“Everybody Loved Each Other There”: Roma Memories of the One-Time Cinka Panna Colony in Oradea and Its Liquidation during the Communist Times

Roma Representations as Nondominant Representations

The relation between power and representation was addressed by the postmodern turn in social sciences, which occurred not only in sociology or anthropology but also in literary criticism, history, law and philosophy. ⁶ Also known as the crisis of representation, this paradigm neglects one outstanding and almighty account of reality, claiming instead the need for equally valid, and multiple, representations. Narratives, memories, and agency are not regarded as neutral concepts any longer; this paradigm tries to identify who produces and reinforces them. Thus, the postmodern turn attaches storytellers to stories, and agents to agencies and memories, all with well-defined social variables like ethnicity, race, class, and gender. ⁷ The groups who speak, act, and remember can be in dominant positions, or—to follow Edward Albee—in a muted one, with fewer chances to launch their representations in the social space. Such subordinated groups are the old, children, women, the physically or mentally disabled, and in many cases, members of ethnic or racial minorities. ⁸

This idea of dominance and subordination is well known in memory studies, too. Historians like Hobsbawm, Rangers, and Anderson revealed long ago that memories are subordinated to group interests; memories are constructed and become legitimate through the process of formalization and ritualization. ⁹ Shackel, who provides a well-documented stocktaking of theories on memory and power, states: “The control of a group memory is usually a question of power. Individuals and groups frequently struggle over the meaning of memory as the official memory is often imposed by the power elite.” ¹⁰

In my view, Roma in Eastern Europe are among the muted groups with fewer chances to launch their representations of the past. This group has always been regarded as an unwelcome other by the non-Roma society and power (see below data on this othering during socialist times). Moreover, unlike other ethno-racial minorities such as the Jews, the Roma, living on the fringes of the social structure, had no well-formed, powerful stratum of intelligentsia who could overcome non-Roma biases or misrepresentations.

Roma and the East European Socialist States

To follow Bárány, the Stalinist concepts of nation (requiring a common language and territory) could explain the fact that—with a few exceptions in Yugoslavia and Hungary—the linguistic and ethnocultural rights of the Roma were not recognized in East European state socialism. ¹¹ This group was not allowed to use its language in schools, being also obstructed from establishing cultural institutions. And, above all, unlike other minorities, the Roma were not recognized as a self-standing ethnic category in the census of socialist states. ¹² In Bulgaria, Roma were missing from the records, in Poland they were classified only as a population of Gypsy origin, in Czechoslovakia they were not among the constitutionally recognized minorities.

In parallel, a series of measures were introduced, beginning with the 1950s, in order to ban practices typical of many Roma groups in the region, depriving them of their right to free movement within the countries, accompanied by policies of forced sedentarization, employment, and school enrolment. ¹³

Together with sedentarization, demolition of Roma shantytowns was a major target for East European socialist policies. These measures were explained by Zoltán Bárány as intended to destroy autonomous Roma communities that—for the state authorities—represented a threat to social stability. ¹⁴ According to the data collected by Bárány, between 1972 and 1981 a total of 4,850 Roma families were removed from ghettoes to be given houses in Slovakia; meanwhile, in Hungary the number of Roma ghetto dwellers significantly decreased after 1971. ¹⁵ In many cases, the newly built houses allocated to the Roma had fewer comforts than the ones given to non-Roma; in other cases, these did not respect traditional Roma usage of space. Thus, in response to such ambivalances, the Roma sold their new properties and rebuilt the original shantytowns on their original sites. ¹⁶

To quote Michael Stewart, “the party intended to eliminate totally all traces of Gypsy lifestyle and behavior. . . . Gypsies were characterized less by a culture than by a ‘way of life’ marked out by behavioral traits such as scavenging, begging, hustling, dealing and laziness.” ¹⁷ The “Gypsy way of life,” as Stewart labelled it, refers to an engagement with traditional, non-industrial working activities such as wood carving, spoon making, tinsmithing, coppersmithing, drain-pipe making, fortune telling, or bear-leading. Small trade was also important among the pre-socialist Roma occupations: purchasing and reselling certain products, such as feather, saucepans, or horses. ¹⁸ All these required certain skills of negotiation and an ability to make connections with the non-Roma, ¹⁹ and also implied the condition of geographical mobility (which shaped many social practices) in order to obtain new clients and purchase goods. And this was in contrast with the officially recognized norms and virtues of the communist state which intended to control all sorts of economic practices and any form of motion within the territory of the country. ²⁰

