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Gypsy Policy in Socialist Hungary and Czechoslovakia, 1945–1989

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

William O. McCagg
William O. McCagg*
Affiliation:
Michigan State University (Lansing)
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Extract

In discussion of ethnic minorities in Eastern Europe, one hears regularly of appalling official misbehavior—not just about attempted genocide (though that too), but also about bureaucratic cruelties inflicted in every field of human activity and at every level of control. Nonetheless, it is always useful to have a measurable basis for assessing unfairness; and historians have the special task of inquiring rationally why and how unfairness came about. Hence the following paper, which attempts not just to condemn, but to explain and evaluate the Hungarian and Czechoslovak official treatment of the Gypsies in recent decades. As is fairly well known, this treatment has included not only harassment of populations which presently exceed 600,000 people in each country, but also (in both countries) systematic abduction of children by the state from unwilling Gypsy parents, and (in Czechoslovakia) equally systematic sterilization of Gypsy women.

Since the point of the paper is to reach beyond mere indictment, I will use a comparative method. Specifically, in recounting each stage of the development of policy towards the Gypsies I will compare what was being done to two other groups: the Jews, on the one hand, and the physically disabled on the other.

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Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 19 , Issue 3: Special Issue - The Gypsies in Eastern Europe , Fall 1991 , pp. 313 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities of the USSR and Eastern Europe, Inc. 

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References

Notes

1. For background and bibliography see Gronemeyer, Reimer, “Zigeunerpolitik in sozialistischen Landern Osteuropas” in R. Gronemeyer (ed.), Zigeuner in der Sozialpolitik heutiger Leistungsgesellschaften (Giessen: Focus Verlag, 1983), pp. 43183; and R. Gronemeyer, Zigeuner in Osteuropa. Eine Bibliographie (Munich: K. G. Sauer, 1983).Google Scholar

2. On the abuses in Czechoslovakia, see the Charta 77 petition of 13 Dec., 1978 published in Vilém Prečan (ed.), Charta 77, 1977–1989… Dokumentace (Bratislava: ARCHA, 1990), pp. 21725; and Paul Ofner and Bert de Rooij (eds.) HetAfkopen van Vruchtbarheid (mimeograph, Amsterdam : 1990). I am indebted to Milena Hübschmannová of Prague for this latter reference.Google Scholar

3. See Clébert, Jean Paul, The Gypsies (New York: Penguin, 1963), pp. 32'35.Google Scholar

4. The history of the handicapped has been written, generally speaking, in pieces, but see Adolf Dannemann et., (eds.), Enzyclopädisches Handbuch der Heilpädagogik (Halle: Marhold, 1934; and then the historical essays in Heinz Bach et al., (eds.), Handbuch der Sonderpädagogik (11 vols., Berlin: Marhold, 1980-87). I am currently preparing a history of the disabled in Central Europe.Google Scholar

5. See the pioneering thesis of Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization (New York: Random House, 1965), ch. 1.Google Scholar

6. There is a rapidly growing literature on this subject, see Robert N. Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

7. Tomka, “Die Zigeuner in der ungarischen Gesellschaft” East European Quarterly, Vol. IV (1970), p. 8; and William Guy, “Ways of Looking at Roms” in F. Rehfisch (ed.), Gypsies, Tinkers and Travellers (London: 1975), p. 213.Google Scholar

8. To count Gypsy victims of the Holocaust is even more difficult than to count Jewish victims, because many of the Gypsies were killed outside of the principal extermination camps. The best estimates are in Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon, The Destiny of Europe's Gypsies (London: 1972), p. 125ff, 183-84.Google Scholar

9. M. Kir. Statisztikai Hivatal, A Magyarországban 1893. Jan. 31 en végrehajtott Cigányösszeirás Eredményei (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1895). Of the Gypsies counted in 1893, some 240,000 had fixed residence, while some 30,000 were wanderers. Almost 30% apparently used only the “Roma” language, 38% used Magyar and 24.5% used Rumanian—”Vlach.”Google Scholar

10. On the Gypsy languages, see apart from Clébert, The Gypsies, pp. 235ff.; László Szegö, “A cigány nyelv” in László Szegö (ed.), Cigányok, honnét jöttek, merre tartanak (Budapest: Kozmosz, 1983), pp. 58ff.Google Scholar

