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Gypsies in Central Asia and the Caucasus
Abstract
This book explores diverse communities living in Central Asia and the Caucasus, who are generally gathered under the umbrella term of ‘Gypsies’, their multidimensional identities, self-appellations and labels given to them by surrounding populations, researcher and policy-makers. The book presents various Gypsy and Gypsy-like communities and provides a comprehensive review of their history, demography, ways of life, past and present occupations, and contemporary migration in post-Soviet space. The authors situate these communities in historical settings and also in the wider context of contemporary evolving global and areal developments.
The book will be of interest to scholars and students of history, sociology, social anthropology, nationalities studies, global and Central Asia and Caucasus areal studies, and Gypsy/Romani studies, and also for policy-makers and civic organizations.
Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov (both from University of St. Andrews, UK) have worked in the field of Gypsy/Romani studies for more than 3 decades and published widely on Gypsy/Roma in Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe.
Chapters (3)
This chapter defines the term Gypsies and charts the area of study—the countries, settlements and regions where field research was conducted—and the methodology.
This chapter defines the main communities in Central Asia covered by the designations Gypsy, Gypsy-like and Intermediate Communities. Historic and demographic data is presented, which reveals the current features of the two studied communities (Mughat and Roma) in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, as well as their migration in the post-Soviet era.
This chapter defines the main communities included under the designation of Gypsies (Dom, Lom and Roma) in the Caucasus area and presents historical and demographic data. It looks at the current features of the three communities studied in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and the Russian Federation, as well as their migration in the post-Soviet Space.
... 129-130) In the case of Roma, it has been noted in several locations, that with conversion some parts of the traditions or occupations of Roma groups have become regarded as demonic and in need of abandoning, as for instance the traditional occupation of fortune telling (e.g. Marushiakova and Popov 2016;Kwiek 2014;Åberg 2014;Laurent 2014). This is also the case in Estonia (Roht-Yilmaz 2019). ...
This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork materials in the form of participant observation and interviews and looks at the mission encounter between the Kaale (Finnish Roma) missionaries and the traditionally Lutheran, Russian Orthodox or Catholic Roma in Estonia and the Vidzeme region in Latvia. The aim of the article is to discuss the role of ethnicity in the mission work conducted by the Kaale and by the local Roma. I demonstrate how the usage of ethnic elements and a culture specific approach in mission relates to bodily and emotionally experiencing God’s presence among the born-again Roma community in this region and how it impacts the success of the mission. Pentecostalism is known for its promise of equality of all peoples before God and at the same time for accommodating its proselytizing message to different conditions, fitting its mission to the local people and situation. This becomes also apparent in the current case where in the multicultural and multilingual mission setting sensations and aesthetics take up an especially important role.
This chapter discusses why local bazaar traders do not formalize their businesses according to official and Western standards. It describes the broader local economic field in the Caucasus and explains different aspects of Caucasian biznes (бизнec), providing an overview of activities subsumed under that rubric and suggesting parameters that help classify economic activities and forms of small entrepreneurshipentrepreneurship. These parameters include (a) the location where business is done (ranging from public pavements to bazaars, shopping malls, and private spaces); (b) personal background (e.g., age, gender, education, personal skills, and ethnic and religious affiliation); (c) social networksnetworks along which business is organized (which may originate in the criminal sphere, in local networks conceptualized as friendshipfriendship, brotherhoodbrotherhood, ethnic community and kinshipkinship, or in the interaction within business activities); (d) the mobilitymobility of traders, (e) the goods that are traded, and, finally, (f) the amounts of goods and capital, means of transportation, and the frequency of the activity. Ideology is another parameter that must be considered, embracing ideas, beliefs, and values. Ideology, parameter (g), is an integral part of the sociocultural setting, and, among other things, provides the framework within which economic activity is assessed. The author suggests considering three overlapping value systems, which together constitute a set of ideas. These value systems respectively relate to (1) value systemlocal society, culture, and cosmology, (2) Soviet ideologyideology, and (3) the neoliberal market economy. Which of these value systems is taken as the point of reference depends on the context, situation, and the actors involved. By giving detailed descriptions of all these parameters and their combinations, the author depicts the variety of the local businesses’ environment, or ecology. She defines the place of long-distance and bazaar tradebazaar trade within the local social hierarchy and socioeconomic context, which, again, results from a specific entanglement of the aforementioned parameters. She visualizes this entanglement by adapting Alexander von HumboldtAlexander von Humboldt’s Naturgemälde,Naturgemälde to reflect on the organic causalities between different factors composing an environment. These causalities create specific niches, which constitute the ecosystems of specific kinds of trade. Forms of trade and entrepreneurship linked to these niches can be viewed as sophisticated adaptations, which do not work in other niches or contexts. Normative definitions of entrepreneurshipentrepreneurship thus do not capture local realities, especially those of bazaar traders. This is also why these traders do not formalize and/or meet the expectations linked to the Western definition of entrepreneurship associated with innovation and the discovery and exploitation of opportunities, described as “one of the primary drivers of industrial dynamism, economic development, and growth” (Carlsson et al. in Small Business Economics 41:913–930, 2013). This chapter thus reviews a variety of themes related to the economic activity of the traders studied and of the Caucasus in general. Above all, it describes the position of bazaar and long-distance traderslong-distance traders within a broader local economic system.