But according to the official discourses of socialist times, assimilation went hand in hand with policies that—officially—intended to “raise” the Roma, facilitating their access to public services and resources, such as the labour market, health care system, and public housing. ²¹ The positive impact of these policies is a fact acknowledged even by those anthropologists who show a critical attitude toward such forms of social engineering:

The Gypsy policy’s success in getting the Rom into the wage labour market was more than statistical. When I talked to Gypsies, in some contexts at least, it did seem that work and the act of labouring had been given a new centrality and value in their lives. . . . The Rom did acknowledge wage labour as the source of the fundamental improvement in their living standards over the previous twenty years. ²²

Such attempts to “civilize the Roma” ²³ through enabling them access to certain resources were embedded in theories and practices deeply rooted in the political fabric of East European state socialism. In line with Katherine Verdery, centralized power is regarded as a core issue of East European socialism, the state being the only important agent in collecting and distributing (in fact: allocating) all kinds of resources. ²⁴ Allocation was a basic concept, as communism was in fact a project of social modernization, which, according to party ideologies, intended to catch up with Western capitalist achievements. ²⁷ Modernization—theoretically and sometimes practically—provided access to a set of material and symbolical goods for many groups exploited during pre-socialist times, like the economically subordinated working class or the landless peasants, and the Roma would easily fit into this category of the underprivileged. ²⁸

Roma in the Romanian State Socialism

Roma in Romania were treated as in other Eastern European countries. As in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Poland, the Roma were not classified as “self-standing ethnic groups”, nor were their ethno-cultural rights recognized. ²⁹ Forced sedentarization of the Roma started in 1946, and went hand in hand with confiscation of horses and wagons. This process had almost been completed by the 1950s. ³⁰ Policies of full employment were stipulated in Law 153/1970, sending Roma men and women to forced labour. ³¹ Increasing the level of schooling and prohibition of trading with gold were also targets for Roma policies in this country. ³²

The most important aspects of Roma policies were stipulated in a Romanian Communist Party document from 1977 issued under the name of “Study Regarding the Socio-Economic Condition of the Gypsy Population in Our Country.” ³³ According to this report, the Roma “refuse integration on the labour market” ³⁴ and “do not provide any socially useful activities; thus, they live on social allowance. They have a parasitic way of life,” ³⁵ “disregard their obligations, as they do not register themselves with the authorities.” ³⁶ “The majority of the adults are illiterate or half-illiterate, showing reluctance (manifestându-se refractari) in sending their children to school; the children are sent to beg. . . . They live in tents under unhealthy conditions, many families in the same room; three or four persons of different sex sleep in the same bed.” ³⁷

Framed by concepts of cultural racism, ³⁸ the document issued by the Central Committee—one of the highest-level institutions in the hierarchy of power—did not only take stock of the problems but also claimed to have found a “solution.” Subsequently, the following tasks were assigned in the plan: “integration in agriculture, factories,” ³⁹ “intensifying of police control over the Gypsies who do not integrate into the norms of social cohabiting and [who] perform a parasitic way of life,” ⁴⁰ “raising the level of education,” and “providing daily food for schools with an afterschool programme. For delinquency, vicious behavior, and negative influence on other minors, children should be transferred to special schools of work and re-education.” ⁴¹ Improving the housing conditions of the Roma was a target, too, in this set of directives: “allocation of land to build houses, in accordance with plans of systematization, . . . demolition of unhealthy (insalubrious) houses” ⁴² were set as objectives to increase the living standards of this group.

