They are the subjects of romantic legends and the objects of modern scorn. Even the name they are commonly known by has mixed connotations.
"I don't have anything against the name Gypsy. I have heard it all my life and gotten used to it. It is what we were called for centuries," says Igor Krikunov, a tall, well-built man around 50 years old, with large eyes and a dark ponytail. Krikunov is an actor and the director of the Gypsy Theatre Romance in Kyiv.
"There are around 12 million gypsies spread out through different countries of the world," he estimates, which in my opinion makes us a nation, although a nation without its own country." The gypsies, or Roma, as some more respectfully call them, came to Ukraine in the 16th century, where they often complemented Cossack regiments as horse breeders and weapons makers.
As with the Jews, it is thought that the Gypsies made their way into Central Europe from Muslim lands. According to Krikunov, they were originally brought to Egypt by Alexander the Great. Indeed, some early European accounts refer to the swarthy nomads as Egyptians.
Unfortunately, ignorance of their roots has often been accompanied by hostility from the various societies that they passed through. And for the most part, not much has changed in the past thousand years. Krikunov recalls getting a call from a Ukrainian woman who wanted to learn more about his troupe's performances. "She said, ‘I already know about you Gypsies and can't stand any of you,’" he recalls. But she attended the next show anyway and completely changed her mind. "Now she comes to all our performances and is one of our best defenders."
The hostility toward the Roma is likely the result of a clash between sedentary and nomadic cultures. However Gypsies often filled gaps in European society: fortunetellers catered to the population's pagan hangovers, while itinerary craftsman could service the unskilled peasantry. Tied to the fields and at the whims of all-powerful landowners, Eastern Europeans must have envied and delighted at the carefree nomads, who like all wanderers were probably less conscientious about others' property rights.
In any event, exchanges were often fruitful. Krikunov says it's already an established fact that gypsies created the Flamenco dance of Spain. It's this kind of culture that his theatre tries to preserve. On the other hand, they picked up what they found. "We are a nomadic people and absorbed culture as we traveled."
It's this kind of mixture that has defined and, ironically, blurred the Gypsies' identity.
Krikunov's actors dress much the way we imagine a Gypsy should. The men in dark broad rimmed hats and brightly colored silk shirts, while the women don endless layers of thin skirts. As far as food is concerned, they seem to have adopted local tastes. Krikunov says he eats Borshch and Golubtsi like Ukrainians. The only distinction would be that Gypsies apparently prefer their dishes spicy.
There is also a Gypsy tongue, which some scholars trace back to Sanskrit. The Roma themselves are thought to come from northern India. But again, most Gypsies speak the language of the country they live in. Unlike the Jews, the gypsies have no religion to unite them. Krikunov's office has a large icon hanging on the wall in plain view. There are even Muslim gypsies in Crimea, he notes. All the same, thousands of Gypsies met their deaths in German concentration camps with Jews. NAZI ideologues racked their brains to prove that their Arian cousins were too racially polluted to escape the ovens.
Contrary to popular belief, the Roma also have a strong sense of lineage and differentiate among different (what can only be called) tribes. These designations seem to reflect the parts of Eastern Europe where one group or another predominated, although much migration has occurred lately. "Unfortunately," says Krikunov, there has also been more mixed marriages. The Roma have traditionally wed their own.
But when an outsider does enter the world of the Gypsies through matrimony, he is more likely than not to go native. "If a (non gypsy) man marries a gypsy girl, she won't try to induct him into our ways. He'll come over on his own. The same thing if a gypsy man marries a Ukrainian girl." In the end, the Roma would seem to know who is who. They have "something like a caste system," says Krikunov.
All of this, of course, contradicts the traditional as well as modern view of gypsies as beggars and thieves. Now, as before, they appear to us, the sedentary, as a race of roaming rabble - so much that in many countries the term Gypsy denotes simply a wandering charlatan.
