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A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia
David Crowe draws from previously untapped East European, Russian, and traditional sources to explore the life, history, and culture of the Gypsies, or Roma, from their entrance into the region in the Middle Ages until the present.
336 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2007
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May 30, 2019
Anyone who has read anything about the Gypsies can readily understand that the people has had a rather difficult time of it throughout their sojourning in Europe. And as they have lived far longer and in far greater amounts in Eastern Europe than in other places, it is perhaps unsurprising that their history has been more than usually tragic in this part of the world. This book certainly does a great deal to emphasize the difficulty that Gypsies have faced over the centuries up to the present day in many (but not all) of the countries of Eastern Europe, and if that is not the most enjoyable of reading it certainly is important reading for those who wish to know more about this people and their background. And admittedly, some of the suffering of the Gypsies appears somewhat monotonous as well, as no political system or governing nation has been immune from a tendency to deal harshly with the Gypsies and to be frustrated in attempts at providing for the well-being of the Gypsies and being responsive to internal political desires on the part of the people of various countries.
The book itself is a bit less than 250 pages and begins with a preface and acknowledgements before moving to an introduction and map before the author gives seven chapters on the experience of the Gypsies in various countries of Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Russia, and Yugoslavia, after which there is a conclusion, notes, bibliography, and then an index. The author goes into very deep detail about the experience of Gypsies in all of these countries, discussing their origins in the country, the various suffering they found as slaves and the way in which they were frequently the victims of popular hostility by the majority populations of all the countries of Eastern Europe. Each chapter is full of the names of demagogues and leaders who in some way or another sought to either exploit or attack the Gypsies, and occasionally even some discussions of ways that the elevation of the Gypsies, usually according to the standards of the country and sadly not the standards of the Gypsies themselves was attempted. Most of the time, alas, these efforts were not successful and usually led to further resentment of the Gypsies later on after the lack of success of elevating the culture and education of the Gypsies in the eyes of neighbors.
A great deal of the sadness of this book is the sheer monotony of reading about the suffering of the Gypsies. Whether one looks at their experience of being heavily taxed by the Turks, or their pretending to be one faith or the other based on how dominant it was, or their reduction to slavery or the various attempts of nations to make them sedentary or to expel them when feeling threatened by their numbers and their way of life, the Gypsies have suffered for a long time. It is hardly surprising that they view outsiders with a high degree of suspicion, even if their own private and alien ways equally predictably lead to the hostility of those around them. The experience of the Gypsy people is a reminder that knowing why there are difficulties in the relationship between peoples is not always a good enough clue as to how these difficulties can be overcome, not least when behavior is predictable and repetitive and yet tragic at the same time. If you want to read this book, prepare to find the Gypsy history sad but easy enough to understand.
The book itself is a bit less than 250 pages and begins with a preface and acknowledgements before moving to an introduction and map before the author gives seven chapters on the experience of the Gypsies in various countries of Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Russia, and Yugoslavia, after which there is a conclusion, notes, bibliography, and then an index. The author goes into very deep detail about the experience of Gypsies in all of these countries, discussing their origins in the country, the various suffering they found as slaves and the way in which they were frequently the victims of popular hostility by the majority populations of all the countries of Eastern Europe. Each chapter is full of the names of demagogues and leaders who in some way or another sought to either exploit or attack the Gypsies, and occasionally even some discussions of ways that the elevation of the Gypsies, usually according to the standards of the country and sadly not the standards of the Gypsies themselves was attempted. Most of the time, alas, these efforts were not successful and usually led to further resentment of the Gypsies later on after the lack of success of elevating the culture and education of the Gypsies in the eyes of neighbors.
A great deal of the sadness of this book is the sheer monotony of reading about the suffering of the Gypsies. Whether one looks at their experience of being heavily taxed by the Turks, or their pretending to be one faith or the other based on how dominant it was, or their reduction to slavery or the various attempts of nations to make them sedentary or to expel them when feeling threatened by their numbers and their way of life, the Gypsies have suffered for a long time. It is hardly surprising that they view outsiders with a high degree of suspicion, even if their own private and alien ways equally predictably lead to the hostility of those around them. The experience of the Gypsy people is a reminder that knowing why there are difficulties in the relationship between peoples is not always a good enough clue as to how these difficulties can be overcome, not least when behavior is predictable and repetitive and yet tragic at the same time. If you want to read this book, prepare to find the Gypsy history sad but easy enough to understand.