Interventions in the spatial organization of the Roma in state socialism had two major dimensions. Sedentarization was one of them, a project that stretched out over more than two decades, having been completed by the 1980s, ⁴³ and the construction of new dwelling places. For the Roma in urban settlements allocation of new apartaments enhanced the elimination of their neighbourhoods on the fringes of many towns. According to some scholars, this demolition was “not much of a loss” as the Roma were provided better living conditions than their previous ones. ⁴⁴ But, as is also acknowledged these directives, simultaneously implied a forced relocation—a liquidation of neighbourhoods and communities. ⁴⁵ As it happened, the forced relocation of the colony in Oradea was not an isolated case: the same happened in Bucharest ⁴⁶ and in Cluj with the Bufnița neighbourhood. ⁴⁷

It is likely that these policies were carried out in line with the Act of Systematization, which affected both the Roma and the non-Roma in Romania. Systematization was a centralized planning embodied by Law Nr. 58 of 1974, which aimed at reshaping urban environments in the 1970s and rural ones a decade later. According to its official objectives, “Systematization should assure the decrease of the built-up surface from the urban and local areas, and an optimal usage of the land that represents an important national good.” However, in contradiction with its officially admitted intention, the sole effect of the law (for towns and cities) was the mass removal of urban residents from houses into blocks, pulling down entire suburbs, or suburb-like areas, and turning them into districts. ⁴⁸

Interpretations of State Socialism and Transition

According to András Bíró, ⁴⁹ the living standards of the East European Roma were relatively high during state socialism:

In conclusion the proletarianisation experienced by the Roma radically changed their role in society. As a rule, they were prevented from making their livelihood in the service sector, as formerly, and instead large numbers had to join the production process of their host societies. . . . The experience of a compulsory school attendance, receiving equal pay for equal work and being called up for national service in the army like their gadjo peers all strengthened the feeling of belonging to the nation. Of course discrimination did not suddenly vanish from everyday life but for Roma new opportunities appeared in on the horizon. Nevertheless, centuries-old-separation from mainstream social development still remained a major obstacle to their large-scale inclusion.

This view is also shared by other scholars who were principal investigators in comparative East European research projects on the condition of the Roma. In Gail Kligman’s view, after 1989 Roma were the first to be laid off from their factory jobs (true, hired for low-skilled labourers’ positions), meanwhile racism and discrimination dramatically worsened their condition after the fall of state socialism. ⁵⁰ Along the same line, Júlia Szalai and Violetta Zentai see post-socialist transformations as a macro-level restructuration, a replacement of previously existing patterns, a change that caused the marginality of the East European Roma. Large-scale events like uncritical implementations of neoliberal economic principles and practices enhanced a restructuration of the labour market, engendering mass unemployment and unpredictability in long-term job perspectives. Moreover, the old, paternalistic state communist welfare system was replaced by new arrangements, supporting middle-class needs and interests. ⁵¹ Such accounts consider the Roma to be the biggest losers of the post-socialist transition, as their access to material and symbolic resources was radically encumbered in the new social, cultural, and economical structures that prevailed after 1989.

A different perspective opposes this discourse of Roma being “the losers of transition,” stating that post-1989 brought the possibility of ethno-cultural recognition and political representation, ⁵² as assimilationist policies ceased to exist after the fall of communisms.

A third perspective, represented mainly by scholars who have a deeper understanding of East European Roma communities and who had conducted long-term fieldwork during socialist times, stress the ambivalence of Roma policies in communist states. According to them, these measures aimed at social integration of the Roma; however, the states’ actions subtly reinforced Roma–non-Roma ethnic borders. In Hungary, for example, the distribution of labor and the everyday practices at the workplace—despite the proletarianization of the Roma—increased differences between them and their Hungarian co-workers. ⁵³ Similarly, taking on waged work implied taking jobs not desired by non-Roma. ⁵⁴ Pál Schiffer, a film director who worked together with the sociologist István Kemény, reveals the flipside of Roma commuting from the villages into cities and towns in the quest for a better workplace: dismantled families and alcoholism is seen as the “price” of such social engineering. ⁵⁵