11. In Hungary and Slovakia alike, the older Gypsy settlements are Lovari. They have long (ie for well over a century) been sedentary. They use the “Roma” Gypsy tongue in one dialect or another amongst themselves, while in public speaking Magyar in Hungary, and various Slovak dialects in Czechoslovakia. Over many decades, however, a great number of very poor Kalderasi Gypsies have migrated from Transylvania, and have settled all over Hungary and Czechoslovakia (though especially in the West of both countries). They have also gone further into Western Europe, and some of them are still migrant. The Kalderasi speak “vlasski” (as the Czechs call it) or “olah” (as the Magyars call it) and Rumanian (outsider authorities sometimes make little distinction between the two tongues). They do not associate with the Lovari. In the Bohemian lands there used to be Kotlari Gypsies who spoke Sinti, but very few of these survived the Second World War. For further detail see the classic study of Slovak Gypsies by Emilia Horváthová, Cigáni na Slovensku (Bratislava: 1964); Tomka, op. cit. pp. 4-5; and Eva Davidová, “The Gypsies in Czechoslovakia” in Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 1970, 3-4, pp. 86'87.Google Scholar

12. This ignorance persists. Over the past decade in both countries Gypsies have organized cultural and political associations, and have protested against the use of the prejudicial term “Gypsy” (cikán, cigány, zigeuner). Consequently, people are beginning to avoid that term, and to refer to the Gypsies as “Roma.” This is done, however, for the most part with no regard as to whether Roma speakers—as opposed to Vlasski speakers—are actually in question. See Expres (Prague) 2 July, 1990. It may be noted that in both Hungary and Czechoslovakia in 1990 the Gypsy associations claim present populations of about 800.000, whereas the official statistics lag under 500,000; and non-Gypsy reformers authorities acknowledge about 600,000. There is also vagueness about which modern language the Gypsies use. In the sixties and seventies the Czechoslovak authorities systematically deprecated the size of Slovakia's Magyar minority, by claiming that many allegedly Magyar speakers were actually Gypsies. In 1976, correspondingly, an authoritative Hungarian sociological inquiry claimed that the “overwhelming majority” of the Czechoslovak Gypsies are Magyar speakers. (See Kemény, Beszámoló as in n. 27 below, p. 2). In both cases, this labelling was probably illusion. Before the First World War, perhaps, the greater number of the Gypsies in today's Slovakia did use Magyar, in so far as they used a modern language. Today, however, the Gypsies throughout Czechoslovakia overwhelmingly use Slovakian dialects, though there are some 35 Magyar speakers left along the Danube, just as there are some Slovak speakers in northeastern Hungary.Google Scholar

13. Kozák, Ms. István, “A cigányok a társadalmi munkamegosztásban” in Szegö, Cignyok, honnét jöttek, merre tartanak, p. 114.Google Scholar

14. Mezey, Barna et al. (eds.), A Magyarországi cigánykérdés dokumentumokban , 1422–1985 (Budapest: Kossuth, 1986) p. 37.Google Scholar

15. Report cited in Gronemeyer, “Zigeunerpolitik,” p. 139.Google Scholar

16. Gronemeyer, op. cit., pp. 60ff.Google Scholar

17. Comp. the similar assessment in Raymond Pearson, National Minorities in Eastern Europe, 1848–1945 (New York: St, Martin's, 1983), p. 202.Google Scholar

18. In Budapest a Jewish Rabbinical Seminary has existed down to the present day, the only one in all of Eastern Europe, and since the mid-1970s there has been quite a bit of public discussion of the Jewish question. In Czechoslovakia, despite the continuous existence of a Jewish Museum in the center of Prague, discussion of Jewish questions has been virtually absent. A good review of Hungarian developments is András Kovács, “The Jewish Question in Contemporary Hungary” in Randolph L. Braham and Bela Vágó (eds.), The Holocaust in Hungary Forty Years Later (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), ch. 15.Google Scholar

19. For relevant texts, see Milena Hübschmannová, Abstrakta odborné literatury o cikánech v ČSSR (1955-1972) (Prague: UFS UK, 1974), passim; and Josef Novaček, “Cikáni jako zvláštní etnická skupina obyvatelstva” in Acta Facultatis Rerum Naturalium Universitatis Comeniae, Res Sociales, I (1967), pp. 91'103.Google Scholar