Muslim communities speaking primarily Turkish and identifying themselves as Turks but called ‘Gypsy’ by the surrounding populations, including ethnic Turks, has been a widespread Balkan phenomenon. The pioneer studies on Balkan Roma explained such identity formations referring to the flexible nature of self-identification, relying on significant historical and ethnographic data. According to that, Turkish identity, primarily perceived to be identical with one of the most long-lasting regional empires’ heritage, was a preferred identity for Balkan Roma, demanding a more prestigious social status. No doubt that explanation is accurate for the majority of observed cases. However, two archival documents, recently discovered in the Ottoman archives in Sofia and Istanbul, indicate another facet of the issue. According to the one dated 1869, there was a sub-group among those registered as Gypsy by the government in the Balkans, identified as Turkoman Gypsies [Turkmān Ḳibṭīleri] and to the other dated 1708, the state saw such communities as a branch of broader nomadic Turkoman people and was aware of their tribal divisions. Recent studies documented that the Ottoman state often registered non-Roma communities, such as Abdals and Tahtacıs, who subsisted on service providing and craft production and were relatively more mobile than the outsiders they engaged, ‘Gypsy’ in Anatolian Turkey. The documents studied here prove that the Ottoman state was doing the same in its European territory. Besides, at least a small minority among the people whose preferred identity is Turkishness but called ‘Gypsy’ in the contemporary Balkans might be the descendants of those indicated in the documents.
The news above again points to the participation of Gypsies in the communist movement. At the same time, it exemplifies how the press combined the popular prejudices against ‘Gypsies’ and the fear and distrust against communists to discredit the leftist movements of the era. In the first passage, the anonymous author declares that the offenders hired some people to distribute the leaflets. Although it is uncertain who hired whom here, the author clarifies its argument in the subsequent passage. There were some Çingeneler (Gypsies) among the accused ones, and they were assigned to do the tasks mentioned above. It is not too difficult for the reader to combine the connotations of passages and extract the possible implication behind the text: Gypsies are not reliable to be dedicated activists of any movement and, therefore, they can only be the ordinary labourers who are hired by the evil communists behind the scene.
Remzi Mustafa was one of the Gypsy tobacco workers affiliated with the TKP and whom the party administration sent to the USSR for training. While the file enlightens his personal experiences in USSR during this period, it also sheds light on the life course of a Gypsy Communist in Turkey and the USSR. He was born in Drama, Greece, in 1908. Both of his parents were tobacco workers, and he resumed his family tradition, becoming a tobacco worker in Istanbul. His first experiences in factory based worker movements led him to an affiliation with the Communist Party of Turkey at the beginning of the 1930s. He was elected as the secretary of the Party’s local branch in Kasımpasa, a locality with a considerable Roma concentration and a working-class location in general.
Zehra Kosova was among the most famous and the most respectable representatives of the immigrant tobacco workers. The publication of her memoir, Ben Isçiyim (I am Worker) carried her reputation among the leftist circles in Turkey to the broader public. The document above is the foreword of the book’s second edition. It was Zehra Kosova’s funeral speech presented by Sevim Belli, another female figure of the Turkish left, also respectable and prominent. In Zehra Kosova’s biography in the funeral speech, Sevim Belli intended to introduce the Roma tobacco workers as an entire community instead of a mere concentration.
The petition mentioned in the document above proves that the inhabitants of Pırnarlık (or Pırnalık) neighbourhood in Xanthi, which, even today, is reputed to have a high concentration of Gypsies (Aarbakke, 2000, p. 94) as early as 1905 were aware of the theories on the Indian origin of Gypsies.
This article traces the beginning of Romani literature. It focuses on the work of Alexander Germano in the context of the history of a unique Romani literacy project developed in the USSR before the Second World War. It shows the peculiarity of the Soviet Romani literature and in particular the personal activities and contributions of Germano, the man considered the progenitor of contemporary Romani literature (with works in all three main genres of literature: poetry, prose, and drama). The study is based on a number of years of archival work in a variety of archives in the Russian Federation and to a great extent in Alexander Germano’s personal archive, preserved in the town of Orel (Russian Federation). The documents studied allow us to clarify the blurred spots in his biography, to reveal his ethnic background and identity, and to highlight the reason for the success of the Romani literary project. The example of Germano shows that the beginning of a national literature depends on the significance and public impact of the literary work of a particular author, and is not necessarily related to the author’s ethnic origin and identity.