Roma Remembering Communism

As with researches on the condition of Roma during state communism, accounts of Roma remembering communism are also small in number. Literature on this issue, in my view, can be divided into two groups: the collection of Roma memories and the analyses based on them, or more accurately, Roma oral histories ⁵⁶ and Roma life-stories. The focus is on the Roma storyteller, usually helped by the learned non-Roma, in order to bring to light previously unknown, hidden Roma experiences. The Slovakian Ilona Lacková is an example: a Roma woman helped by the non-Roma Millena Hubschmannova to produce a counternarrative to the dominant group’s negative labelling, which was intended to silence Roma narratives. ⁵⁷ According to Lacková’s book A False Dawn: My Life as a Gypsy Woman in Slovakia, state communism remains an unfulfilled dream to her, as the Roma had no better lives after the instauration of the new regime. A somewhat similar type of this remembering is provided by István Pogány, recalling a Roma couple’s life in a small Hungarian town. From their viewpoint, Kádár’s communism was much better than the following years, as there was plenty of work then. Living conditions were better as the system liquidated the Roma colony and allocated new, better apartments to its inhabitants. The years of transition brought layoffs and impoverishment. ⁵⁸

Roma life-story accounts tend to place Roma experiences in a broader, theoretical framework. Mari’s life history offers a good opportunity to reveal how identities are constructed at the junction of inward perceptions of the self and those from the outer social world. Through the story of a Roma woman from a small Hungarian town, Éva Kovács convincingly proves how personal perceptions of being a non-Roma are contrasted to public narratives that always push the storyteller into a negatively labeled box, reserved for the Gypsies. ⁵⁹ Comparing a series of Roma narratives, Cecilia Kovai claims to demonstrate that there is no fixed, essentialist category of Roma: different people see their memories of communism from different perspectives. ⁶⁰ Therefore, to Vlah musicians, transition brought no change; moreover, travelling abroad in communist times was always accompanied with fear: mobility has a price to pay. Meanwhile, while Ilona considers herself as a loser of the political and social changes, as these brought for her the lowering of living conditions and unemployment, Karola sees in post-socialism a new opportunity for upward mobility, as post-1989 enabled her to freely express her Roma identity.

The very few similar researches in Romania belong merely to the oral history category. As the biggest project of this kind is still ongoing (“The Untold Story: An Oral History of the Roma People in Romania” ⁶¹ ), with no tangible published results up to this moment, I will confine myself to only one book, Ilonka néni, where an old Roma woman speaks about her life to the ethnographer Csilla Könczei. ⁶² As a contrast to the Hungarian examples, in these oral histories, the communist past appears only as an indicator of life events, and the narrative provides no information that would make Roma life in communism more comprehensible. The reader has to have some previous knowledge to identify these scripts, for example, names of the industrial plants, and of certain bureaucratic institutions like the împăcare (peacemaking court), typical for the communism. Moreover, we have no clue whether life in communism was different than in pre- or post-communist times. It could be so, as—unlike the Hungarian examples—Ilonka néni, aunt Ilonka, is positioned on the fringes of the social structure, being unlearned, even illiterate, being always temporarily employed.

The Research Itself

Fieldwork for this research started in 2011, initially focused on the school integration of this specific Roma group from Oradea. Later, as recollections of the one-time colony became more and more salient in carrying out my interviews, I placed this issue at the centre of my investigations. Remembering the past proved to be of help when initiating contacts with the locals and trying to gain their trust: all of them were eager to recall their memories of colony life. But narratives about the 1970s were not just a useful fieldwork toolkit: these served as a resource in linking fragmented individual episodes to—as Loïc Wacquant puts it—the broader context of socio-cultural patterns in order to understand the pauperization, or up- versus downward mobility of the Roma in post-socialist Eastern Europe. ⁶³

Men, women, and children whom I identify as “the Roma” in this article, belong to an economically and socially heterogeneous group; however, the majority live in an urban ghetto facing economically disadvantaged conditions. They refer to themselves as “Hungarian Gypsies” (magyar cigányok), which, in my view, may signify their assimilation towards local Hungarian society. It could be so as the generation of the grandparents speaks Romany although they do not identify themselves with any vernacular or subethnic group; only the parents’ generation understands the language, but Romany is not transmitted to their children. Younger ones are enrolled in the Hungarian classes of the local school; many parents apply for the education funds offered by the Hungarian state and allocated to those who enrol their children in Hungarian classes. “It is because we are Hungarian Gypsies. Gypsies but also Hungarians,” as a Roma woman—mother of two—explained to me. The term Roma was missing from our conversations; they use “Gypsy” instead, without any negative connotation.