February 21, 2024
This book was an amazing read! And when I say amazing, I do not mean it in the happy sense of the word.
I am Bulgarian, and Crowe provoked me to think a lot about my region's history. Social justice issues are typically studied from a distinctively Western perspective, and this was my first time stumbling on a book that hit so close to home.
For context, I grew up in a small town in Bulgaria. My town, like most other Bulgarian towns, has a Gypsy quarter (mahala). When I was a kid, my parents volunteered in various Gypsy quarters, and I have visited several. When we furnished our apartment following the birth of my younger brother, we went to the Gypsy market to buy bookshelves. One of my brother's best friends in elementary school was a Gypsy girl whose mom had divorced her Gypsy dad and had left the mahala to work and live with the Bulgarians.
And then, my family was unable to have a romanticized view of the Gypsy community shared by some prominent figures mentioned in the book, like Tolstoy or Lizst. A village house that my family inherited from my grandfather was completely ransacked by the Gypsies in the village every couple of months. After several years of having everything stolen - tools, produce, basic furniture like a bed frame, and so on - my father abandoned the house with a heavy heart. It was the house where he had spent his childhood, together with his cousins and his grandparents.
That was my background when I started the book. I should mention that Gypsies in Bulgaria are no longer traveling people, at least not as much as they were before. I knew that historically they were nomads, but Communist policies made them settle. And then here come all the details I did not know - it never occurred to me that not so long ago we had educational programs in the Roma language. I always thought that the default "Bulgarian kids should speak Bulgarian", which currently both nationalistic and liberal parties support is and has always been the norm. I did not know that the Gypsies fought alongside Bulgarians and Russians in the Russia-Turkish (Freeing - that's what we call it in Bulgarian) war. I did not know that Gypsies were derided for being Ottoman spies, but they still had to pay jizya.
And then there was so much more I did not know about our neighboring countries! Moravia (Czech Republic) would put gory drawings of Gypsy families being brutalized, just so they could warn Gypsies what would happen if they entered the country. A Czech town that I visited as a kid - Hodonin - had a large Gypsy concentration camp. Romania had Gypsy slaves until the middle of the 19th century - that was a brutal reality of which I had no clue. I have always thought of slavery as something distant, American or maybe Western European. Maybe Russia with its serfs too. But never the Balkans - we had been oppressed by so many countries for so long, that it didn't make sense to me to think of us as the oppressors.
This book changed the way I think about us with the terrible descriptions of how we treated Gypsies. Overall, all Balkan countries failed the Gypsy population by design, by being terrible policymakers for centuries. It should be noted that most of the time, they were terrible in policymaking for their other citizens as well; it's just that Gypsies were much more underprivileged. Crowe gave me a broader understanding of the region and helped me think compassionately for the Roma minority. Maybe, what my parents and I did as kids was good, but not enough. Maybe, this small-scale effort needs to be combined with more systemic efforts with better policy making. I hope we figure it out soon.
---
On a different note, I should say that the book was meant to be an annotated bibliography. Hence, it is incredibly dense and packed with information, making it a bit hard to read at times. It is well documented, with loads of references to original documents. The only reason I give it 4 instead of 5 stars is that it is so hard to read.
I am Bulgarian, and Crowe provoked me to think a lot about my region's history. Social justice issues are typically studied from a distinctively Western perspective, and this was my first time stumbling on a book that hit so close to home.
For context, I grew up in a small town in Bulgaria. My town, like most other Bulgarian towns, has a Gypsy quarter (mahala). When I was a kid, my parents volunteered in various Gypsy quarters, and I have visited several. When we furnished our apartment following the birth of my younger brother, we went to the Gypsy market to buy bookshelves. One of my brother's best friends in elementary school was a Gypsy girl whose mom had divorced her Gypsy dad and had left the mahala to work and live with the Bulgarians.
