Gypsies in Czechoslovakia: A Case of Unfinished Integration



Gypsies in Czechoslovakia: A Case of Unfinished Integration

Otto Ulc

Gypsies, those wanderers in various parts of the globe who still elude assimilation, have remained on the periphery of world attention. Their North Indian, Aryan origin notwithstanding, they were singled out with the Jews for Nazi genocide: an estimated one million of them perished. From occupied Bohemia and Moravia they were deported and almost all were exterminated. In the nominally independent pro-Nazi state of Slovakia, most of the Gypsies survived although they were subjected to various discriminatory measures.

The end of the war precipitated a considerable population movement in Czechoslovakia. Those displaced from the occupied territories returned, and several million ethnic Germans were expelled. Part of this migration were many of the surviving Gypsies moving from devastated, hungry areas to a relatively unscathed Czechoslovakia. In addition, under the terms of the minorities exchange treaty between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the latter disposed of a portion of its unwanted Gypsies as "repatriated Slovaks."

Czechoslovakia thus became a Gypsy world power of sorts, exceeding all its socialist neighbors—Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Poland. According to the 1966 census, statewide the 220,000 Gypsies constituted a mere 1.55 percent of the total population, but in Slovakia the average reached 3.72 percent, in its eastern province 7.33 percent, and in a few districts over 10 percent. Gypsy birthrates substantially exceed those of the rest of the society. Will this country in the very center of Europe lose its "monoracial" character because of these "black" intruders? This question has been posed with increasing frequency.

At first the communist rulers approached the issue of integration with a simplistic remedy based on an ideologically pure diagnosis. The Gypsies were victims of capitalism, so the overthrow of capitalism would take care of the Gypsy problem. Articles appeared, even movies

required to enlist fully the talents of Armenians, Baits, Slovenes, and remaining Jewish, German, and Magyar diasporas in reconstructing the lagging socio-economic orders of Russia, Yugoslavia, and Romania are extremely unlikely. Yet continued relegation of such talented "aliens" to purely local spheres (when even these are permitted) constitutes a kind of "non-decision"" which is really political choice of the most deleterious type.

When a region has inherited such contradictory tendencies as has contemporary East Europe and its borderlands, concise projections are risky. All the same, the following summary hypotheses may be advanced:

1) Tensions between Leninist regimes and populations of Moslem

background will increase as the latter grow relatively faster and,

under influences from the Middle East, become more obdurate

in adhering to traditional ways of life.

2) Population intermixtures along frontiers of historical Moslem-

Christian conflict will continue to produce intense ethnic con

flicts among groups of differing Christian backgrounds.

3) Persistent anti-urban ideologies will increasingly supplant "clas

sic" Marxism-Leninism, thereby enhancing barriers to economic

development.

4) In several smaller countries, however, gradual evolution of in-

terethnic cooperation appears to have counteracted such anti-

urban ideologies, thereby facilitating stable growth, especially

in consumer services.

5) Tensions between countries with relatively successful economies

and those handicapped by demography or ideology will heighten.

6) The factors just listed, plus irrationality in its own policy-

making, are apt to raise problems for the Moscow regime that

will be insoluble within any framework of peaceful evolution of

a coherent bloc.

7) were produced glorifying the creation of a new, socialist, ex-Gypsy citizen.x

Following the death of Stalin, this Potemkin-like scenario began to fade away. This was the end of the "no policy phase," to be supplanted by the "wrong policy phase," the period from 1958 to 1965, characterized by optimism well in tune with Khrushchevian harebrained schemes. The Gypsy problem will be solved by 1970, decreed Prague, as Moscow had decreed that Communism would surpass capitalism by 1980.

The basic premise of the undesirability of preserving Gypsy identity was advanced and, with a brief interlude in the late sixties, it has been maintained since. The government diagnosed the Gypsies not as a nation, nor even as an ethnic group, but merely as people "maintaining a markedly different demographic structure" (whatever this might mean). An Act on Permanent Settlement of Nomadic People was promulgated in 1958, echoing a similar edict issued in the sixteenth century. The targets of this bureaucratic fiat were ordered to settle down and abandon their life-style in a few weeks. Without a coherent plan and without funding this was a doomed enterprise from the beginning.

However, this campaign did help dispose of some taboos of censorship. The media started to delve into matters hitherto off limits, such as the Gypsies' high rate of criminality, illegitimacy, incest, and inbreeding (e.g., reporting the case of a Gypsy who fathered eleven children with his own daughter while still living with his fifth wife). The Gypsy started to be seen not so much as an alienated but as an alien species that preferred to rely on cunning shielded behind an incomprehensible language and frequent change of domicile, thus eluding the controlling, punitive state. Clever fooling of the society at large is, after all, the cherished theme of Gypsy folk tales.

Indeed the Gypsies' literacy and rate of participation in the national economy were low and their criminality and incidence of "parasitism" were high, but all the remedial measures proved to be of little effect.2

After conceding these failures, in 1965 the government presented a new program with a dual task: to enforce full employment of able-bodied Gypsies and to literally liquidate Gypsy hamlets to enforce the

1. Otto Ulc, "Communist National Minority Policy: The Case of the Gypsies in Czechoslovakia,"

Soviet Studies 20:4 (April, 1969), pp.421-443.

2. L'ud, September 30, 1967, p.3.

3. dispersal (rozptyt) of its inhabitants. A special Governmental Committee for the Solution of the Questions Concerning the Gypsy Population {Vlddnivyborpro resent otdzek cikdnskeho obyvatelstvd) was established.

Resettlement was the most costly item in the program, though it was not welcomed by the majority of the Czechoslovak population who were frustrated by the experience of waiting for an apartment for many years. Now the Gypsies were to be issued an apartment right away, and worse, they were eventually supposed to become next door neighbors. "They are like us, and yet they are different," wrote the daily Svobodne slovo on October 20, 1967. But despite the state's encouragement of births through generous material benefits extended to large families, gynecologists were nevertheless encouraged to terminate as many Gypsy girls' pregnancies as possible.

The Czech economy, like those of Western Europe at the time, was generating vacancies in menial occupations such as garbage collection, street cleaning, road maintenance and construction work. The most frequent candidates for such chores were found among politically tainted individuals and among the Gypsies, a stratum maximally removed from political matters.

The program of 1965 with its emphasis on dispersal and resettlement in urban areas failed because the government did not provide adequate funds and intelligent, imaginative organizers to implement its designs. Most importantly, though, the existence of the Gypsy's ethnic identity was acknowledged (i.e., a Gypsy is a Gypsy and not a Slovak of Gypsy ancestry), his right of ethnic survival was not. Integration remained the only proper socialist solution.

Under socialism it is totally unthinkable to build some "socialist and national" Gypsy culture from the fundamentals of something which is very primitive, backward, essentially often even negative and lacking in advanced tradition. . . . The question is not whether the Gypsies are a nation but how to assimilate them.3

The integration process never left the bounds of a one-way dialogue. Any comparison to the status of the black population in America prompted an indignant response. The reformist, liberal-leaning Reporter on November 17, 1966 wrote: "Negroes struggle for integration which

3. Demografie 1 (1962), pp.80-81.

is denied them, whereas the Gypsies do not want, or are incapable of integration."

Successive failures convinced the social engineers not to commit themselves again to any specific timetable. Rather, the safe course of prophetic nonspecificity was chosen. Integration of a minority, which according to some estimates was expected by the turn of the century to become one million strong, would be accomplished one day.

The Prague Spring

The "Prague Spring" of 1968 first paralyzed and then disposed of the system of state censorship. The floodgates were opened after decades of Stalinist silence and the nation was inundated with information on any subject imaginable and hitherto untouchable, such as the post-1945 expulsion of three million ethnic Germans, the purges, the rehabilitation of political victims, the incompetence of political appointees, and injurious policies in various fields.

