What do you think?
Rate this book
Between Two Fires: Gypsy Performance and Romani Memory from Pushkin to Post-Socialism
Since tsarist times, Roma in Russia have been portrayed as both rebellious outlaws and free-spirited songbirds—in each case, as if isolated from society. In Soviet times, Russians continued to harbor these two, only seemingly opposed, views of “Gypsies,” exalting their songs on stage but scorning them on the streets as liars and cheats. Alaina Lemon’s Between Two Fires examines how Roma themselves have negotiated these dual images in everyday interactions and in stage performances.
Lemon’s ethnographic study is based on extensive fieldwork in 1990s Russia and focuses on Moscow Romani Theater actors as well as Romani traders and metalworkers. Drawing from interviews with Roma and Russians, observations of performances, and conversations, as well as archives, literary texts, and media, Lemon analyzes the role of theatricality and theatrical tropes in Romani life and the everyday linguistics of social relations and of memory. Historically, the way Romani stage performance has been culturally framed and positioned in Russia has served to typecast Gypsies as “natural” performers, she explains. Thus, while theatrical and musical performance may at times empower Roma, more often it has reinforced and rationalized racial and social stereotypes, excluding them from many Soviet and Russian economic and political arenas. Performance, therefore, defines what it means to be Romani in Russia differently than it does elsewhere, Lemon shows. Considering formal details of language as well as broader cultural and social structures, she also discusses how racial categories relate to post-Soviet economic changes, how gender categories and Euro-Soviet notions of civility are connected, and how ontological distinctions between “stage art” and “real life” contribute to the making of social types. This complex study thus serves as a corrective to romantic views of Roma as detached from political forces.
Lemon’s ethnographic study is based on extensive fieldwork in 1990s Russia and focuses on Moscow Romani Theater actors as well as Romani traders and metalworkers. Drawing from interviews with Roma and Russians, observations of performances, and conversations, as well as archives, literary texts, and media, Lemon analyzes the role of theatricality and theatrical tropes in Romani life and the everyday linguistics of social relations and of memory. Historically, the way Romani stage performance has been culturally framed and positioned in Russia has served to typecast Gypsies as “natural” performers, she explains. Thus, while theatrical and musical performance may at times empower Roma, more often it has reinforced and rationalized racial and social stereotypes, excluding them from many Soviet and Russian economic and political arenas. Performance, therefore, defines what it means to be Romani in Russia differently than it does elsewhere, Lemon shows. Considering formal details of language as well as broader cultural and social structures, she also discusses how racial categories relate to post-Soviet economic changes, how gender categories and Euro-Soviet notions of civility are connected, and how ontological distinctions between “stage art” and “real life” contribute to the making of social types. This complex study thus serves as a corrective to romantic views of Roma as detached from political forces.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
1 person is currently reading
43 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 10, 2013
Winner of the 2001 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize, Alaina Lemon’s Between Two Fires: Gypsy Performance and Romani Memory from Pushkin to Postsocialism, is a valuable contribution to the emerging field of Romani Studies. Lemon’s anthropological approach to Russian Roma is grounded in three years of fieldwork, but provides an insightful study across all disciplines. The book examines how Roma performance reproduces and reinforces Russian national and racial ideologies. Lemon illuminates the ways in which Russian "Gypsies" are repeatedly typecast and dichotomized in society as wild or civilized, nomadic or assimilated, wandering or settled, and "authentic" or "inauthentic," perpetuating a "discursive division" (57). Lemon’s work is unique in its approach because it doesn’t dwell on the Roma as a “cast-off” people without historical memory and place, but concentrates on discourse about Romani performance, performation, and everyday life. Through personal interviews with Russian Roma, Lemon emphasizes how Roma are not a people without nation and memory, but are connected to local places and pasts.
Pushkin’s Byronic 1824 poem, Tsygany (Gypsies) and the Roma of other Russian classics became a national discourse cementing the Russian perspective of Gypsies that both exalted and excluded them. Lemon emphasizes that Gypsy performance was a “conduit for Russian national, poetic genius” (28), rather than display of good performance. Having no Pushkin of their own, Lemon asks how Roma can articulate themselves within the Soviet nation without being subsumed within Russian culture. Lemon’s research is centered at the Moscow Romani Theater, the first and longest running Romani Theater in the world. The Romani Theater was intended to entice Roma to become civilized and to debunk stereotypes, though it intensified them by creating the image that “Gypsies must live only in gutters or poetry” (28). In Chapter 4, Lemon describes how the Russian directed Theater served as an institution of nationalist propaganda to “buttress assimilative nationalities policy” (139), that nurtured performers who portrayed the romantic stereotype, while displacing Roma not associated with state-sponsored arts. The memory of state performance, according to Lemon, has complicated class relationships “not only between Roma and non-Roma, but among Roma” (166).