And then, my family was unable to have a romanticized view of the Gypsy community shared by some prominent figures mentioned in the book, like Tolstoy or Lizst. A village house that my family inherited from my grandfather was completely ransacked by the Gypsies in the village every couple of months. After several years of having everything stolen - tools, produce, basic furniture like a bed frame, and so on - my father abandoned the house with a heavy heart. It was the house where he had spent his childhood, together with his cousins and his grandparents.
That was my background when I started the book. I should mention that Gypsies in Bulgaria are no longer traveling people, at least not as much as they were before. I knew that historically they were nomads, but Communist policies made them settle. And then here come all the details I did not know - it never occurred to me that not so long ago we had educational programs in the Roma language. I always thought that the default "Bulgarian kids should speak Bulgarian", which currently both nationalistic and liberal parties support is and has always been the norm. I did not know that the Gypsies fought alongside Bulgarians and Russians in the Russia-Turkish (Freeing - that's what we call it in Bulgarian) war. I did not know that Gypsies were derided for being Ottoman spies, but they still had to pay jizya.
And then there was so much more I did not know about our neighboring countries! Moravia (Czech Republic) would put gory drawings of Gypsy families being brutalized, just so they could warn Gypsies what would happen if they entered the country. A Czech town that I visited as a kid - Hodonin - had a large Gypsy concentration camp. Romania had Gypsy slaves until the middle of the 19th century - that was a brutal reality of which I had no clue. I have always thought of slavery as something distant, American or maybe Western European. Maybe Russia with its serfs too. But never the Balkans - we had been oppressed by so many countries for so long, that it didn't make sense to me to think of us as the oppressors.
This book changed the way I think about us with the terrible descriptions of how we treated Gypsies. Overall, all Balkan countries failed the Gypsy population by design, by being terrible policymakers for centuries. It should be noted that most of the time, they were terrible in policymaking for their other citizens as well; it's just that Gypsies were much more underprivileged. Crowe gave me a broader understanding of the region and helped me think compassionately for the Roma minority. Maybe, what my parents and I did as kids was good, but not enough. Maybe, this small-scale effort needs to be combined with more systemic efforts with better policy making. I hope we figure it out soon.
---
On a different note, I should say that the book was meant to be an annotated bibliography. Hence, it is incredibly dense and packed with information, making it a bit hard to read at times. It is well documented, with loads of references to original documents. The only reason I give it 4 instead of 5 stars is that it is so hard to read.
August 28, 2021
I've had this book on my shelf since 1995, and finally read it, and so glad I did! It's basically a comprehensive survey course on the Roma in Eastern Europe and Russia from the Middle Ages to the early 1990's. There is a bunch of census data, which Crowe presents with a lot of caveats because obviously census data on an oppressed ethnic group is rarely accurate. The book is structured such that each country or region has an entire chapter dedicated to it, with a focus not only on the Gypsies but on the overarching political climate at the time. Nestling the history of the Roma within the context of all the surrounding upheaval was a good way of presenting the big picture of the situation. This isn't a book that is full of personal stories of the Roma so much as, again, a political history of their lifestyles. I find it a perfect springboard for further readings of the Roma, as it provides a substantial foundation for understanding the circumstances, strife, and oppression they've endured for centuries.
March 26, 2025
An enlightening introduction to the topic for someone who knew only the most basic stuff about the Roma in Europe. Really highlights the almost nonstop oppression these peoples have suffered, and the tireless efforts to seek dignified lives despite it all.
