some settled in the cities,. Roma choirs became famous throughout Russia.
After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 Roma played both sides. Some supplied the Red Army with horses. Other sided with the White Russians and ended up in Paris along with them. For the most part they prospered under the Soviets. An all-Roma union was formed. Schools and theaters that used the Romani language were opened. A wide variety of Romani publications were available.
Under Stalin, situation of the Roma took a turn for the worse. After being labeled a an “unstable culture” they were forcibly settled and collectivized and pressured into taking normal jobs. Resisters were sent top Siberia and shot. Under Khrushchev, Roma were forced to move to apartment blocks. The Roma tabor system was modified for apartment blocks with a tabor occupying a block or a row of floors and the baron ruling over them. They set up businesses to make money and meet the needs of the Roma community.
Roma Occupations
Many Roma have traditionally lived in camps that were set up on the outskirts of towns and engaged trades like metalworking and horse trading. They were able to maintain their ways in the Soviet era. When asked how much control authorities had over them, one Roma told the Washington Post, "Nobody can rule the Roma, because we have our own brain.” Many Roma have jobs and like other Russians.
Some Other Roma travel seasonally to Moscow from Moldova and Romania and back. Members of this group are often seen begging on Moscow streets; this activity has figured largely in the negative stereotype of the Roma among ethnic Russians. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
Most Roma have been unable or unwilling to gain employment in any but a few occupations. In the Soviet era, metalworking was a designated Roma trade, but street commerce — selling whatever goods become available — remains the most common occupation. Roma were much involved in the black-market trade of the last Soviet decades. Roma musical ensembles have prospered in Soviet and post-Soviet times, but few individuals have access to such a profession. *
Roma Weddings and Cultural Inspiration
Traditional Roma weddings blend Orthodox rituals and Roma customs and last for three days. On the first day is a church wedding and a mock abduction of the bride and a mock fight over the bride-price and climaxes when the groom’s family storms the house of the bride, which has been barricaded up. In the wedding ceremony the couple kneel holding icons, and are blessed with salt and bread. There is feasting, dancing and singing. After it has been established the bride is a virgin all the guests don red armbands. In some cases the bloodstained sheets from the marital bed are displayed. Gifts of money are stuffed in a loaf of bread.
Many couples have traditionally been married in their teens in marriages arranged by their parents. After the wedding the couple usually lives with the parents of the groom. Women are expected to have lots of children. Women have traditionally been regarded as both polluting and sources of power. Men have traditionally gone out of their way not to touch a woman’s skirt less they be polluted. A women could extract revenge against a man by lifting her skirt in his direction, causing him to ostracized for up to a year.
Roma have been a source of inspiration in the arts. Alexander Pushkin greatly admired Roma culture. His poem “Roma” is about a Russian man who joins a Roma band but murders his Roma wife after she leaves him for a Roma lover. The symbolist poet Alexandr Block also wrote extensively about Roma. A great deal of Roma poetry and literature explores their relationship with outsiders.
Roma Fortuntellers and Discrimination
Gypsies associated with fortunetelling, palm readings, crystal balls and the occult. Fortune telling is known as “dukkering” and the secrets behind their skill are closely guraded secrets.♠
Many fortunetellers in Russia are Abkhazians from the Caucasus and Roma (Gypsies). Abkhazian women read coffee grounds; Roma often use cards. On Roma fortune teller told the Washington Post,"All sorts come here for advise—doctors, procurators, Mafia—it's a good business."
In general, post-Soviet Russian society has included the Roma with other easily identified non-Slavic groups, particularly those from the Caucasus, who are accused of exploiting or worsening the economic condition of the majority population. In the 1990s, violence has erupted between Russians and Roma on several occasions.
Romas are often regarded as thieves and criminals by Russians and other ethnic groups. Nadezhda Demtr, a Roma with a Ph.D. in Roma studies, told the Los Angeles Times, “Roma have their own unique culture and traditions, which, like the ones in all other nations, are based on good not evil. Roma culture has nothing to do with cheating, thievery and confidence tricks.”
Gypsy Hypnotism Crimes in Russia
A number of Russians have said they have been victims of “Gypsy hypnosis”—crimes, usually thefts, in which the victims claim they were hypnotized by the perpetrators of the crime and coaxed into doing something they wouldn’t normally do such as hand over a lot of money. Some think the perpetrators use nuero-linguistic techniques in which patterns of speech are altered in such a way that they hypnotize victims. [Source: Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, February 2005]
Some experts say the Gypsy hypnosis label is made up to hid the embarrassment of being duped, Other say there is something to it. One expert told the Los Angeles Times, that perpetrators of such crimes “are people who have honed their skills to perfection: they have been pulling these kinds of confidence tricks on people for generations...They are able to turn off their [victim’s] inhibitory mechanisms and ram through their psychological defenses.” Some law enforcement officers believe the victims are not hypnotized but rather tricked using sophisticated psychological techniques.
Some victims have turned over all the money they had. It s not usual for thieves to get away with several thousand dollars. One victim lost $300,000. A detective who has handled hundreds of “gypsy hypnosis” cases told the Los Angeles Times, “Could a person operating with all his faculties agree with a plan under which all of the money he saves in his entire life should be given to these people on the streets.”