20. The Czechoslovak laws regarding Gypsies are published in Hübschmannová, Abstrakta, pp. 143ff. Comp. the essay by P. Višek in Kazimir Véčerka and Marketa Stěchová (eds.), Příčiny, podminky a možnosti prevence sociálno patologickych jevů v romské populaci v ČSSR (mimeograph, Cesky Krumlov: 1986), pp. 6ff.Google Scholar

21. See the intelligent eye-witness account in Otto Ulc,” Communist National Minority Policy: The Case of the Gypsies in Czechoslovakia,” in Soviet Studies, Vol. XX (1968-69), no. 4, pp. 424'425.Google Scholar

22. Politburo resolution of 20 June, 1961, republished in Barna Mezey et al (eds.), A Magyarországi cigányérdés dokumentumokban, 1422–1985 (Budapest: Kossuth, 1986), p. 240.Google Scholar

23. Agit-Prop Committee Statement of 11 June, 1974 reprinted in Mezey, op. cit., pp. 250ff.Google Scholar

24. The census of 1960 as cited in Tomka, “Die Ziegeuner,” p. 9. The statisticians apparently only now abandoned the language criterion for counting Gypsies, and produced more real figures.Google Scholar

25. Srb, Vladimir and Job, Jan, “Některé demografické, ekonomické a kulturní charakteristiky romského obyvatelstva v ČSSR 1970” in Demografie, Vol XVI (1974), no 2, p. 173.Google Scholar

26. Kemény, István, Beszámoló a Magyarországi cigányok helyzetéel foglalkozo 1971-ben végzett kutatásról (Budapest: 1976), p. 5, 10, 13.Google Scholar

27. Večerka and Stěchov, op. cit., pp. 78 and 6; and Vladimir Pavlok et al (eds.), Pede o společenskou integraci cikánskykh obcanu̇ z hlediṡko resortu̇ socialnich večí (Bratislava: VUSR, 1984), p. 13. The CSR authorities apparently counted only those Gypsies who presented themselves for social welfare benefits.Google Scholar

28. These figures were provided me by Gypsy leaders in Prague and Budapest in July and August, 1990; but see Expres (Prague),2 July 1990.Google Scholar

29. These problems are detailed in the various essays in Večerka and Stečhová, Příčiny podminky. The danger of Gypsy welfare abuse was especially pronounced in Czechoslovakia, where for a decade after 1968 the Government paid premiums to families with many children.Google Scholar

30. Symbolically, Czechoslovakia adopted a new constitution in July, 1960, declaring itself a “Socialist Republic.”Google Scholar

31. See my “The Origins of Defektology” in William McCagg and Lewis Siegelbaum (eds.), The Disabled in the Soviet Union (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), p. 51.Google Scholar

32. Gollesz, Viktor, Gyógypedagogiai rehabilitáió (Budapest: Tankönykiadó, 1985), p. 19.Google Scholar

33. See CSR Ministry of Education, Vychova a vzděláváni mládeže vyžadující zvlaštní peče v Československu (Prague: SPN, 1987), pp 30'31).Google Scholar

34. See Gronemeyer's of the SZETA group in his “Zigeunerpolitik,” p. 130-131. After much dispute, the sociologists managed to publish the results of their investigations in 1976: see Kemény, Beszámoló.Google Scholar

35. Kemény, Beszámoló, pp. 41–42; Mezey, op. cit., p. 255ff.; Gronemeyer, “Zigeunerpolitik,” pp. 114 ff.Google Scholar

36. Resolution of 2 Oct. 1984, in Mezey, op. cit., p. 279.Google Scholar

37. Ibid; and Gronemeyer, Zigeunerpolitik, p. 114-18.Google Scholar

38. See the articles by Miroslav Holomek, “Současné problemy Cikánu̇ v ČSSR a jejich řešeni” in Demografie, XI (1969) no. 3, pp. 203-209; “Stav soucasnéo hnutí organizace Cikánu-Romu̇ v CSR” in Demografie, IX (1969), no. 3, p. 216; and Tomáš Holomek, “Problematika Cikánu̇ ve svetle zákonné úpravy”, in Demografie, XI (1969), no. 3, pp. 210'213.Google Scholar