For the first time the Gypsies themselves were able to describe their experiences with decreed integration and denial of their ethnic identity. The exceptionally influential literary weekly Literdrni listy (circulation 300,000 in a country of 15 million) dealt with the topic several times; even after the August 1968 invasion by Warsaw Pact forces, it managed to publish with the same vigor for nine months, under the self-imposed impoverished title Listy.4

Various individuals endorsed the Gypsy demand, which was not for self-determination but only for official recognition of their nationality (in accord with the nationality policies in the USSR) and the right to organize themselves. The media also blasted the ignorance and manifold prejudices of the non-Gypsy majority. Some scholars, too, started to pay more attention. The Institute of Sociology, a branch of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, announced an opening for a position of sociological research into the Gypsy problematic.5

4. E.g., Karol Sidon, "Cerni a bill" [Blacks and Whites], Literdrni listy 22 (July 25, 1968), p.8;

Jan Drapal "Diimyslna likvidace naroda" [Ingenious Liquidation of a Nation], Listy 3 (January

23, 1969), p.2.

5. Literdrni listy 8 (April 18, 1968), p. 14. This topic remained listed among the priority issues of

scholarly attention: cf. the authoritative, programmatic statement by Jaroslav Kapr, Miroslav

Petrusek, and Zdenek Saraf, "Odpovednost sociologu" [Responsibility of Sociologists], So-

ciologicky casopis 5:5 (1970), pp.385—399- This publication took place shortly before the peak

of "normalization" in 1971.

6. The August 1968 invasion was, of course, a turning point in the country's history, but the change was not immediate. The nine months of heresies were followed by nine months of retreat, the gradual removal of the "socialists with human faces," and their replacement by the Husak team of "normalizers."

Soviet tanks rolled against the reformers in Prague to prevent undermining the monopoly of communist power as perceived by Moscow, but not against the Slovak nationalists. The "Bratislava Spring" was no threat, and even less so were the voices claiming some rights and recognition on behalf of the Gypsies.

The original reaction to the invasion was one of dramatic, even euphoric unity of defiance, regardless of one's ethnic background. Members of the Polish minority in Northern Moravia cursed the reluctantly invading Polish units. The equally reluctant Hungarian invaders in Southern Slovakia were met with disapproval by the Hungarian minority. The Soviet invasion and occupation even fomented the patriotic sentiment of Czechoslovak Gypsies. Clyde H. Farnsworth of the New York Times reported, "In the early days of the occupation, citizens of Prague were moved by the sight of the Gypsy violinist dressed in black who wandered up and down the streets of the Old Town playing Czech national airs."6 In the East Slovakia town of Kosice, Gypsy youths went into battle against the tanks. Gypsy communities in various places proclaimed their unity with the Czechs and the Slovaks. One such manifesto opened with these lines:

We, the citizens of Gypsy ancestry, will never forget the years of Hitlerite occupation when we, just as the citizens of Jewish origin, were persecuted; many members of our families were liquidated in the Nazi concentration camps. Therefore, we strongly condemn the occupation of our lands by the armies of the five states of the Warsaw Pact, among whom is also the army of the German Democratic Republic. Since the days of the Munich occupation, this is the second invasion of our lands.7

In 1968 various organizations came into existence, seeking official recognition from the Ministry of the Interior and eventual admission into the National Front, an umbrella organization. The Human Rights

6. "Occupation Stirs Czechoslovak Gypsies' Patriotism," New York Times, November 3, 1968.

7. Pravda (Plzen), August 27, 1968, p.2. Some Gypsies also joined the big emigration wave

estimated at 150,000 in the 1968-1969 period. Alas, after reaching Austria, the Gypsies

faced the fact that the Iron Curtain was no barrier to racial prejudice: no country was willing to

accept them. New York Times, June 18, 1970.

8. League, the Club of Former Political Prisoners, and a host of other entities sought legitimation in this way.

In this effort the Gypsies were behind by a few months. In 1968 the old governmental committee charged with the solution of the Gypsy problem (and not having a single Gypsy among its members) was disbanded and in December of that year the Ministry of the Interior approved the charter of the Gypsy Union in Slovakia called Zvdz Cigdnov-Romov in Slovak and Romano Jekhetdniben in Romany. It was considered a cultural-educational organization and presided over by Anton Facuna, an architect by profession. In 1969 a similar organization for the Czech part of the country was established in Brno. Both became members of the National Front.

Branches sprang up in provinces and districts with a variety of aims. In the Central Slovakian town of Banska Bystrica, for example, the Gypsies put together a project to ameliorate their housing.8 A new approach regarding Gypsy settlements in Slovakia was also reported: instead of tearing down and erasing Gypsy hamlets, they should be rebuilt and modernized to provide improved living conditions preferable to those offered in strange and often hostile new surroundings.9

The most energetic and articulate advocate of the Gypsy minority was (and still is) Milena Hiibschmannova, a Romany-speaking sociologist. Her essay "What Is the So-Called Gypsy Question," published in 1970, remains the best formulated defense of the Gypsies' right to their ethnic identity, as well as a succinct criticism of governmental policies and societal attitudes.10

Gypsies, Hiibschmannova pointed out, are viewed as a problem to be solved by outsiders. The authoritative Czech language dictionary does not even capitalize the word "Gypsy" (cikan) and describes the term as, "a member of a nomadic nation, symbol for mendacity, thievery, vagabondage. . . ."u

She strongly criticized The Gypsy Question in the CSSR by Jaroslav Sus, a book representing the official policy line vis-a-vis the Gypsies, namely

8. Rudeprdvo, July 7, 1970, p.2.

9. Pravda (Bratislava), April 14, 1969. Some of the rebuilding surely appeared out of the

question—e.g., the hamlet Jablonkov with 150 residents, no water, no toilet and no access

road.

10. Milena Hiibschmannova "Co je tzv. cikanska otazka," [What is the so-called Gypsy ques

tion}, Sociologicky casopis 6:2 (1970), pp. 105-120.

11. Frantisek Travnicek, Slovnik jazyka ceskeho (Prague, 1952).

12. unequivocal, unconditional assimilation.12 Anything else would be a reactionary step backward. Sus had even referred to the "reactionary nature" (reakcnost) of Gypsy folklore." There was nothing worthy of preservation in the Gypsy heritage, said Sus, and Gypsies were destined for accelerated assimilation along the lines of the old, rather discredited governmental decree of 1965.

Traditionally, according to Hubschmannova, only a small portion of the Gypsies preferred the nomadic way of life. The majority were permanently settled in Slovakia and preferred to earn their livelihood as blacksmiths and musicians. Due to the socio-economic transformation of the country, they had been pushed increasingly into unwanted occupations of manual, unqualified laborers in construction and road maintenance, hence the Gypsy ditch diggers and street sweepers.

The governmental policy of dispersal had recommended a quota of five percent as the maximum concentration of Gypsies in any given community. Those to be resettled were denied the option of joining relatives in other districts. For those from Slovakia the plan had decreed the assignment of the largest quota in industrial Northern Bohemia, the ecologically devastated and least attractive part of the country.

The Gypsies, Hubschmannova asserted, were distinguished by characteristics acquired by birth (physical features), in the family (language), and through a group coexistence (sharing of values alien to outsiders). They aspired to have their ethnic identity recognized, just as a new constitution in I960 had granted national minority status to the Hungarians, Poles, Germans, and Ukrainians.

The two Unions of Romas established in 1969 presented to officialdom this cautious self-portrait:

Gypsies were a numerous social group characterized by specific ethnosocial commonality that is tied by certain features: spiritual ties . . . linguistic ties . . . ties with certain traditions . . . the existence of social and typical mental traits ... a common awareness of differentiation from other social groupings . . . the Gypsies as a social group have the characteristics of a certain specific subject, they therefore have the right to be considered as such. They also have the right to create further conditions for their existence and the development of their personality.13

12. Jaroslav Sus, Cikdnskd otdzka v CSSR (Prague, 1963).

13. Hubschmannova, "Co je tzv. cikanska otazka," pp. 117-118.

14. Normalization

The post-invasion "normalization" produced a state of affairs officially known as redlny socialismus, neither a return to the Stalinism of the fifties, nor the kind of mellowing and detente between the rulers and the populace that occurred in Hungary. In Czechoslovakia a kind of social contract—some call it a non-aggression pact—evolved: the rulers ruled and the citizenry, in return for not meddling into public affairs, received the opportunity to attend to its private affairs, to maintain a fairly tolerable—for some very comfortable—standard of living augmented by corruption and pilferage from the state coffers. The Party, concerned with the maintenance of the power monopoly and preservation of the status quo, looked the other way as long as the illegal acts of private enrichment did not become too obvious.

