Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - RomaInterbellum (Roma Civic Emancipation Between The Two World Wars)

Teaser

Over the past two decades the Roma issue has become one of the most current topics in European public space and also became especially relevant in academia. Despite of this there are still not researched topics, such as history of the Roma in the period between WWI and WWII...

Summary

Over the past two decades the Roma issue has become one of the most current topics in European public space and also became especially relevant in academia. Despite of this there are still not researched topics, such as history of the Roma in the period between WWI and WWII, and the appearance and development of social and political projects proposed by Roma. The present project has the ambitious goal to fill in this gap. Main premise of the research is the circumstances that Roma are not a hermetically isolated social and cultural system. They exist in two dimensions, both as separate ethnic communities and as a part of the macro-society in which they live within the respective nation-states. Together with members of the macro-society they experienced breakdowns of old Empires and the establishment of national states. On the vast territories of that what would became the Soviet Union they were included in the building of a new political system. In this time span Roma started to be politically institutionalized and in the same time also subjected to a variety of controversial policy practices.

Within both academia and public perception, as well as in the discourse of key political actors and Roma activists, one comes across the ingeminate statement that Roma history has been primarily written by non-Roma and that, because of the absence of a writing tradition, Roma voices have been widely left out of history. Based on our in-depth historical research conducted throughout Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe so far, the project is able to offer a corrective point to this overarching narrative. We succeeded to discover numerous key original documents in variety of languages, which showcase ‘Roma voices’ throughout history, thus also offering a critical discussion and a much-needed revision of previously firmly held beliefs.

Through relying on documents, critical rereading and rethinking of historical sources and older research, this new approach, a norm in other fields of history, will overcome the legacy of a Roma history that has too often been blighted by stereotypes and myths. Through this, the project contributes to overcome extant stereotypes, present in the society about Roma as nation without history and even within academic circles, where a belief is met that there are not sufficient, preserved and written historical sources concerning Roma past to allow for the emergence of Roma History as a field in its own right.

A second prejudiced claim has been that Roma are not an integral part of the (European) societies in which they have lives, in most cases for many centuries. Furthermore, rather than seeing them as political actors in their own right, with their own views and visions of what is the best for their communities, some works have presented Roma as nothing else but passive recipients of different state governments’ policies. Such approach doesn’t help to overcome marginal position of Roma studies in academia and the marginal position of Roma in society.

In our research so far, we were able to discover a large amount of new, largely unknown sources which strongly contradict these claims. In the archives and libraries across the region we have found numerous documents, written not only about Roma, but also by Roma themselves, that shed light not only on wide-ranging Roma vision(s) about the problems of their time and desired future for their communities, and that also reveal their place and role in specific historical events which shaped the world after the Great War.

The project looks at Roma not only as passive recipients of policy measures but also as active architects of their lives. Till now, together with studying evidences reflecting state policies in regard to Roma we succeeded to collect written heritage of Roma visionaries living in the Soviet Union, Romania and Bulgaria, Serbia, Czechoslovakia, Latvia and Turkey, whose published and unpublished texts reflect the main stages in the deve

Work performed

PI (Prof Elena Marushiakova-Popova) worked on setting up the office and the project, worked on Recruitment of PDRF, identified and selected local consultants and did preliminary planning of the database. In collaboration with the IT technicians they also setup the Project’s web page. Elena manages, coordinates and organizes the project and there are constant mutual exchange meetings with the team for the purpose of brainstorming and sharing of resources. She also coordinates the research activities of the whole team while conducting her own research, including desktop research and research in archives in Bulgaria, the Russian Federation, Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia, Greece, Hungary, France.

RF (Prof Veselin Popov) is supporting and assisting the PI in the management, coordination and the organization of the RomaInterbellum Project in all aspects. He assists the PI in the overall management and administration of the project. In collaboration with PI and IT technicians he was active in the initial setting up of the web page of the project; he also assists the PI coordinating the research of the whole team, and in supporting the career development of PostDoc Research Fellows in the project, while conducting his own research, including desktop research and research in archives in Bulgaria, the Russian Federation, Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia, Greece, Hungary, France.

PDRF (Dr Aleksandar Marinov) was selected through open competition and joined the team on 1st of Sept. 2017. Immediately after joining the team, he took part in all joint activities. Dr Aleksandar Marinov has also his own individual responsibilities in the project – own research topic with focus on Bulgaria, he is responsible for matters with University’s Library and assists and collaborates with the IT technicians.

The team organised first public presentation of the RomaInterbellum project, and took part, in Explorathon – European Researchers’ Night 2017 where the aims of the project were disseminated and discussed with the wider community at St Andrews.

From 1st of Sept 2018 two more PDRF, namely Sofiya Zahova and Raluca Bianca Roman joined the team, selected through open competition. Sofiya Zahova is conducting research in countries of former Yugoslavia, and already conducted her first archival research trip in Serbia. Raluca Bianca Roman’s research is focused on Romania and Finland. She already conducted her first research trips in archives in UK and in Romania.

Whole team collaborates on a daily basis with PI Elena Marushiakova and RF Veselin Popov exchanging ideas, brainstorming and sharing resources. All members of the team participate actively in the regular working sessions and working meetings, including on-line meetings and discussions, several times a month.

With respect of own research – all members of the team are carrying out desktop and library research; work on classification and analysis of resources, and are involved in gathering, processing, classifying and analyzing sources to be included in the database created by IT specialists of the project. All members of the team are developing own publications and papers for conferences.

The project team till now conducted 32 field trips for archival and library research in Bulgaria, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia, Greece, Hungary, Serbia, France, UK, Romania, made 6 invited presentations and participated in 7 conferences worldwide.

In 2018 the project’s first international workshop “Roma Civic Emancipation Between the Two World Wars: Challenges in Archival Research of Roma” took place in St Andrews (25th -28th October, 2018); with 21 participants (including project research team) from 13 countries.

PI organised a thematic panel “Roma Civic Emancipation between the Two World Wars” at the Association for the Study of Nationalities World Convention, which will be held on 2-4 May 2019, at Harriman Institute, Columbia University, New York, US. The whole team of th

Final results

From the beginning of the project up to now we were able to prove that the initial assumption about availability of “Roma voices” in libraries and archives was correct. Contrary to the widespread belief that such evidence doesn’t exist, the project succeeded to discover written heritage about active participation of Roma in social life during the Interwar period. PI with her team were able to discover in libraries and archives thousands of pages of documents which prove that Roma were not only passive recipients of policy measures but also active architects of their lives. Along with this, the documents discovered, show the contradictory policies of individual countries towards Gypsies (as they were called at that time) in which the discriminative and repressive measures were often combined with indifference and/or paternalistic approach for integration and efforts for welfare, health and educational improvement and even “affirmative action” in early Soviet Union.

The project results till now refute some of the assertions reiterated in academic literature – e.g. often quoted evidence about holding an International congress of Gypsies in Kisfalu in 1879, about creating of contemporary Roma banner in the 1930ies in Romania, about establishing of Roma organisation in the early Soviet union by State and Party initiative, about the lack of any Roma activism in Hungary after Trianon agreement, about the lack of Roma with education and own political visions on the territory of Turkey after the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire, etc.

Together with this the project discovered in archives numerous unique evidences, such as, to mention at least some of them, 6 letters from Roma activists to Stalin and 4 more to other highest functionaries of Soviet State; numerous Roma initiatives directed towards transition from nomadic to settled way of life in several countries of the region; attempt of Roma activists for establishing a Gypsy autonomy on territory of USSR; statute of the first Roma organisation in Greece, establishing of the first Roma schools not only as it was known till now in Uzhgorod during the first Czechoslovak Republic, but also in Greece and Romania, elaboration of concepts of Anti-tsiganism and double discriminated Roma woman in early Soviet Union, first Roma women organisations in Bulgaria and Romania, building of the first Roma Orthodox church in Yugoslavia, Roma evangelical mission in Moldova, and many others.

Till the end of the project we expect to discover even more unique documents. We envisage for next period to continue archival and library studies, to extend the source base and to include topics which we were unable to investigate so far, such as evidences about the establishment and functioning of Gypsy kolkhozes on the vast territory of the Soviet Union, about Roma professional organisations in the Balkan countries, more evidences about written published and unpublished works of Roma visionaries. We intend to re-visit some of the archives for additional studying and also the archives which we were unable to reach until now in Russia, countries of former Yugoslavia, Romania and Finland. In the next period until the end of the project we will work also on publishing the results in the form of journal articles and monographs. In process of preparation is a volume with selection of the most important till now unknown sources and their analysis, entitled Roma Voices in History: A Source Book. Till the end of the project also a data base of discovered sources will be accessible on line.

Website & more info

More info: https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/romainterbellum/.