Penned by a noted Gypsy scholar, Ian Hancock, this collection of writings examines Romani history, culture, language, and politics and covers topics that range from responses to the Romani Holocaust and Romani religion to anti-Gypsy racism and oppression. Giving a voice to an often misunderstood community, this record includes personal stories, persuasive research, heartfelt criticisms, and sincere advice. Informative and dynamic, this volume strives to debunk the myths and prejudices surrounding the Roma and to examine how Romani identity has been formed in the course of their long history.
The region designated as ‘Central and Eastern Europe’ in this book is inhabited by many different and sizeable groups, who are called with similar names in various countries: ‘Cyganie’ (Poland), ‘Čigonai’ (Lithuania), ‘Čigāni’ (Latvia), ‘Cigáni’ (Slovakia), ‘Cikáni’ (Czech Republic), ‘Cigányok’ (Hungary), ‘Ţigani’ (Romania, Republic of Moldova), ‘Цигани’ [Tsigani] (Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine), ‘Цыгане’ [Tsygane] (Russian Federation), ‘Тσіγγάυоі’ [Tsigani] (Greece), etc.1 Their ancestors migrated from the Indian subcontinent to Europe more than a millennium ago. In most cases, the population identifies itself as Roma2 and speaks its own Romani language, called Romani čhib or Romanes. It is divided into different dialects (Matras 2002: 5–48), which are used by various endogamous ‘Gypsy’/Roma groups and metagroups (Marushiakova and Popov 2001a: 34–41; Tcherenkov and Laederich 2004: I 237–514). The ‘Gypsy’/Roma groups are characterized, among other things, by the use of a common dialect (or acquired language where their own original language is now lost), which is an important marker of their identity. The metagroups are often made up of separate groups who have already begun to lose their group characteristics. Metagroups may also include descendants of groups who have lost the memory of their former existence, and the identity of their members now only exists on the metagroup level. The ‘Gypsy’/Roma groups are not static social and cultural units.
As perceived icons of indifferent marginality, disorder, indolence, and parasitism, "Gypsies" threatened the Bolsheviks’ ideal of New Soviet Men and Women. The early Soviet state feared that its Romani population suffered from an extraordinary and potentially insurmountable cultural "backwardness," and sought to sovietize Roma through a range of nation-building projects. Yet as Brigid O’Keeffe shows in this book, Roma actively engaged with Bolshevik nationality policies, thereby assimilating Soviet culture, social customs, and economic relations. Roma proved the primary agents in the refashioning of so-called "backwards Gypsies" into conscious Soviet citizens. New Soviet Gypsies provides a unique history of Roma, an overwhelmingly understudied and misunderstood diasporic people, by focusing on their social and political lives in the early Soviet Union. O’Keeffe illustrates how Roma mobilized and performed "Gypsiness" as a means of advancing themselves socially, culturally, and economically as Soviet citizens. Exploring the intersection between nationality, performance, and self-fashioning, O’Keeffe shows that Roma not only defy easy typecasting, but also deserve study as agents of history.
This book explores developments in the three major societies of the South Caucasus - Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia - focusing especially on religion, historical traditions, national consciousness, and political culture, and on how these factors interact. It outlines how, despite close geographical interlacement, common historical memories and inherited structures, the three countries have deep differences; and it discusses how development in all three nations has differed significantly from the countries' declared commitments to democratic orientation and European norms and values. The book also considers how external factors and international relations continue to impact on the three countries. © 2015 selection and editorial material, Alexander Agadjanian, Ansgar Jödicke and Evert van der Zweerde. All rights reserved.
The Caucasus mountains rise at the intersection of Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. A land of astonishing natural beauty and a dizzying array of ancient cultures, the Caucasus for most of the twentieth century lay inside the Soviet Union, before movements of national liberation created newly independent countries and sparked the devastating war in Chechnya. Combining riveting storytelling with insightful analysis, The Ghost of Freedom is the first general history of the modern Caucasus, stretching from the beginning of Russian imperial expansion to the triumph of nationalism after the Soviet Union's collapse. In evocative and accessible prose, Charles King reveals how tsars, highlanders, revolutionaries, and adventurers have contributed to the fascinating history of this borderland. Based on new research in multiple languages, the book shows how the struggle for freedom in the mountains, hills, and plains of the Caucasus has been a perennial theme over the last two hundred years-a struggle that has led to liberation as well as to new forms of captivity. The book sheds light on the origins of modern disputes, including the ongoing war in Chechnya, conflicts involving Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, and debates over oil from the Caspian Sea and its impact on world markets. Ranging from the salons of Russian writers to the circus sideshows of America, from the offices of European diplomats to the villages of Muslim mountaineers, The Ghost of Freedom paints a rich portrait of one of the world's most turbulent and least understood regions.