The majority of my respondents were born in the 1950s and the 1960s, and, with a few exceptions, none of them was permanently hired as industrial worker; thus, the proletarianization of the Roma could not be grasped through these empirical data. Still, as may appear, in many cases the “Gypsy way of life” was affected by the forced relocation.

It is important to underline that this study focuses on the memories of one particular subgroup of the one-time colony dwellers. It deals with its lower class, which stays even today in the so-called Gypsy blocks, with no possibility to move out as the better-off ones have already done. Although the fieldwork deliberately included all kinds of colony members, the memories of the upper classes are so heterogeneous that their inclusion here would demand a new theoretical framework.

The Colony and Its Liquidation

The place known later as the Roma colony was settled on the eastern fringes of the town of Oradea during the 1890s, according to a map from 1890. ⁶⁴ In 1939 the street bears the name of Colonia Țiganilor (Roma colony), in 1941 it appears as Cinka Panna Street, and in 1947 as Cigánytelep Street (Roma colony Street), finally being renamed as Micsandrelor according to a map from 1966. ⁶⁵ The data are in line with the Roma narratives, which underline that the parents and grandparents of the respondents were living in this place “from the beginning of the nineteenth century.” Some Roma also recall the renaming: “There was a man coming to our place, saying that the street is renamed in Micsandrelor from now on.” Many families still have this street (Micsandrelor) as place of residence in their identity cards. As has been mentioned, the place was in fact a street with two rows of hovels forming an L shape, all the buildings having a private courtyard that enabled raising animals such as chickens, pigs, or rabbits and there was a communal fountain serving as the water supply. The street was quite close to a series of factories: the oil factory, the timber yard, the cement plant, the brewery, Fructexport (for collecting and processing fruits), and the poultry works. The Roma in the colony had different occupations. Some were employed in the factories, mostly men, but some women, too. Many women performed day work in Fructexport, collecting and sorting the fruits. There was also the complex category of the self-employed: a few had horses and carts and worked as carriers, transporting woods from the timber yard to the non-Roma households in the town, and carried paper and scrap iron to the refuse site. Similar to them, but mainly in a “lower” position, were the younger men or boys helping the carriers to process wood in the town; many women collected paper and other waste by hand, taking it to those with carts. As memories tell us, the great majority of the colony dwellers, both men and women, were engaged in small trade through personal networks with no authorization: they purchased goods from the Hungarian tourists in the town centre and resold them on the flea market; they prepared sunflower seeds and sold them in the vicinity of the stadium to the supporters before the Sunday football game. Others bought beer or non-alcoholic drinks in the town, reselling them to their fellow colony dwellers. Others made pies and sold them.

As official data have not yet been found, it is difficult to reconstruct the reasons for liquidation of the colony. According to the only written source, it was an initiative of the factory managers: “The local authorities nod assent to the demand for the land expressed by the surrounding factories. The place neighbouring the Eastern railway station was occupied by the Combustibil firewood and coal deposit, simultaneously the building of two blocks of flats was in Voltaire Street. . . . To wind up this slum, that it was a seedbed for criminality was one of the arguments used by town elites and the police for liquidation of the place.” ⁶⁶ The same argument occurred in many Roma narratives, especially from the better-off: “the tin-yard needed the place, so we had to move out.”

In this reasoning, forced relocation was due to the economic interests of the factories; however, achieving such a goal was easier because of the already existing set of arguments framing “the Roma issue.” “Civilizing” the Roma by allocating them new, better apartments instead of hovels was in line with Party documents applied countrywide, and this accorded with the non-Roma demand.

The new dwelling place allocated for colony-dwellers was a set of two semi-detached blocks of flats, situated in the same district but still a one-hour walk from the initial location of the colony. As narrations of the past are always shaped by present experiences, it is difficult to approach them as mere documents about communist times. Still, some clues, other than recollections, may give us guidelines for interpretation. The only preserved photograph from the colony was that of one house: a hovel made of adobe. As all respondents agree, the colony had a poor infrastructure: there was only a communal fountain serving as water supply; only a few families had electricity, and the others bought it from them. According to the memories of a retired engineer who was working at the State Office for Housing and Urban Development in those times, the two newly-built blocks had a tile stove, a bathroom, a tub—true, a bit smaller than the regular size, as it was of 120 cm—and a sink. There was no central heating, but only a stove, no separate electricity meter, and only one for measuring water consumption; there were no wall-tiles, only cement on the floors, and a nylon rug.

