7. The first Gypsy/Roma organisations, churches and newspapers

In the 1970s, a young and provocative German scholar, Kirsten Martins-Heuss, shocked the academic public with her statement that Gypsy Studies is “a science of the plagiarist”. It cannot be denied that there are still some grounds for such a critique. In the history of Gypsy (now known as Roma) movements and organisations, inaccurate data and interpretations often make their way from book to book without attempts at verification — for example, scholars refer to the Gypsy Conference in Kannsta..

Conclusion

Funding: European Research Council for the Project RomaInterbellum. Roma Civic Emancipation between the Two World Wars, ERC-Advanced Grant no.69466, hosted by University of St Andrews.Publisher PD

Introduction: The roots

Funding: European Research Council for the Project RomaInterbellum. Roma Civic Emancipation between the Two World Wars, ERC-Advanced Grant no.69466, hosted by University of St Andrews.Publisher PD

Foreword

Funding: European Research Council for the Project RomaInterbellum. Roma Civic Emancipation between the Two World Wars, ERC-Advanced Grant no.69466, hosted by University of St Andrews.Publisher PD

To the question about oral history :on the example of the missed Gypsy autonomous republic in the USSR

In the 1920s and 1930s in the USSR, nation-building was carried out in line with the paradigm of “affirmative action”. This led to the creation of many national administrative-territorial units at different levels. The leadership of the All-Russian Union of Gypsies has also repeatedly raised the issue of the need to create a Gypsy national region, which will develop into a Gypsy autonomous republic, and some Gypsy activists have also pleaded for this in their letters to Stalin. In 1936, a meeting of the Council of Nationalities of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR decided to start preparatory work in this direction and issued the corresponding Resolution of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. A comprehensive survey of the places of possible future Gypsy national unit in the West Siberian Territory was organised, as well as other preparatory work. However, for various reasons at the end of the 1930s the topic of the Gypsy Autonomous Republic disappeared from the agenda. The article presents these events which were preserved in the oral history of the Gypsies and also how the memory of these events intertwined with the memories of the deportation of nomadic Gypsies from Moscow to Siberia in 1933. As a result of the contamination of memories of these two events, a historical narrative was created in folklorised form. A discussion is offered about method of oral history, in which the interpretation of events can develop into a national narrative, far from always being a reliable historical source. To achieve full historical knowledge, it is necessary to verify the oral history with existing documentary sources, taking into account the general socio-political context in which the Roma historical narrative was created and functions

In search of own state:Romani attempts to create autonomy before WWII

Text of panels and abstracts accepted for the international conference of the Gypsy Lore Society held in Prague in 2021 (GLS Annual Meeting and Conference on Romani Studies 2021, 8.-10. 9. 2021 - https://gls2021.ff.cuni.cz/)