June 27, 2012
This is a solid intro for anyone who has even a passing sympathetic interest in the only (other) group of people that are hated as much as the Jews. Crowe gives a systematic re-tracing of how the Roma-I tend to avoid using the word "Gypsy" since it has too much "Hate-story" attached to it-came to be "here". In Europe,America,... and our heads.As they are...except they're not. Bothering to actually find out how "History/Hate-story" came to be written, one finds a rather remarkable timeline covering hundreds of years and many diffrent "nations". The one thing uniting all of these places is,of course,their treatment of the aforementioned "ethnics". Except that it was not always like this; at their earliest time of recorded "appearance", the Roma were,at least in some places, highly prized for their skills in metal-work,music and various other occupations. It did appear to me that with the event of "modernity" (i.e. mass-prodution,mass-society),Romany individuality became an "undesirable" quality...together with their refusal to be "tied down" to a prescribed form of making a living. The book also covers what happened to the Roma after the collapse of Communism,but the author does have a tendency to end many chapters with the same phrases and no concrete ideas of what could be done to change their situation. But I may be a bit harsh here,Crowe is more of a historian than an activist,and there are of course no "quick-fixes" available for these "group/s" of people who have suffered centuries of very "institutionalized" racism/xenophobia. Reading this book,I came to realize that Europe has it's very own "Slavery issues" to deal with,and unlike the US,we have not yet organized a civil-rights based movement that takes up the battle for "Roma Rights/Equality". Maybe reading this book will help people to understand that what most regard as "deviant" behaviour is really often just a sign of deeply traumatized men and women who have been robbed of their past, and are in danger of being deprived of a future. This book should be widely read,prefably starting in schools...the earlier one learns of what has been done to the Roma the better. I highly recommend this,it is hopefully going to change any readers perceptions/ideas/pre-conceived notions about "Gypsies".
May 31, 2017
Read this the first time back in the 1990s when I was doing research for my novel, Gypsy Spy: The Cold War Files. The same stories that captivated me over twenty years ago continue to fire my compassion for the plight of the Roma and my imagination. The Gypsies' history in Europe has been long and turbulent. David Crowe has done a great job to put their history within the context of the shifting sands and sovereigns of Eastern Europe. The material is organized geographically. The reader gets multiple rounds of an Eastern European historical survey from the Middle Ages to the early 1990s. The regions examined all found themselves behind the Iron Curtain after World War II. The author highlights some of the social improvements the Soviet governments made for the Roma but fails to illustrate the overall costs in liberty in well being these communist systems imposed, something he didn't do with the Nazis. For this flaw in balance, I chose to only give it four instead of five stars.
November 18, 2013
Interesting, but it's broken down by country, and each country follows the same general line, so once you've read the first section, you may as well have read them all.
He delves a lot into the histories of the individual countries, sometimes not mentioning the Roma for pages and pages. Honestly, the whole thing feels a bit like a brief overview of each country's history with a particular interest in how some of these events affected the Roma. This may be something that only bothers me, but I just find it incredibly unnecessary to go into explicit detail of how exactly the Germans came to take power over Hungary when all that really matters is that the Germans took control and that because the Germans took control, bad things happened.
Also, the author really loves census data. I'm pretty sure if I ever see census data again, I'll have to gouge my eyes out.
He delves a lot into the histories of the individual countries, sometimes not mentioning the Roma for pages and pages. Honestly, the whole thing feels a bit like a brief overview of each country's history with a particular interest in how some of these events affected the Roma. This may be something that only bothers me, but I just find it incredibly unnecessary to go into explicit detail of how exactly the Germans came to take power over Hungary when all that really matters is that the Germans took control and that because the Germans took control, bad things happened.
Also, the author really loves census data. I'm pretty sure if I ever see census data again, I'll have to gouge my eyes out.
July 18, 2013
How a people who started out with unique favorable trades changed to a most despised group. Good information on the circular causes of the downward spiral based on fear of the Ottoman Empire/outsiders and dark skin until finally the Romas did reflect what they were despised for. A little too many statistics for my taste and repetitive but otherwise interesting and informative.
April 6, 2011
It was a little dry, but I definitely learned some new things about Gypsies. Like - they were paid to be sterilized and some countries imposed forced relocation of children (basically kidnapping) to attempt to integrate them into society. Those things happened in the 60s and 70s - yikes!
April 2, 2011
An good research resource for studying the Rom.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews