Table of contents:
- How the Roma perceived the workers 'and peasants' revolution
- How the Roma were endowed with land, and whether these measures were able to turn the nomads into a sedentary people
- How many gypsy collective farms were created in the USSR
- What awaited gypsies who refused to join labor
Video: How gypsy collective farms were created in the USSR, and was the Soviet government able to force nomadic people to work
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Since ancient times, Gypsies have led a nomadic lifestyle, so they did not need any subsidiary farming, or a house for living, or land plots. However, under the Soviet regime, they had to say goodbye to traditions - in the USSR, vagrancy and the lack of permanent work were not welcomed. In order to get rid of people without a place of residence within a socialist country, it was decided to make them sedentary residents, providing free housing and introducing them to collective farm labor.
How the Roma perceived the workers 'and peasants' revolution
According to the census, in 1926 there were about 61,000 Roma in the Soviet Union. True, experts assumed that in fact there are much more representatives of this people. Simply not trusting the authorities, they often tried not to be seen by statisticians or to pretend to be a person of a different nationality - Greek, Romanian, Hungarian, Moldovan, etc.
The nomadic way of life made the gypsies apolitical inhabitants of the country, therefore they were very indifferent to the idea of universal equality. Moreover, the gypsy people saw nothing shameful in wealth, on the contrary - having a lot of gold and money was considered a very attractive business for them. At the same time, most Romals did not bathe in luxury at all: fortune-telling on cards, dancing with songs in front of merchants and nobles, tinning work, and begging for alms were almost the only sources of income that allowed them to feed the camp family.
The October Revolution deprived of these incomes, completely changing and worsening the usual way of life of the Roma. And although the communists did not attribute them to class enemies and did not persecute them as "bourgeois", the nomads reacted negatively both to the workers 'and peasants' revolution and to the cardinal changes that came to the country after it.
How the Roma were endowed with land, and whether these measures were able to turn the nomads into a sedentary people
According to the doctor of historical sciences Nadezhda Demeter, the Soviet government did not initially plan any coercive measures against the gypsy camps. The authorities hoped that it was enough to allocate land to the nomadic people, as they would naturally give up group vagrancy. To this end, in 1926, a decree was issued in the country, which spoke of a system of assistance to nomadic gypsies for the transition to a sedentary working life. Two years later, in addition to this document, Moscow issued another all-Union decree under the self-explanatory title: "On the allotment of land to Gypsies who are transitioning to a sedentary working lifestyle."
The decrees implied voluntary initiation into collective farm and artel labor: they did not mention any possible repressions in case of unwillingness to abandon nomadic life. Nevertheless, especially zealous performers on the ground began to enroll the Roma in collective farms by force, transferring horses taken from the nomads there.
How many gypsy collective farms were created in the USSR
From the end of 1920 to the middle of 1930. in the Soviet Union, 52 collective farms were created from representatives of the Roma ethnicity. Families who wished to acquire a permanent residence permit were allocated land and cash subsidies in the amount of 500-1000 rubles to create a personal backyard. At that time, many Roma benefited from financial assistance, but most of them did not change their nomadic life to a settled one. Only five percent of the nomads became collective farmers, and even they did not burden themselves too much with real work.
There is a known case when in the artel "Lola chergen" (Talitsky village council, Lipetsk region), which consisted of 50 gypsies, local residents were hired for collective farm work. The Romals themselves did not work in the fields, and the grown crop, instead of surrendering in favor of the state, was divided equally among their own. Often this became known to the higher party leadership, but they did not react to such cases, knowing how reluctant the nomads were to agree to join collective farms.
All this does not mean that the Roma were against labor, but they were offered activities that were not related to the traditional craft - raising horses, forging garden and garden tools, tinning and soldering, as well as trade. If the Soviet nomenklatura correctly used the potential of the nomadic people, the country would have no problem replenishing the labor force with knowledgeable and experienced workers.
What awaited gypsies who refused to join labor
The repressions against the Roma began in the 1930s and were not political, but most often criminal in nature. At the same time, the accusations were built without taking into account the specifics of the traditions of the nomadic people, which would help to understand the reason for the perfect, criminal, in the opinion of Soviet justice, offense. An illustrative example is the case when a group of Roma tinkers was convicted in Leningrad for illegal currency trading. If the prosecutors inquired about the customs of the nationality to which the convicts belonged, they would find out that from time immemorial its representatives exchanged all the income they received for gold coins of various countries.
At that time, the USSR also fought against nomadic gypsies who did not agree to have a permanent address. So, from June 23, 1932, for 10 days, the Ministry of Internal Affairs organized raids in all major cities of the country - Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa, Kiev, Minsk. As a result, about five and a half thousand people were caught and sent to Siberian and Ural prisons.
In the post-war period, the Soviet government again raised the issue of the Roma settlement by issuing a document "On the introduction to labor of Roma who are engaged in vagrancy." This time, the decree prescribed specific punishments: up to 5 years of expulsion to settlement for refusal to have a certain place of residence. Quite quickly, this measure led to the fact that the Gypsies, although they continued to wander around the country, already had a mandatory passport and residence permit in their hands.
By the beginning of 1958, as follows from the memorandum of the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR Nikolai Dudorov to the government and the Central Committee of the CPSU, more than 70 thousand Roma were registered in the country, most of whom later found a permanent address and work. At the same time, 305 recalcitrant gypsies were sent into exile for refusing to move to a settled life.
And if in the USSR the Gypsies were simply trying to "correct", then in Nazi Germany they were trying to destroy them, in the truest sense of the word. At that time a middle class was formed from the Romans, but Hitler did everything to forget about him.
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