A victim of a hypnosis crime told the Los Angeles Times a man came up to her on the streets and repeatedly waved a ring in front of her and “was talking gibberish”. He said something about how he left his wallet in a taxi and had to meet someone at the airport. She then said she offered him $250 in rubles. He said that was not enough and asked her to go to her apartment. Inside she said she opened a safe and gave him $500 in rubles plus the rubles she had in her wallet. As she took the elevator down to the lobby she knew she had been robbed but she said she could not do anything about it. [Source: Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, February 2005]
Another victim, an economist and tax inspector, told the Los Angeles Times she was walking with her baby when a well dressed woman wearing a gold chain asked her for directions to a local clinic. “I explained to her, and I was about to leave,” she said. “But at that moment, she caught my eye with her eye. Our eyes met. She said, ‘I’m looking at you, and you’re a nice girl and all, but there’s a death coming to your family.’ My father was very ill at the time....She said ‘Your husband, was married before?’ I said no, but he had a girlfriend. She said, ‘It’s her handiwork. She did it. She moved the dirt, and it has also fallen on your child.”
The woman told her that the spell would cause her baby to drown in a bathtub. “She said, ‘You will have go home. And if you have any yellow metal at home, you will collect it, you will tie it into a kerchief and you will tie in three knots.’ She said, ‘If you have any money at all, you count it and take it.’...I went home. I felt panicky. I did everything in five minutes: I collected all the money, I collected all the gold—I had rings, earrings, bracelets, seven or eight items altogether...We had a lot of money, because we had just sold our garage, and we were getting ready to buy a car.” In all she haded over $6,000 in rubles and jewelry. “I knew this was wrong. But I felt as if I was programed to do it...I was under a spell.”
Blacks in Russia
Blacks in Russia include immigrants, visiting students, business people and Russians of mixed parentage. Most of the several thousand blacks in Russia are in Moscow and St. Petersburg. There are much fewer in other cities than there once was when many Africans came to study at Soviet institutions.
The first blacks in Russia are believed to have arrived around the 11th century. One of the first known black was an African who worked for the grand duke of Kiev. The royals houses of Georgia and the Caucasus are thought to have some Ethiopian blood. Russia's most famous poet, Pushkin, was the great grandson of an Ethiopian prince in the court of Peter the Great, who was also a nobleman and miliary commander.
During the Soviet era, freedom fighters in newly independent African countries came to Russia for military straining. Promising students were taught engineering, science and Marxist ideology.
Black Russians
There are about 14,000 Afro-Russian blacks living in Russia, making up less than one hundredth of 1 percent of the population. Some are spouses or children in mixed marriages. The majority are offspring of relationships between white Russian women and male African students who studied in the Soviet Union from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Many children were born to black fathers who had to leave the Soviet Union after their student visas expired and mothers who were unable to get the documentation to leave the Soviet Union and join the father.
Afro-Russians are used to being stared at on the streets and being mistaken for foreigners. The daughter of a Kenyan economist and Russian women told the Los Angeles Times about an experience at a hair salon, "It thought, it'll be so simple, I'll just ask them to cut it all off short. The hairdresser yelled at me and said she wouldn't do it. She said it wasn't worth dulling her scissors on my hair.
Well known Afro-Russians include Yelena Khanga, host of a sex-talk show called “About That”;
Racism and Violence Against Blacks in Russia
Racism against blacks is common. A student from Cameroon told the Los Angeles Times that he rarely goes through a day in which is not beaten, spat on, scorned or disrespected in some way. He said he once started a lecture before a class of murmering 150 students and turned around and saw a large sheet with hand-painted swastika held up by a group of students. He said he fears violence every time he enters a subway station or walks through a park.
There are no rules as to what is considered bad taste. Comedians perform in black face and make racist jokes. One of the biggest pop hits in 1999, “They Killed a Black Man”, as a string a racial stereotypes chanted to a reggae beat by an all white group. The lyrics included" A dead snake doesn't hiss, a dead goldfinch doesn't chirp, a dead black man doesn't go play basketball."
There have been numerous attacks on blacks. Most attacks are against students although diplomats, businessmen and soldiers at the American Embassy in Moscow have been victims. Many of the attacks are committed by skinheads or members of white supremacist groups.
In 2005, a student from Guinea-Bissau was killed in Voronezh in the heart of European Russia. In 1992 a black student was killed. In 1998 an editor of a neo-fascist newspaper attacked an off-duty U.S. Marine. He was arrested, convicted of incitement of racial hatred and released. In August 2002, the son of a Cameroon diplomat was badly beaten by a half dozen men.
An immigrant from Madagascar told the Los Angeles Times he was jumped one night while he went to get some milk for his daughter. He said he was beaten and kicked by skinheads for five to 10 minutes. A Ugandan said he was hospitalized for 12 days after being attacked by 20 to 30 youths on a subway car for about eight minutes and ended with a beer bottle being broken over his head. One black Russian told AP, he was assaulted by a mob of teens returning from a soccer match and was left with a broken arm and dislocated shoulder.
A young man from the Cameroon, who had been a student at People’s Friendship University for five years, told the New York Times he had been abused, beaten and even shot. “At any hour you must be ready to fight. On the Metro, on the road, on the street, everywhere. So every morning you have to do your 100 push-ups. “
In 2001, ambassadors from 37 African nations appealed to the Foreign Ministry for protection of their citizens. Authorities are not very sympathetic. A common view among bureaucrats and police is: "They are not Russians. They belong in Africa." Some police have been accused of harassing blacks and calling them monkeys. Some blacks have reported ordinary Russians coming to their rescue on subway attacks.
Image Sources:
Text Sources: “Encyclopedia of World Cultures: Russia and Eurasia, China”, edited by Paul Friedrich and Norma Diamond (C.K. Hall & Company, Boston); New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, U.S. government, Compton’s Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.
Last updated May 2016