In a survey of the Gypsy stage from the 1930’s through the late 1990’s, Lemon provides theatrical synopses and backstage events that are representative of Russian assimilative motives. The Theater boasted that only its entourage was authentic in attempts to displace other Gypsy performers and “alienate them from real folk culture” (141), and further placing limitations on Roma self-representation. Lemon relates stage narratives of Russian directors telling Roma musicians to “change the tempo . . . because it is more Gypsy that way” (151). Relations of authority on the set, Lemon observed, “were compounded not only by general occupational concerns about wages or reputation but also by ethnic hierarchies” (152). The backstage narratives of Lemon’s study provide a view of Romani performance that clearly answers the questions of authenticity and motive. Lemon’s research of the Theater is cross-culturally enlightening, as it demonstrates the ways in which theater, and the arts in general, hold sway over the public and can be manipulated to fit the nationalist agenda of the state.
Lemon dislodges European assumption that authentic Gypsy culture lacks memory of the past and commitment in the present. Lemon contrasts metaphors of the stage, structured on state archival records, to Romani oral histories and folktales to demonstrate how “Gypsy performance veils Romani memory” (166). Roma do not deny history, argued Lemon, but there is no infrastructure that “magnifies their memory as broadly collective” (167). The challenge is the assumption that history not only belongs to the civilized, but that Roma hold diverse religious backgrounds and tradition; therefore they have no attachment to a history. Lemon investigates narrative memories of Roma and archival texts to untangle Russian Roma memory and loyalty to the state or to Roma culture. In claiming to expose “inauthentic Gypsies”, Lemon accuses the state of setting up a stage that created mistrust among Russian Roma and blurred the real and the counterfeit memory.
Between Two Fires is a symbolic title as duality is a common theme in Lemon’s book. It quotes, firstly, the title of the first play staged at the Moscow Romani heater in the 1930’s depicting a Gypsy camp forced to choose between the promises of the Red Army or the deception of the White Army. Secondly, it represents the duality within Romani culture to European assimilation that brings Lemon to conclude that “performance does not compel Roma to forget to remember” (235). Based on her PhD dissertation, Lemon has created a work that is highly useful to scholars across many disciplines.
Pushkin’s Byronic 1824 poem, Tsygany (Gypsies) and the Roma of other Russian classics became a national discourse cementing the Russian perspective of Gypsies that both exalted and excluded them. Lemon emphasizes that Gypsy performance was a “conduit for Russian national, poetic genius” (28), rather than display of good performance. Having no Pushkin of their own, Lemon asks how Roma can articulate themselves within the Soviet nation without being subsumed within Russian culture. Lemon’s research is centered at the Moscow Romani Theater, the first and longest running Romani Theater in the world. The Romani Theater was intended to entice Roma to become civilized and to debunk stereotypes, though it intensified them by creating the image that “Gypsies must live only in gutters or poetry” (28). In Chapter 4, Lemon describes how the Russian directed Theater served as an institution of nationalist propaganda to “buttress assimilative nationalities policy” (139), that nurtured performers who portrayed the romantic stereotype, while displacing Roma not associated with state-sponsored arts. The memory of state performance, according to Lemon, has complicated class relationships “not only between Roma and non-Roma, but among Roma” (166).
In a survey of the Gypsy stage from the 1930’s through the late 1990’s, Lemon provides theatrical synopses and backstage events that are representative of Russian assimilative motives. The Theater boasted that only its entourage was authentic in attempts to displace other Gypsy performers and “alienate them from real folk culture” (141), and further placing limitations on Roma self-representation. Lemon relates stage narratives of Russian directors telling Roma musicians to “change the tempo . . . because it is more Gypsy that way” (151). Relations of authority on the set, Lemon observed, “were compounded not only by general occupational concerns about wages or reputation but also by ethnic hierarchies” (152). The backstage narratives of Lemon’s study provide a view of Romani performance that clearly answers the questions of authenticity and motive. Lemon’s research of the Theater is cross-culturally enlightening, as it demonstrates the ways in which theater, and the arts in general, hold sway over the public and can be manipulated to fit the nationalist agenda of the state.
Lemon dislodges European assumption that authentic Gypsy culture lacks memory of the past and commitment in the present. Lemon contrasts metaphors of the stage, structured on state archival records, to Romani oral histories and folktales to demonstrate how “Gypsy performance veils Romani memory” (166). Roma do not deny history, argued Lemon, but there is no infrastructure that “magnifies their memory as broadly collective” (167). The challenge is the assumption that history not only belongs to the civilized, but that Roma hold diverse religious backgrounds and tradition; therefore they have no attachment to a history. Lemon investigates narrative memories of Roma and archival texts to untangle Russian Roma memory and loyalty to the state or to Roma culture. In claiming to expose “inauthentic Gypsies”, Lemon accuses the state of setting up a stage that created mistrust among Russian Roma and blurred the real and the counterfeit memory.
Between Two Fires is a symbolic title as duality is a common theme in Lemon’s book. It quotes, firstly, the title of the first play staged at the Moscow Romani heater in the 1930’s depicting a Gypsy camp forced to choose between the promises of the Red Army or the deception of the White Army. Secondly, it represents the duality within Romani culture to European assimilation that brings Lemon to conclude that “performance does not compel Roma to forget to remember” (235). Based on her PhD dissertation, Lemon has created a work that is highly useful to scholars across many disciplines.
Displaying 1 of 1 review