Vándorcigányok az államszocializmusban - Gypsy Travellers in the Communist Era

Abstract

Afterhaving recognised the social problems of settled Gypsies, we also have to turn our attention to the tensions resulting from the lack of social integration of travelling Gypsies in Hungary. Can we even talk about classical examples of travelling Gypsies in Hungary in the Communist era? The literature published so far claims that most statistics on Romani people in Hungary are unreliable. This doesn’t mean that the results of research carried out on this topic should be completely ignored, but the data have to be considered cautiously. It is especially true for surveys after 1945, since at that time highly different methods were used to determine the proportion of Romani people in the Hungarian society; hence the divergent results and obscurity of actual numbers. All we can give is estimation. My aim was to resolve contradictions and give a more precise picture of the situation of Gypsies, especially that of travelling Gypsies in Hungary, therefore I have involved in my research written sources such as reports of the MSZMP KB [Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party], case studies, qualitative field-works etc. Based on these documents, it has become possible to describe the process how the nomadic lifestyle of Gypsies in Hungary disappeared during the period from the turn of the century until the political transition. Additionally, a quite unique phenomenonis detectable in the Communist era; an institutionalised wandering controlled by the state which can be seen as the temporal extension of the former nomadism.