Yet the literature and arts of eastern and western Europe (if not the sciences) attribute a pretty well defined culture to pretty specific people. The music, dance and song is as unmistakable as the people who perform it. The symbol of the horse, not yet replaced by the camper, perseveres. And where there is a reason, they get together. One such reason is a wedding. "People come from all over." As far as keeping in touch, it's word of mouth. "If I go to a train station and see a gypsy.
I'll ask him where he's from. We'll start talking and he'll go back and tell his people, and I'll talk to mine," says Krikunov. But the most important social unit for the Gypsies is the extended family.
Contrary to another popular belief, many modern Gypsies like to live in big houses - at least those who can afford to do so. "He wants all his children and grandchildren under one roof and close to him," says Krikunov. The emphasis on the family is evidently stronger than the urge to wander. Continually exposed to new cultures and "persecution" in their travels, explains Krikunov, the gypsies learned to put the family above all other social organizations. According to him, it is family values that best describe the Roma.
For example, respect for one's elders is imbibed from birth. And if a gypsy gets married, "he does so for life." All the while, many Gypsy kids grow up among non Gypsies. "He (the child) isn't distinguished from others by anything. It's others who set him apart by calling him gypsy mug or other nasty names," says Krikunov.
At first glance, all this may seem to contradict the obvious, but even street gypsies work in families. The women beg but don't work as prostitutes. In short, the values would appear to be consistent across the economic divide. And, according to Krikunov, an economic divide exists among various 'tribes'.
But if police reports from the former Soviet Union are to be believed, Gypsies are not above other crimes, like drug dealing. Krikunov doesn't deny the accusation but he qualifies it. "He (the gypsy) isn't the one bringing this stuff into the country. It wasn't gypsies who served in Afghanistan and brought back narcotics by the plane full. This was pushed on him, and he will get pushed into jail." Most of these petty criminals, the actor explains, come from Western Ukraine and Romania, where there is no other work. They live on the fringes of society and do what they have to in order to survive. "Other gypsies would rather go hungry than ever stick out their hand," he emphasizes.
This image of the beggar/thief is probably the biggest stain on the gypsy's reputation. Indeed, says Krikunov, his people are averse to factory and fieldwork, not to mention officialdom or the army. "In Soviet times, we made a load of money. It was the cream of the crop." In keeping with their traditions, Gypsies filled the spiritual void of the communist world and the economic hole of the command economy. In Czarist times, they were neither peasants nor soldiers, but found themselves a place in the empire.
Perhaps their apolitical, neutral status has been a blessing as well as a curse. "We don't take up arms. A gypsy would consider it a sin to raise his hand against another," says Krikunov. To some, stealing and begging are worse sins. Not the Gipsies, who pride themselves for their spirituality, which makes them as exotic as misunderstood.
A well-known actor in the former Soviet Union, Krikunov has probably known many benefits of the secular world. Although not all Gypsies read tarot cards, he insists that a bit of the mystic and spiritual is in every Gypsy's blood. As for Krikunov, he doesn't even get his fortune told: "I have no need for it. It's not something that I do."
Krikunov is in fact firmly planted in the modern world. His theatre is subsidized by the state. Ukraine isn't the worst place for a Gypsy. "This is a good people ... a tolerant people," he underlines.
But what of the poor Roma who roam the streets of the former Soviet Bloc? Once despised by agricultural societies, they are now on the verge of extinction in the space age. In a world of supermarkets, CDs and psychologists, their trades go unwanted.
"I'm afraid," says Krikunov, referring to the encroachment of organized cities, mass culture and mass production. But maybe the nomadic, spiritual and family oriented values of the gypsies will turn out to be just the remedy the world needs. Or as their distant ancestors did thousands of years ago, they will retreat to some distant mountain peak until the world is ready for them again.
In the mean time, Krikunov and his handful of performers sing, dance and act like gypsies always have - for all those who come to see them and, most of all, for themselves.
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