Tsiganskaya tragediya 1941–1945. Fakty, dokumenty, vospominaniya (review)

Tsiganskaya tragediya 1941-1945. Fakty, dokumenty, vospominaniya. Tom.2. Vooruzhonnyi otpor [The Gypsy's Tragedy 1941-1945. Facts, Documents, memoires. Vol. 2, Armed resistance]. Nikolai Bessonov. 2010. Saint Petersburg: Shatra, 375 pp, isbn 978-5-86443-161-0 Reviewed by Elena Marushiakova and Veselin Popov The publication in 1972 of the book by Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon,'The Destiny of Europe's Gypsies' and its numerous translations into different languages, launched the foundations for a new direction in Romani Studies - the research into the persecution and annihilation of 'Gypsies' (Roma, Sinti, Manus, etc.) during the Second World War. This topic fairly quickly found its place in the field of research and in the public domain and it now attracts the attention of both scholars and novelists. The past few decades have witnessed the emergence of a variety of new historical sources including archive documents, recordings of oral history, memoires, and others. Dozens of books and articles have helped raise the topic in the public domain and dozens of monuments have been errected around the world (not just in Europe but even in the US and Australia) commemorating the Roma victims of Nazi persecution. However, the emergence of this new research direction led almost immediately to debates about how best to define the persecution and extermination of Gypsies during the Second World War: as Holocaust (with its various Romani translations such as Porrajmos, Samudaripen or others), as genocide, or otherwise. Some authors even conclude that recent research in this direction will contribute to a new understanding of the very theory of genocide (Stewart 2010: 172-96). At the same time, other authors and some Roma activists offer a new comprehensive understanding of the history of the Romani people as centuries of persistent persecution, and even as a series of three Holocausts - in medieval Europe, during World War II, and during the so-called Era of socialism in Eastern Europe. It is a well-known fact that the Gypsies do not constitue a hermetically isolated and self-sufficient social and cultural system. Gypsies have always existed in at least 'two dimensions', or in two coordinated spheres: as a separate community and as a society that is integrated into the respective nation-state. The general appreciation of Gypsy history, including attitudes towards the 'Roma Holocaust', is usually predicated on the basis of a choice between these two paradigms. When Gypsies are primarily seen as a separate community, and the general social and cultural context is ignored, we find that the predominating concept in the study of Gypsies (Roma, according to new, politically correct terminology) is that of an eternal victim' in world history, a subject of constant harassment by all societies in which they lived and continue to live. This view of Roma as a community without its own' homeland or its 'own country, constantly isolated and persecuted, explains why most research on the 'Roma Holocaust' presents them as passive victims of Nazism and only very rarely (and briefly) mentions the Gypsies as active participants in anti-fascist resistance. For such resistance was carried out by Gypsies not as a separate entity but as an integral part of the societies in which they lived. Against the background of numerous studies on the fate of Gypsies in the Second World War, it is striking to note the almost complete absence of works dedicated to the Gypsies involved in the fight against fascism, fighting in the ranks of army or partisan units. The book under review is the first major work that fills this gap at least partly. The author of the book is Nikolai Bessonov. He is almost unknown outside Russia and the post-Soviet space, as he publishes only in Russian and his texts are almost never translated in the West - but his work is impressive. His first, co-authored, book (Bessonov, Demeter and Kutenkov 2000) represents the first comprehensive and systematic study of the history of the Gypsies in the Russian Empire and the USSR, and includes a presentation of the contemporary state of the Gypsy community in the countries of the former USSR (various Gypsy groups, their internal structure, ethno-cultural characteristics and their folklore). …