It is difficult to reconstruct the exact course of the removal, so I will present the most likely version. As some respondents recall, there was an assigned order in which the families were to be removed. As the initial order was changed due to arrangements between the authorities and the Roma leader (vajda), some colony dwellers, who were initially eligible to leave in the first round, were moved onto the second, so they—possibly as a sign of protest—occupied the block illegally. This version is in line with that provided by a one-time bureaucrat who confirms this occupation, adding that after a while the authorities issued identity cards to these illegal dwellers indicating this new place as their home address. This meant—as the old bureaucrat said—legalizing their status.

This may explain why the second wave of Roma received derelict apartments. In their words, “There was dung in here, do you understand?” And this degradation became more and more acute:

There was no cleaning. Nobody cleaned the stairway as it was nobody’s. I painted the stairwell myself, buying everything with my money. I took the garbage away, paid some beers to the fellows to take them. I tried to mobilize them to make a common complaint, signed by each one of us, go to the council and ask for central heating. I thought it would be better than the tile stove. But they did not come.

Or:

They, the other Gypsies, were all making themselves a heater (hot plate) from tiles. But the sole electricity meter could not withstand this as it was extra consumption, and it did not resist. So, the electricity was cut off. ⁶⁷

To escape from these worsening conditions, certain categories of dwellers moved out. One was that of full-time employees in industry, who—in accordance with state policies—were allocated apartments by their factories elsewhere in the town. The second category were those who do illegal and informal activities on the black market, and cannot be, in my view, called employees, who lived from organizing gambling parties and illegal small trade on the black market with commodities (coffee, contraceptives, chocolate, etc.) purchased from Hungarian tourists and resold in the street or through personal networks. Success in such practices enabled them to buy apartments elsewhere in the town:

We were never afraid of work. We left for the coach or train station or travelled to villages to play “here is the red, where is the red,” a popular game, as it was easier to bribe the policemen there. We gave him one or two thousands, which we later won back. This is how I lived out and made money to buy a house.

Others were using their Roma or non-Roma connections to legalize their status:

I left from the colony and occupied a house. . . . I got acquainted with a woman for whom I did the cleaning. Her husband was a policeman, and he taught me tricks, what to do when the solders came and insisted on us moving out of the house. . . . Then I wanted to live in my apartment legally. I had the right as my husband was employed. I was told by one of my cousins, who was a musician, and played at the weddings of these people at the council, whom to ask for help.

Although the condition of the apartments worsened gradually, the Roma who stayed have not elaborated narratives about this issue. They recall isolated events that lead to the destruction of their own apartments (the neighbour who rammed their chimney) but have no broader perspective about the whole process. Those few pieces of information I obtained was provided by those who had already left. According to them, the Roma, who were not accustomed to have separate electric meters on the colony, improvised self-made heaters from bricks and wires, leading to such a high consumption that it destroyed the system. So the electricity was cut off, and then reconnection to the system became a matter of negotiations with the authorities. Being accustomed to a property of their own, many of these people refused to pay rent for these new apartments, stating that the removal was not at their initiative. Accumulation of unpaid utilities made the authorities stop the water and electricity supply, and adjusting the situation needed bigger and bigger investments. Thus in 2008 with the support of Habitat Romanes Foundation, the building of twenty houses was started for more than 150 persons living in 96 apartments. ⁶⁸

With the lack of carefully designed post-socialist urban planning, ⁶⁹ these conditions have not been seriously improved since, causing discontent on both (Roma and non-Roma) sides. The former blame the authorities for not helping the poor, and the latter, in the words of a retired bureaucrat, conclude that “in communist times, there was an attempt to make them better houses. But they destroyed everything. Nothing is good for them because they cannot appreciate what they have got.” Her young colleague, who seems to have been born in the time of the relocation, affirms, “EU funds did not bring visible changes. It is in vain to spend money on the Roma. We worked a lot, but no outcome is seen.”

Due to the permanent degradation, the place bears two names. It is known as the NATO block of flats mostly among the local Romanian society and local Romanian press, versus “Gypsy block of flats” by the local Hungarians familiar with the area.

Memories of the Colony