39. The Czechs, like the Hungarians, made a large scale review of their Gypsy policy in the early 1970s, and analyzed their alternatives: see Karel Kra and Eva Davidov (eds.), Cikáni v ČSSR v proces společenské integrace (mimeograph for “internal circulation only”: Prague: UFS, ČSAV, 1976). A short preliminary version of this study was printed as K. Kra (ed), Ke společenské problematici cikáni v ČSSR (Prague: UFS CSAV, 1975). Comp. Kara's brief “Cikáni v ČSSR a jejich společenská integrace” in Sociologicky Casopis, no. xvii (1981), pp. 366379.Google Scholar

40. Malá, Helena, “Vychova, vzdělávání a biologicky vyvoj cikánskych děta mládeže v ČSR,” (Mimeograph: Prague: Universita Karlova, 1985), p. 44.Google Scholar

41. See K. Olah's chapter in Večerka and Stečhová (eds.) Přčiny, podminky a možnosti, p. 83.Google Scholar

42. Alongside the official “persuasion”, the women were offered sums of money, most recently 11,000 Ksč. Ofher and De Rooij, HetAfkopen, English summary, p. 2.Google Scholar

43. See in particular Jaroslav Suchy, Anthropologische Untersuchungen eigenartiger Populationen Mitteleuropas in Mitteilungen Sekt. Schulbiol. (Prague: ČSAV, 1965), Heft 1, pp. 105-144; his Rassengeschichte der Menschheit (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1968); his (with Helena Malá) “The Physical Features of Gypsy Youth” in Anthropologia LVI (1969), pp. 3143; their Anthropologicky vyzkum cikánskych dětí v Čechách in UK, Sbornik kafedry biologie a zakladu zemedělské vyroby (Prague: Ped. F. UK, 1969, pp. 221-233; and their A Contribution to Determine Pigmentation of Hair and Eyes of Gypsy Youth in Czechoslovakia (Prague: Academia, 1971).Google Scholar

44. Malá, Vychova, vzdělávaní. Comp. Jaroslav Stipek, Sociální příčiny poruch chováni obtižné vychovatelné mládeže (Prague: St. Ped. Nakl., 1987, pp. 45'48.Google Scholar

45. The hero of the Hungarian defectological movement was Dr. Gustv Barczi. His far less influential opposite number in Czechoslovakia was Milos Sovk. These and the following remarks about Czechoslovak defectology are based on the numerous historical essays by Dr. Anna Szabo-Gordos published mainly in the Bárczi Gustáv Gyógpedagógiai Föiskolai Evkönyve; and on my readings of the Hungarian periodical Gyógypedagógiai Szemle and the Prague journal Otázky defektologii. Google Scholar

46. Gronemeyer brings this out especially well in his “Zigeunerpolitik,” chs. 3 and 4. See also the internal study about public opinion in Czechoslovakia: V. Kalvoda et al. (eds.), Minění o cikánech a o ěešeni cikánské otázky (Prague: U W I, 1971); and Kemény, Beszámoló, passim.Google Scholar

47. This at least was the published justification of the decision: in reality the issue may have been a desire among the police authorities to monopolize possession of police dogs. In other Socialist countries (viz Poland) the police and the blind shared the production of the dog-breeding farms! Interview at the Association for the Blind in Warsaw, Sept. 1988.Google Scholar

48. See for example Gábor László et al. (eds.), “Cigányügyi tanulmányok es dokumentumok,” Szociálpolitikai Értesito, no. 2, 1984; Agnes Bokor, “Telepi Cigányok” in the Sociological Institute's overall report on Poverty in Hungary in ibid., nos.4-5, 1985, pp. 397ff; István Bencsik, AMagyarországon élo cigánylakossg társdalmi beilleszkedése az 1970-os évektol napjainkig (Budapest: ELTE BTK,1988); and A.T. Hegedus, “A cigány identitás változásnak problémái” in Kult. Kozlemények no. 4, 1989, pp. 104'112.Google Scholar

49. See Prečan (ed.), Charta 77…Dokumentace, pp. 217'225.Google Scholar