The integration of the Gypsies was not among the most urgent tasks. In the early seventies the Gypsy organizations admitted to the National Front seemed to be growing. The media reported the standard establishmentarian message of self-praise about the accomplishments, and self-criticism about the setbacks and the surviving prejudices on the part of the majority. "Unfortunately, there are still people among us who maintain the old-fashioned views that the Gypsies are lazy and dirty just like the Negroes in the USA," wrote one journalist, revealing more about Czech attitudes than he realized.14 As was customary in such semi-diagnostic exercises, the urge to blame present ills on things and times past was irresistible: the capitalist order, overthrown and buried several decades ago, was still considered the root cause of lingering prejudice and discrimination. The Gypsy problem was softened by the prefix "so-called," or put into quotation marks. But there also remained official discrimination in such forms as segregated summer camps for Gypsy children, and denigration of Gypsy culture.15

Suddenly, in April 1973, the Gypsy associations were abolished by administrative fiat and relegated to the crowded cemetery of short lived innovations conceived in 1968. The unceremonious demise of the Gypsy associations was little noticed by the nation at large, which was preoccupied with the chores of everyday life.

14. Ondrej Oravec, "Kde rasismus nema mista" {Where There Is No Place For Racism}, Tribuna

44 (October 20, 1974), p.2.

15. Zdena Stepankova, "Nove bfehy" [New Shores], Rudeprdvo, August 28, 1973, p.3.

16. One voice, eventually, was heard. Charter 77, a community of several hundred citizens from various walks of life, in January 1977 (prodded by the Helsinki Accord of 1975) issued an appeal to the government to obey its own solemnly ratified laws and civil rights covenants. Milovan Djilas characterized Charter 77 as the most mature program yet produced in postwar Eastern Europe. The Party responded with truly Stalinist fury, condemning the signatories—along with their families—to the role of pariahs of socialist society. Among Charter 77's several dozen position papers on various issues ranging from religious freedom to environmental problems has been one on Gypsies.16

In December 1978, Charter 77 issued Document No. 23 entitled "Situation of the Gypsies in Czechoslovakia."17 It provides informative, revealing, even dramatic reading. The Gypsies are "the least protected group of citizens in Czechoslovakia," deprived of a right of association which should be restored without delay. The attitude of the public vacillates between indifference and racism. The problem is the more acute and is bound to get aggravated because the Gypsies represent a de facto Third World culture in the midst of a European culture, and furthermore they are the first or second most numerous minority in the country. Yet, the document charged, the government does not recognize Gypsies as a national minority but only as an "ethnic group;" legally they do not exist. The various relevant bureaucratic structures were established not to assist the Gypsy culture but to eliminate it. Nomadic or not, the Gypsies have been subjected to registration and prohibited from moving freely. Because the existence of Gypsy ethnicity is denied, local authorities are left to compile and maintain the never complete or accurate "Gypsy Register." All these practices are in violation of the Constitution. Further assertions of the Charter 77 document are that:

— the great majority of Gypsy dwellings consist of one room, and the average number of occupants is double or even triple that of the rest of the population;

—about 30 percent of the Gypsies are illiterate and only 0.5 percent of them finish higher education; their children are forced to at-

16. See the superb, detailed book on the subject by H. Gordon Skilling, Charter 77 and Human

Rights in Czechoslovakia (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981).

17. Its full text is in English in Human Rights in Czechoslovakia: The Documents of Charter '77,

1977-1982, compiled by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Washing

ton, D.C.: Congress of the United States, July 1982). Document on Gypsies, pp. 157-170.

18. tend schools in Czech or Slovak and they are told the Gypsy culture does not exist;

—the under-educated, unqualified Gypsies thus fill the roles of manual laborers in menial positions shunned by the society at large.

The document then says:

The Gypsy minority is undergoing a process of social disintegration which has no comparison in the history of the Gypsies. This fact is substantiated by an ever increasing number of Gypsies who are being sentenced to loss of freedom.18

Compared to the national average, the criminality of Gypsies is considerably higher and so are the sentences inflicted upon the offenders.19 Gypsy children are being placed in state institutions and foster homes against the will of parents who are capable of living up to their parental duties. Consent of Gypsy women for sterilization is being obtained by suspicious means. In some areas the sterilization of Gypsy women is carried out as a planned administrative program, with awards for those officials exceeding, and punishment for those failing to meet the assigned quotas.

The government had decreed that the Gypsies were a dying ethnic group, destined for extinction; however, this endeavor to force integration led, instead, to a deepening of the gulf between the Gypsies in various stages of integration, thus reviving ethnic consciousness among the already integrated citizens who in their adulthood had decided to search for their roots and learn their ancestral tongue.

The 1980s

The government steadfastly refused to respond to any of the initiatives of Charter 77 under the assumption that even a mere acknowledgement of any positive role on the part of the "dissenters" would legitimize them and in turn threaten the monopoly of power held by the Party. Pressing problems rarely wither away just because of their official disregard. The Gypsy problem did not go away either; on the contrary,

18. Documents of Charter '77, p. 167.

19. Exactly opposite practices prevailed twenty years ago: the judges used to treat Gypsy offend

ers with a rather paternalistic, patronizing benevolence.

20. it continued to grow as did the number of Gypsies in a country which has otherwise experienced a steady decline in childbirth since 1975. The overall Czechoslovak birthrate is now below the level of biological reproduction.20

Despite the 10 percent decline in Gypsy fertility during the seventies, the average number of live births for a Gypsy woman is 6.4; in contrast the national average is a mere 2.4. "The more children, the less expensive is life," is the alleged Gypsy saying.21 (The state guarantees six months of maternal leave with full pay, and generous child allowances will follow for eighteen years.)22

Not the position paper of the Charter 77, but the results of the 1980 census finally jolted the essentially conservative rulers and also revived the "Gypsy question" in the media. There were 219,554 Gypsies in 1970, but by 1980 there were 288,440, out of the total population of 15,277,000.23

These precise figures are a very imprecise reflection of reality. This is conceded by Demografie, a governmental publication: "In view of the fact that the Gypsies (Cikdni) are not considered a nationality (ndrodnost), no ascertainment of their mother tongue has been made; the census takers had to base their finding on special oznaceni("characterization," "determination") of persons included in the groups of Gypsy population.24 The census takers, it was acknowledged, had to rely on the frequently unreliable and incomplete "Gypsy Register" maintained by the offices of local administration and on "common knowledge: characteristic lifestyle in multigenerational families with a great number of children and inadequate knowledge of the language of society."25 What about "mixed"

20. Mladdfronta, October 3, 1983, p.2; Prdce, August 10, 1983, referring to the results in 1981

and 1982.

21. Stefanie Pisarikova, Rolnicke noviny, November 20, 1969.

22. Almost forty years of socialist construction notwithstanding, the high fertility of Gypsy

women is still being blamed on remnants of capitalist mentality, according to Imrich Farkas,

an official in charge of Gypsy matters, in Pravda (Bratislava), September 23, 1982, p.5.

According to Rude prdvo, April 23, 1986, p.4., the number of Gypsies has already reached

345,000.

23. "Nektere demograncke, ekonomicke a kulturni charakteristiky cikanskeho obyvatelstva v

CSSR 1980" [Some Demographic, Economic and Cultural Characteristics of the Gypsy

Population in the CSSR 1980], Demografie 2 (1984), pp. 161-178.

24. Demografie 2, p. 161.

25. Demografie 2, p. 161. Surprisingly, indeed inexplicably, the same source on the same page

puts the number of Gypsies registered in 1980 with local authorities at 306,246 and the

census account of these people at 288,440.

26. households? Integrated, Czech or Slovak speaking Gypsies were sometimes queried about their ethnic identification, and sometimes not.26

The population ratio of the Czech Republic (CSR, i.e., Bohemia and Moravia) to Slovakia (SSR) is 2:1. The ratio of Gypsies is reversed: twice as many live in Slovakia. Of these, the majority (53 percent) live in the eastern province.

As indicated above, the highest concentration of the Gypsies in the CSR is in the industrial, polluted, least attractive North Bohemia (part of the former Sudetenland), in grimy, ugly towns, notably Most (3.4 percent of the total population), Sokolov (3.3 percent) and Chomutov (2.8 percent). In Slovakia the percentages are considerably higher: Rimavska Sobota (14.2 percent), Roznava (12.6 percent), Vranov (10.7 percent), and Spisska Nova Ves (10.3 percent) have the most. Half of the residents of the town of Rimavska Sobota are Gypsies and the town or rather city of Kosice is considered to be the largest settlement of Gypsies in Central (or perhaps in all of) Europe.

In Slovakia, between 1972 and 1981, the population rose by 10.5 percent, while that of the Gypsies increased by 23.8 percent. The mild decline in the natality of the Gypsy population is more than adequately offset by the decline in infant mortality. It is certainly to the credit of the public health system that in the district of Kosice, the overwhelming majority (96 percent) of Gypsy mothers deliver their babies in hospitals.27 Officialdom denies that forced sterilization, as charged by Charter 77, has ever been considered.

Fully in accordance with the Bolshevik ritual of criticism and self-criticism, hyperboles of contentment and self-praise are followed by recitals of woes and litanies of shortcomings. Accomplishments are met with satisfaction, shortcomings acknowledged with alarm, even indignation. The third act of the standard dramatic scenario follows: the resolved determination to dispose of the residual shortcomings.

But the record of governmental endeavors in this are far from being

26. In the light of these imperfections the estimates of one million Gypsies living in Czechoslova

kia in the year 2000 does not seem that exaggerated. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January

26, 1981, put the figure as high as 1.5 million. Dr. Josef Dvorak, an official of the Federal

Statistical Office, in charge of demography, offered this projection: in the year 2000 the

population of Czechoslovakia will be 16,007,047 (7,809,981 males, 8,197,066 females).

The article is entitled "1+1 =?," Tvorba 47 (November 24, 1982), p.4. Incidentally, the

author acknowledged that a survey of a "population climate" was conducted in 1981, yet the

results were not made public.

26. Rudeprdvo, March 16, 1983, p.5.

27. entirely negative. On the positive side, progress has been accomplished in housing, hygiene, education, and employment. On the negative side, along with the overall growing number of the Gypsy population there has been an increase in Gypsy criminality and a growth in prejudice and hostility by the majority of the population.

Some data from provincial probes have been reported in the media. This is especially the case of Eastern Slovakia and its urban center Kosice.28 The municipal council there surveyed 681 Gypsy families and divided them into three groups: families adjusted to the socialist way of life; those in transition, with basic progressive mores already acquired; and backward Gypsies, adhering to the old way of life (poverty, lack of hygiene, parental neglect, criminality). Prosecutor Zoltan Koren, writing about this study, acknowledged that the third—the most backward—category was the most numerous. Instead of offering concrete figures he stated, "It is a generally known fact that the main obstacle in accomplishing the charted goal of elevating the Gypsy population are the Gypsies themselves."29

Pravda, the main Slovak Communist daily publication, has also delved into the Gypsy subject. In 1952, only two Gypsy families lived in downtown Kosice. In 1981, the number of families was 334. To stop this influx, the authorities prescribed the "dispersal norm"—one Gypsy family, or a maximum of two families, for each housing block. Altogether 204 Gypsy families from the historical center of Kosice and from the shanty settlement next to the ice hockey stadium were moved to a suburban housing project called Lunik IX. This was supposed to be the right step in the desired direction of integration—to remove the Gypsies from prehustenie (excessive concentration). The result did not match the expectation. "The new tenants in large measure destroyed the furnishing, failed to pay the rent, caused not inconsiderable damage in the neighborhood and became a menace to the other inhabitants in the area."30

There has been significant improvement in the Gypsies' housing conditions throughout the country, but considerable regional differences remain. According to the 1980 census 52.5 percent of the Gypsy

28. Prosecutor Zoltan Koren, Noveslovo, May 12, 1983, p.4.

28. Koren, Nove slovo, p.4. One may wonder what would be the political fate of a prosecutor in

the United States or in any other democratic country after such an utterance.

29. Pravda, July 25, 1983, p.3-

30. population in Czechoslovakia was urban.31 In more urbanized Bohemia and Moravia the proportion stood at 80.8 percent urban. Two-thirds of the Gypsies in CSR reside in apartment houses, two-thirds of the Gypsies in SSR reside in small, privately owned so-called family houses. Whether urban or rural, they continue to live in crowded conditions: 5.6 persons per household. The average number for the rest of the population is 3.1. The majority of Gypsy families (76.1 percent in 1970, 70.8 percent in 1980) occupy one- or two-room apartments. Not the size but the quality of the dwellings has improved appreciably. All housing space in the country is rated by a governmental decree in four categories—from first class down to the fourth class—the lowest, inferior, substandard, unhygienic accommodations. Whereas in 1970 the overwhelming majority (80.7 percent) of Gypsies languished in abodes of this worst category, by 1980 their proportion had dropped to 49 percent (32 percent in CSR and 59 percent in SSR). By 1980 the following amenities were available to the Gypsy population: indoor toilet (39-4 percent of households), running water (61.8 percent), refrigerator (60.5 percent), television set (81.8 percent). In all these categories the percentage was higher in CSR. But in Slovakia, by 1981, some 10 percent of the Gypsies still lived in primitive camps scheduled to be razed by 1990.32

The government deserves credit for having improved the poor, indeed deplorable living conditions of the Gypsies. This has been accomplished in a country plagued with a perpetual scarcity of housing space. Typically newly weds wait ten years to obtain their own apartment.

As to the progress in the education of the Gypsies, significant improvement in school enrollment and attendance has not been matched by pedagogic accomplishments. Gypsy youth still lag substantially behind their "white" peers. From various published sources this picture emerges: The majority of Gypsy children do attend school, though their truancy rate is twice the national average. The illiteracy among Gypsy adults dropped to a mere 10 percent (in a country with a record of otherwise full literacy since the nineteenth century).33 Most Gypsy

31. Demografie 2, p. 162.

7, 1983, p.2. Prdca, January

-,,>*>i™ nrmKPr?1 108? n. *

Rudeprdvo, November 5, 1973, p.3.; ~ slovo, April 28, 1984. Ndrodni vybory,

I in kindergartens. In eastern Slovakia rcent in 1972 to 66 percent in 1982.

varies from district to district; it is md lowest in Senica (33 percent), f socialism notwithstanding, there are itter how destitute. In some communi-rypsies is paid from the local budget, vith fulfillment of the enrollment and ve, is the main motive.

a kindergarten does not entirely solve 100I year, of the total of 2,298 first-iled to move on to the second grade, Te Gypsies. One-third of the Gypsy i grade and only 4 percent manage to :ation. The university level is reached les and 0.2 percent of females. 7 children receive various bonuses. In ictice, the emphasis is on the quantita-llment of the plan and meeting the ure their high class attendance some from their own pocket. r a double standard in student evalua-

of the subjects of preferential treat-Gypsies passing from the first to the the minimal skills; in the case of the at half of them fall in this category. In ercent Gypsy minority and the best t) not even one fifteen-year-old Gypsy o a higher school level, jsing to recognize the Gypsy national-ge, difficult and often impossible to dicapped by their poor knowledge of bound to lag behind. On average on vith some 200 Czech or Slovak words, ibulary mastered by their other class-?ntal faculties tested they all too often ecial Schools (zvldstni skoly), a euphe-in£ to the needs of the mentallv re-

tarded. In Prague some "exclus tfidy) are in operation. In Slovak for Gypsy children was reporte conditions of decreed assimilatio: Crash literacy courses for ac results. Similar attempts in po entirely. In this postinvasion ei Party is not interested in convei in overt conformist behavior. M( are offered to the Gypsies: theii without their attendance of even ist dialectics.

In Czechoslovakia all young r substantial physical handicaps o the armed forces. The Red Arr forms a significant role in integr Russian, the language of comn record of faithful emulation in that little has been achieved in Gypsy charges left in the tutelar of adopting a consistent patten time to time and from unit to permissiveness, literacy courses nored, Gypsy soldiers integrat another.

A trend similar to that in ed ment of the Gypsies: impressive sive ones in quality. In 1980 th very close to the national avera economically active. In the cas was considerably lower (54.9 pe of 89 percent), but this was a i 1970. Czechoslovakia, a sociali fare payments to those not gainf mal, though not nonexistent, a a prosecutor and criminal charg< In defiance of the official rest criss-cross the country (by train:

population in Czechoslovakia was urban.31 In more urbanized Bohemia and Moravia the proportion stood at 80.8 percent urban. Two-thirds of the Gypsies in CSR reside in apartment houses, two-thirds of the Gypsies in SSR reside in small, privately owned so-called family houses. Whether urban or rural, they continue to live in crowded conditions: 5.6 persons per household. The average number for the rest of the population is 3.1. The majority of Gypsy families (76.1 percent in 1970, 70.8 percent in 1980) occupy one- or two-room apartments. Not the size but the quality of the dwellings has improved appreciably. All housing space in the country is rated by a governmental decree in four categories—from first class down to the fourth class—the lowest, inferior, substandard, unhygienic accommodations. Whereas in 1970 the overwhelming majority (80.7 percent) of Gypsies languished in abodes of this worst category, by 1980 their proportion had dropped to 49 percent (32 percent in CSR and 59 percent in SSR). By 1980 the following amenities were available to the Gypsy population: indoor toilet (39.4 percent of households), running water (61.8 percent), refrigerator (60.5 percent), television set (81.8 percent). In all these categories the percentage was higher in CSR. But in Slovakia, by 1981, some 10 percent of the Gypsies still lived in primitive camps scheduled to be razed by 1990.32

The government deserves credit for having improved the poor, indeed deplorable living conditions of the Gypsies. This has been accomplished in a country plagued with a perpetual scarcity of housing space. Typically newly weds wait ten years to obtain their own apartment.

As to the progress in the education of the Gypsies, significant improvement in school enrollment and attendance has not been matched by pedagogic accomplishments. Gypsy youth still lag substantially behind their "white" peers. From various published sources this picture emerges: The majority of Gypsy children do attend school, though their truancy rate is twice the national average. The illiteracy among Gypsy adults dropped to a mere 10 percent (in a country with a record of otherwise full literacy since the nineteenth century).33 Most Gypsy

Demografie 2, p. 162.

Pravda, October 22, 1981, p. 5.

33. Pravda, February 22, 1983, p.5; May 3, 1983, p.5.; August 27, 1983, p.2. Práca, January

9, 1984, p.2. Směna, September 27, 1983, pp. 1, 7. Učitel'ské noviny, October 21, 1982, p.3.

Rudé právo, November 5, 1973, p.3.; February 2, 1983, p.5.; May 23, 1984, p.5. Svobodné

slovo, April 28, 1984. Národni výbory, July 1982, pp.22-23. Demografie, p. 168.

Table 1 Gypsy Labor Force Distribution

Percent of Gypsy Percent of Entire

Occupation Labor Force Labor Force

Agricultural Laborers 9.5% 3.3%

Other Manual Laborers 75.5% 33.4%

"Employees" (i.e. non-manual)* 7.2% 54.5%

*This last category is intentionally vague, one of political convenience lumping together mailmen and policemen, accountants and executioners.

search of places with job offers along with lucrative recruitment bonuses (ndboroveprispevky). After collecting the bonuses, many will move on, in search of a new bonanza, thus engaging in the illegal yet infrequently prosecuted misdeed oifluktuace.

The geographic mobility of the Gypsies is not matched by their socio-economic mobility. They still remain at the bottom of the ladder. This was the situation in 1980:34

Imrich Farkas, the chief commissar of Gypsy matters in Slovakia, while acknowledging the very low level of skills of both Gypsy males and females, asserted:

We have already got not an insignificant number of tractor drivers, welders, locksmiths, butchers, waiters, cooks, non-commissioned and commissioned army officers, members of the police force, we even have miners [why this gradation?]. Gypsy women work as hairdressers, waitresses, beauticians, teachers, nurses, cashiers, etc. Soon there will be no line of work left without Gypsy participation.35

In order to accomplish such a goal the Gypsies would also have to embark on political careers. As of 1982, it was reported, 368 males and 67 females had already been elected as "deputies of People's Committees on various levels"—i.e., on lower rather than higher levels.36

Most negative reporting by the media with regard to the Gypsies concerns their disproportionately high criminality. In Slovakia, this

34. Demografie 2, p. 168.

35. Pravda, September 23, 1982, p.5.

36. Pravda, January 28, 1983, p.4. One Gypsy, however, made it to the top, Emil Rigo,

member of the politburo in 1968, though no friend of "socialism with a human face." His

career was brief.

37. minority of 4 percent of the population is held responsible for 20 percent of all crimes committed, including 24 percent of all parasitism, 50 percent of robberies, 60 percent of petty thievery, 75 percent of endangering the morality of the youth (i.e., a much too early initiation into sex by non-Gypsy standards).37 Gypsies are also frequently mentioned among those contributing to the increase in juvenile delinquency and crimes committed by repeat offenders.

The Slovak government evaluated its record in coping with the Gypsy problem in the 1976—1982 period and announced successes in housing, hygiene, schooling and employment, but failures in criminality and integration in general.38 But financial assistance as a means to accelerate the uplift has been ruled out as "superfluous" (zbytecnd).^9

The government refrains from providing data relevant to the ongoing integration process. For example, the frequency of inter-marriages is anybody's guess. Observers are left with impressionistic, yet prevalent conclusions: the majority of Gypsies live better and longer, their overall standard of living has improved. Yet, this progress has not generated any eagerness to jump into the socialist melting pot or to abandon one's ethnic identity.

Commissar Farkas revealed the governmental concern about the increasing rather than decreasing difficulty of elevating the Gypsy lifestyle, "because increasingly left for solution are those socially and culturally more backward families."40 An uphill battle indeed—successes being offset by the high birthrate of the unassimilated.

Because the Gypsy nationality is denied and therefore officially nonexistent, the Gypsies are obligated to declare themselves as members of any of the constitutionaly recognized nationalities. The result of this involuntary choice in the 1980 census was as follows: 75 percent Slovaks, 15 percent Hungarians, 10 percent Czechs. Hence, though the Gypsy standard of living in the Czech lands in the highest, their identification with the Czech nationality is the lowest.41

An insight in the matter is provided in an interview with a social

37. Pravda, January 19, 1983, p.2; January 28, 1983, p.4; January 13, 1984, p.2. The percent

age for murder not given. However, Smena reported, March 7, 1983, p.4., that in 1980 in

eastern Slovakia Gypsies committed 13 murders of the total 18.

38. Prdca,}u\yl, 1983, p.4.

39. Rudeprdvo, May 23, 1984, p. 5.

40. Prdca,]\Ayl, 1983, p.4.

41. Demografie 2, p. 170.

42. worker in charge of 945 Gypsy clients in Prague's fifth district: "Their nationality is Czech, Slovak, Hungarian. Of course, they have their typical characteristics—in addition to the color of their skin, their own language, life-style and so on." The social worker further revealed: "At various meetings this questions has been debated endlessly, of course, with the result always the same. If one feels a Gypsy (cikdn), in that case he is one, if he does not feel Gypsy, in that case he simply is not."42

Officialdom continues to praise "the liquidation of the romanizing {romizujicich) efforts on the part of the Roma population who in 1970 were declaring themselves as the neuznavand (unrecognized, unacknowledged) Roma nationality."43 Cikdni are referred to as individuals of Gypsy origin but not of nationality. Allusions such as tmavi kluci (dark boys) are employed or no mention is made under the safe assumption that the name in question will also identify the ethnicity.44 This was the case, for example, of the criminal prosecution of an extortionist grave digger named Julius Rigo in the town of Komarno.45

The Second World Congress of Roma Gypsies held in Geneva in 1978 appealed to the Czechoslovak government to follow the example of socialist Hungary and Poland and to grant the Gypsies the status of an ethnic minority, but to no avail. The government remains adamant. "When they know how to live in an apartment, they don't want to be Gypsies any more," asserted Miloslav Prucha, a senior ministry official who holds central responsibility for the Gypsy population, further adding that "They maintain their language, songs and dances" with no cultural loss suffered because of the denial of their ethnic identity.46

Milena Hiibschmannova remains the most persistent advocate of the Gypsy cause in the country. Yet, the difference in the message and in the medium available to her is instructive. In 1970 in the sociological journal of the Academy of Sciences, she presented a sharp critique of the government's assimilationist policies and its various advocates. In 1983, on the pages of a literary supplement of the weekly Tvorba, she once again approached the subject—under the ostensible pretext of writing a review of a Gypsy musical, the first original work stage in

42. F. Ruzicka, "Cikanska neromance," [Gypsy Non-Romance], Svobodne slovo, April 28, 1984,

p.4.

Demografie 2, p. 170.

VecerniPraha, April 19, 1983, p. 5.

Smena, July 5, 1983, p.5.

Henry Kamm, New York Times, January 24, 1982, p.A-10.

Roma language since 1974. In her pleas on behalf of the Gypsies, Hiibschmannova proceeded with the skills of an experienced, often bruised warrior.47

In her review Hiibschmannova explained that the author, Emil Scuka, was a Slovak-born Gypsy who was a public prosecutor in Northern Bohemia. His Gypsy wife was finishing medical school. Despite his seeming complete integration, he had chosen to express himself in an illegitimate vernacular. The themes of the musical were that Gypsies had fought during World War II as partisans, that they were naturally collectivists, and that sexual fidelity, monogamy, and abhorrence of promiscuity were among their strongest values. However questionable some of these assertions might have been, the review pointed out that the theater ensemble called itself ROMEN, the same name used by the Gypsy theater in Moscow. Therefore, it was politically sanctified by its adherence to the Soviet model.

Hiibschmannova beat the censor with additional evidence. The performers, she pointed out, were not dissident intellectual Gypsy nationalists but hard-working members of the socialist community. One of the female artists worked full time as a ditch digger. The star, Marta Bandyova, could not afford to attend the conservatory and cultivate her musical talent. "She is writing her autobiography in Romany. Thus far no publishing house can be found willing to publish Roma authors in Romany," Hiibschmannova managed to write.

She described the enthusiastic response of the predominantly Gypsy audience, quoting both in Czech and Romany exclamations like, "Man, I am very proud to have been born a Rom! .... I used to be truly ashamed that I was born a Gypsy. Why don't they write 'citizen of Czech origin was a thief!' " Reference was made to a Czech woman uttering a well-intentioned, "you are such a decent human being as if you were not a Gypsy," eliciting this comment in Romany: "Rorn gadzske ca akor manus, kara dura avel." [For a white person, a Gypsy is a human being only when he is away from him.] However, she wrote, no one dares tell the author of this musical that he is a Gypsy because, above all, he is a prosecutor.

Yet, nowhere in this remarkable piece of reporting did Hiibschman-

47. "Co ty lidi dovedou" [What Those People Are Capable Of}, Tvorba 15 (April 13, 1983), pp.vi-vii.

nova dare to repeat the demand of the past, for recognition of the legitimacy of the Gypsy ethnicity, the way she did over a decade ago.

In 1986 the weekly Tvorba published a long feature story entitled "The Trailblazers from the Village Zlate Klasy."48 In this West Slovak village exactly one-third of the total of 3,750 residents are "citizens of Gypsy origin." Without using terminology such as "integration," or "assimilation," these were presented as model citizens. Ninety-seven percent of adult males were gainfully employed, 31 individuals had completed middle level education, and eight were university graduates. A special committee of the local administration met each month to deal with pressing problems, notably with truancy among the Gypsy youth. The administrators promoted interest in local folklore, Gypsy cultural activities, and rejected the practice of rozptyl—dispersal of the Gypsy population. Lectures on self-improvement were regularly given. In short, this story presented a favorable picture of Gypsy life which did not follow the official line.

A new appeal to the Czechoslovak government by the World Congress of Roma Gypsies in Geneva to recognize the Gypsies as a legitimate minority just as they had been recognized in Hungary and Poland was met in 1986 with an angry rebuttal in the main Party daily Rude prdvo.49 The statement entitled "Such Are the Facts" opened with the success story of one Miroslav Zajda, an assimilated Gypsy, worker, student, Party member, and soccer referee. "I am happy," he confided. Rude prdvo condemned the international Gypsy organization as well as "one of the former Czechoslovak historians currently living in the West on the payroll of the CIA," for their charges that Gypsies in Czechoslovakia are denied development of their cultural life. "We are trying to accomplish their non-violent {nendsilne) incorporation into the life of the society," pledged the party daily, "to change the pattern of thinking left behind by capitalism."

Popular Prejudice

The Government's denial of the legitimacy of Gypsy nationality might have contributed but certainly did not cause the prejudicial attitudes characteristic of contemporary Czechoslovak society. On rather rare

48. Tvorba 16 (April 23, 1986), p.4.

49. Rude prdvo, June 21, 1986, p. 3.

50. occasions the media delve into the touchy subject and reveal, for example, that Gypsies are not admitted into some Prague restaurants. The daily Svobodne slovo reported the case of a Gypsy citizen who with his wife, "a shining blond" {zdrivd blondyna), went for a dance. She was welcome; he was ordered to wait outside. The story continued, "We asked about the fate of the so-called mixed marriages and were told that in most cases they don't work out well. "50

Generalizations abound about Gypsies habitually ripping apart an allocated apartment. Children are warned to avoid Arbes Square in Prague because of the Gypsies congregating there.51

A revealing picture into the subject is provided in an autobiographical documentary book entitled ". . . a bude hur" {". . . // Will Get Worse].52 The young author and recent exile Jan Pelc describes the underworld, not of political dissidents, but of those who had "opted out"—vagabonds, parasites, ex-convicts, fugitives from justice and the like. With the authenticity of an insider, he discusses the Gypsy way of life and how it interacts with the outside world. The author, while expressing considerable sympathy for these fellow outcasts uses language, epithets, and characterizations quite abhorrently racist by current western standards. A description of a Gypsy tavern illustrates the existence of two different worlds: "Whites" are not allowed in, and they would not dare to enter.

Rude prdvo, the main voice of the Party, reported a case of an "honest, hard-working Gypsy" who with his family of eight was evicted from his own house so it could be illicitly transformed into a country cottage with a tennis court for a Prague bureaucrat. In this morality feature story justice prevailed.53 Yet at roughly the same time the Party did permit its newspaper Nova svoboda in northern Moravia to publish a call for a "fundamental solution" to the Gypsy problem by expelling from the city of Ostrava all those "who do not live a normal life."54

Until recently Czechoslovak society was convinced of its racial tolerance. In some ways, this was always an illusion, but in recent years the

50. Ruzicka, "Cikanska neromance," p.4.

51. Ruzicka, "Cikanska neromance," p.4.

52. Jan Pelc, ". . . a bude hur" (Cologne: Index, 1983), p.512. (On the Gypsy subject, see

pp.l67ff, 242ff, 254ff, 302, 410, and 413.)

53. Rude prdvo, April 1, 1983, p. 3-

54. Nova svoboda, September 11, 1982, p. 3-

55. Zivotstrany 8 (1983), p.38.

56. illusion has been exposed as such. While the number of the Gypsies has been growing visibly, society at large, traumatized by the 1968 invasion and the subsequent adjustment to the life of "normalization," has experienced a change in lifestyle, mores, and an overall decline in civility. The populace has become less tolerant, more impatient, and egotistic. This development is one of the perpetual themes in the media, lamenting the alleged infestation of petty bourgeois mentality. The overall decline in civility on the part of the frustrated and increasingly intolerant populace is further aggravated by the widely shared and frequently exaggerated belief that the Gypsies are beneficiaries of a host of privileges on their path to the less-than-cherished goal of integration.

While condemning western racism with forceful indignation, the people in this part of the socialist orbit are thoroughly uninhibited about making racial slurs and expressing racist prejudice of the old-fashioned vintage. Gypsies are called "dirty," "lazy," "dishonest," "primitive," "parasitic," and "inferior."

As a part of a research project into novel forms of dissent in Eastern Europe I conducted a survey among recent young refugees in 1984—85. The Gypsy question was not an important part of this project, but I did ask respondents about the potential for Gypsy assimilation. The answers were uniform. Some of them will make it, but the majority are still beyond reach. All of them are beneficiaries of privileged treatment; they do not get away with murder, but with plenty of infractions of the law which the state will not tolerate from the rest of the population. This leads to a great deal of resentment on the part of the public.

The nationality issues in prewar Czechoslovakia served as the pretext for the destruction of the State by Germany. After World War II and the restoration of independence, the solution of the minority problem was a paramount task. This was done by drastic means—the expulsion of some three million Germans. However, the planned, equally forcible exodus of the Hungarian minority did not fully materialize, thus permanently burying the hopes of creating a purely Slavic republic. According to the 1980 census, the Hungarian minority was 580,000 strong. Whereas 4 percent of the population in Slovakia were Gypsies, 11 percent were Hungarians, a high percentage of them farmers and relatively few engaged in white collar positions. Concentrated in the southern part of Slovakia, in the district of Komarno (110,000 pop.) they represented a 72 percent majority.55 Constitutional recognition of the

Hungarians as an ethnic group entitles them to their own schools and to Csemadok, their ethnic-cultural, albeit nonpolitical organization. As a rule, in Slovakia official pronouncements on nationalism invariably concern relations not only with the Czechs but also with the Hungarians. Tensions exist, mutual recriminations are common, and the Hungarian human rights activist Miklos Duray (a signatory of Charter 77) was put in jail.

The communist government in part inherited, and is in part responsible for the continuing problems concerning the Gypsy and Hungarian minorities. But now some new ethnic problems may be developing. These are quite minor, and the numbers involved are almost insignificant, but they reveal an interesting aspect of Czechoslovak feelings about ethnicity.

Importation of foreign labor and their temporary stay may well be a mutually beneficial arrangement to alleviate unemployment in one place and a labor shortage in the other. A practice known for decades in Western Europe, it started to be practiced in Eastern Europe on a much smaller scale in the late 1970s. On the basis of the Czechoslovak-Cuban treaty of 1978, by April 1983 over 4,500 young Cubans were placed in 67 Czech industrial plants for a term of four years (the first six months spent on language training). In the few accounts in the media there was nothing but praise, a quaint echo of the glorification of Stakhanovite heroes of socialist labor who exceed the production quotas and who excel in their devotion to ideological advancement. In addition, some eighty Czechoslovak-Cuban marriages and fifty births were reported.56

This success has not been repeated with the far more numerous guest workers from Vietnam. The first contingent of 420 arrived in 1980. By the end of 1982, the number reached almost 30,000, i.e., one per 300 Czechoslovaks employed. Because of their concentration in assigned work places their presence throughout the country is felt unevenly. Several factors contribute to the less than harmonious state of affairs: the sudden influx of the Vietnamese (mainly southerners, Catholics wearing crosses) in 1982, their poor language preparation, complaints over labor assignment, remuneration, climate, diet, separation from families, and various facets of cultural incompatibility. Some violent

55. Zivotstrany 8 (1983), p. 38.

56. Zemedelske noviny, May 5, 1983, p.6; Prdca, September 3, 1983, p. 1.

57. clashes with the local people were reported in the foreign but not in the Czechoslovak press. However, some information has been provided by the daily Mladd frontal1 admitting shortcomings, poor selection practices in Vietnam, unjustified phobias of the Czechoslovak public as to the alleged importation of mysterious tropical diseases into the hygienic center of Europe. Following public pressure, thorough medical examinations^ of jointly used swimming pools were undertaken, and no sources of plague-like banes were detected.

A new racial slur denoting the Vietnamese, Rdkosnici, was coined and universally adopted.58 As indicated above, Czechoslovak society in the post-invasion period has forfeited much of its civility. The frustrated have turned selfish, ill-tempered, and intolerant. Without previous exposure to much racial heterogeneity, the overall reaction to the strange outsiders is one of rejection, negative generalizations, and stereotypes.

"Our Domestic Kukluxklan" is the title Olga Sulcova, a politically proscribed publicist, gave to her incisive essay that circulates in samizdat and was published abroad in 1986.59 The author demolishes "the legend of the alleged antiracism of our citizens" pointing out that these citizens were free of racist attitudes as long as they had no opportunity to encounter people of different colors, physical features, and cultural mores. Numerous examples are provided: brutal abuse of dark-skinned passengers in the Prague metro, contemptuous recommendations to the Vietnamese to return to their jungles, graffiti with genocidal messages VSICHNI ZLUTI DO PLYNU! [i.e., "all yellow folk be gassed!"]

"If our domestic Kukluxklan were organized and became a member of the National Front," writes Sulcova, "it would be a numerically strong, powerful component! No sociological probes are required to arrive at this conclusion; it suffices to live in this country, to walk in the streets, to shop and use public means of transportation."

In the in-depth interviews of the survey mentioned earlier, questions about the acceptance of and coexistence with the Vietnamese "guest

57. Mladd fronta, December 11, 1982, p.8; January 4, 1983, p.2.

58. Derived from rdkos, a Czech word for "reed." Hence, rdkosnici are people made of reed,

resembling the fragility of reed? The word is one of mockery.

59. Listy (Rome), October, 1986, p.73.

60. workers" elicited fairly uniform responses. Unlike the Cubans (many of them veterans from assignments in Angola) the Vietnamese are not aggressive, they avoid trouble, and keep to themselves. Both the Cubans and the Vietnamese have no access to the hard currency stores (a privilege abundantly exploited by foreign students and other visitors), and their material poverty triggers no envy. The Vietnamese have entered the unofficial Czechoslovak market in providing illicit services (e.g., house repairs) for lower prices, to the delight of prospective customers and resentment of the less accommodating local competition. Nonetheless, the Vietnamese are occasionally being evicted from restaurants, refused rides in taxis, denied service in barber shops, and kept out of public baths.60

Media coverage is rare and of the predictable type—the model stories of fraternal socialist cooperation, such as the case of Nguyen-Thi-Thu, an exemplary female worker in a cookie factory.61 A different genre appeared in a trade unionist daily: a Slovak woman identified merely as "Eva" inquired about the procedures on how to obtain a permit to marry a Vietnamese citizen who had impregnated her.62 The rule of the overall anemic media coverage was suddenly broken by state television's extraordinary report (September 3, 1986) entitled "Special Program of Investigation." Pictures of two Vietnamese males covered the screen—alleged murderers and corpse mutilators. A nation-wide hunt was declared (hardly a difficult undertaking in a police state of modest size).

Interviewed citizens have expressed rather xenophobic displeasure over the presence of these Oriental interlopers in the country, regardless their eventual merits in contributing to the strength of the global socialist commonwealth.63 The temper of the country is such as to suggest that a further influx of foreigners is unlikely. The preeminent interest of the government is the maintenance of the status quo and tranquility. This

60. The Czech language periodical Hlasy (Melbourne) 15 (August 1, 1986), p. 11, carried an

intelligent, perceptive interview with a Czech-Australian who revisited his native land that

he had left after the Soviet invasion in 1968: he found the people ill-tempered, intolerant,

and disliking everybody. On the top of their hate list are the Russians—followed by the

Gypsies, Germans and the Vietnamese.

61. Rudeprdvo, January 26, 1985, p.3.

62. Prdca, January 11, 1986, p. 10.

63. Amerkke Listy (New York), September 19, 1986, p.9.

64. surely would be endangered by a further import of 300,000 Vietnamese and 80,000 Mozambiqueans as was rumored and reported in the western press. The guest workers, including the most exemplary ones, may be deported from the country on short notice to assuage public resentment should the need be recognized by the government.

But no such solution is applicable in the case of the Gypsies, whose ranks are rapidly growing. Total cultural assimilation remains the goal of the government which, however, no longer offers any specific deadlines for this accomplishment. Deep seated racial prejudices not only persist in Czechoslovakia, but are likely to grow.

children (age 3 to 5) are enrolled in kindergartens. In eastern Slovakia the proportion grew from 10 percent in 1972 to 66 percent in 1982. However, the attendance record varies from district to district; it is highest in Levoca (83.8 percent) and lowest in Senica (33 percent).

The official accomplishment of socialism notwithstanding, there are no free lunches for children no matter how destitute. In some communities, however, the bill for the Gypsies is paid from the local budget. Not philanthropy, but concern with fulfillment of the enrollment and attendance plan decreed from above, is the main motive.

Yet, acculturation provided in a kindergarten does not entirely solve the problem. In the 1983-4 school year, of the total of 2,298 first-graders in all of Slovakia who failed to move on to the second grade, almost three-fourths (1,661) were Gypsies. One-third of the Gypsy students do not finish the eighth grade and only 4 percent manage to proceed to a higher level of education. The university level is reached by a minuscule 0.3 percent of males and 0.2 percent of females.

Teachers working with Gypsy children receive various bonuses. In the norm with overall socialist practice, the emphasis is on the quantitative rather than qualitative fulfillment of the plan and meeting the quota of various indices. To assure their high class attendance some teachers pay the Gypsies' bus fare from their own pocket.

Educators, it is charged, apply a double standard in student evaluation, to the ultimate detriment of the subjects of preferential treatment. Almost one-third of the Gypsies passing from the first to the second grade have not acquired the minimal skills; in the case of the fourth-graders, it was reported that half of them fall in this category. In Roznava (a district with a 13 percent Gypsy minority and the best record in kindergarten enrollment) not even one fifteen-year-old Gypsy passed the entrance examination to a higher school level.

The governmental policy of refusing to recognize the Gypsy nationality is thus responsible for damage, difficult and often impossible to repair. The Gypsy children, handicapped by their poor knowledge of the language of instruction, are bound to lag behind. On average on entering school they are familiar with some 200 Czech or Slovak words, i.e., less than a tenth of the vocabulary mastered by their other classmates. Instead of having their mental faculties tested they all too often are reassigned to the so-called Special Schools (zvldstni skoly), a euphemistic label for institutions catering to the needs of the mentally re-

tarded. In Prague some "exclusively Gypsy classes" {vyhradne cikdnske tridy) are in operation. In Slovakia the opening of eighty kindergartens for Gypsy children was reported. Are these separate facilities under conditions of decreed assimilation?

Crash literacy courses for adult Gypsies have produced marginal results. Similar attempts in political indoctrination were abandoned entirely. In this postinvasion era of "normalized" Czechoslovakia the Party is not interested in conversion of souls but merely in obedience, in overt conformist behavior. Moreover, no status promoting incentives are offered to the Gypsies: their jobs as street cleaners are secure even without their attendance of evening courses offering insight into Marxist dialectics.

In Czechoslovakia all young males, with the exception of those with substantial physical handicaps or political connections, have to serve in the armed forces. The Red Army in the Soviet Union allegedly performs a significant role in integration by teaching the minority draftees Russian, the language of command. In the light of Czechoslovakia's record of faithful emulation in Soviet practices, it is rather surprising that little has been achieved in teaching and uplifting the involuntary Gypsy charges left in the tutelage of the military for two years. Instead of adopting a consistent pattern, the practices have been varied from time to time and from unit to unit: strict discipline alternating with permissiveness, literacy courses diligently pursued or completely ignored, Gypsy soldiers integrated in one regiment or segregated in another.

A trend similar to that in education has taken place in the employment of the Gypsies: impressive increases in quantity, and less impressive ones in quality. In 1980 the employment rate of male Gypsies was very close to the national average of 91.9 percent, 87.7 percent were economically active. In the case of the Gypsy women the percentage was considerably lower (54.9 percent as opposed to the national average of 89 percent), but this was a solid increase from the 35.1 percent in 1970. Czechoslovakia, a socialist welfare state, provides no social welfare payments to those not gainfully employed. Unemployment is minimal, though not nonexistent, and those without a job are likely to face a prosecutor and criminal charges for the felony of parasitism.

In defiance of the official restrictions on change of residence, Gypsies criss-cross the country (by trains rather than in horse-drawn caravans) in

Table 1 Gypsy Labor Force Distribution

Percent of Gypsy Percent of Entire

Occupation Labor Force Labor Force

Agricultural Laborers 9.5% 3.3%

Other Manual Laborers 75.5% 33.4%

"Employees" (i.e. non-manual)* 7.2% 54.5%

*This last category is intentionally vague, one of political convenience lumping together mailmen and policemen, accountants and executioners.

search of places with job offers along with lucrative recruitment bonuses (ndboroveprispevky). After collecting the bonuses, many will move on, in search of a new bonanza, thus engaging in the illegal yet infrequently prosecuted misdeed oifluktuace.

The geographic mobility of the Gypsies is not matched by their socio-economic mobility. They still remain at the bottom of the ladder. This was the situation in 1980:34

Imrich Farkas, the chief commissar of Gypsy matters in Slovakia, while acknowledging the very low level of skills of both Gypsy males and females, asserted:

We have already got not an insignificant number of tractor drivers, welders, locksmiths, butchers, waiters, cooks, non-commissioned and commissioned army officers, members of the police force, we even have miners [why this gradation?]. Gypsy women work as hairdressers, waitresses, beauticians, teachers, nurses, cashiers, etc. Soon there will be no line of work left without Gypsy participation.35

In order to accomplish such a goal the Gypsies would also have to embark on political careers. As of 1982, it was reported, 368 males and 67 females had already been elected as "deputies of People's Committees on various levels"—i.e., on lower rather than higher levels.36

Most negative reporting by the media with regard to the Gypsies concerns their disproportionately high criminality. In Slovakia, this

38. Demografie 2, p. 168.

39. Pravda, September 23, 1982, p.5.

40. Pravda, January 28, 1983, p.4. One Gypsy, however, made it to the top, Emil Rigo,

member of the politburo in 1968, though no friend of "socialism with a human face." His

career was brief.

41. minority of 4 percent of the population is held responsible for 20 percent of all crimes committed, including 24 percent of all parasitism, 50 percent of robberies, 60 percent of petty thievery, 75 percent of endangering the morality of the youth (i.e., a much too early initiation into sex by non-Gypsy standards).37 Gypsies are also frequently mentioned among those contributing to the increase in juvenile delinquency and crimes committed by repeat offenders.

The Slovak government evaluated its record in coping with the Gypsy problem in the 1976—1982 period and announced successes in housing, hygiene, schooling and employment, but failures in criminality and integration in general.38 But financial assistance as a means to accelerate the uplift has been ruled out as "superfluous" (zbytecnd).^9

The government refrains from providing data relevant to the ongoing integration process. For example, the frequency of inter-marriages is anybody's guess. Observers are left with impressionistic, yet prevalent conclusions: the majority of Gypsies live better and longer, their overall standard of living has improved. Yet, this progress has not generated any eagerness to jump into the socialist melting pot or to abandon one's ethnic identity.

Commissar Farkas revealed the governmental concern about the increasing rather than decreasing difficulty of elevating the Gypsy lifestyle, "because increasingly left for solution are those socially and culturally more backward families."40 An uphill battle indeed—successes being offset by the high birthrate of the unassimilated.

Because the Gypsy nationality is denied and therefore officially nonexistent, the Gypsies are obligated to declare themselves as members of any of the constitutionaly recognized nationalities. The result of this involuntary choice in the 1980 census was as follows: 75 percent Slovaks, 15 percent Hungarians, 10 percent Czechs. Hence, though the Gypsy standard of living in the Czech lands in the highest, their identification with the Czech nationality is the lowest.41

An insight in the matter is provided in an interview with a social

43. Pravda, January 19, 1983, p.2; January 28, 1983, p.4; January 13, 1984, p.2. The percent

age for murder not given. However, Smena reported, March 7, 1983, p.4., that in 1980 in

eastern Slovakia Gypsies committed 13 murders of the total 18.

44. Prdca,}u\yl, 1983, p.4.

45. Rudeprdvo, May 23, 1984, p. 5.

46. Prdca,]\Ayl, 1983, p.4.

47. Demografie 2, p. 170.

48. worker in charge of 945 Gypsy clients in Prague's fifth district: "Their nationality is Czech, Slovak, Hungarian. Of course, they have their typical characteristics—in addition to the color of their skin, their own language, life-style and so on." The social worker further revealed: "At various meetings this questions has been debated endlessly, of course, with the result always the same. If one feels a Gypsy (cikdn), in that case he is one, if he does not feel Gypsy, in that case he simply is not."42

Officialdom continues to praise "the liquidation of the romanizing {romizujicich) efforts on the part of the Roma population who in 1970 were declaring themselves as the neuznavand (unrecognized, unacknowledged) Roma nationality."43 Cikdni are referred to as individuals of Gypsy origin but not of nationality. Allusions such as tmavi kluci (dark boys) are employed or no mention is made under the safe assumption that the name in question will also identify the ethnicity.44 This was the case, for example, of the criminal prosecution of an extortionist grave digger named Julius Rigo in the town of Komarno.45

The Second World Congress of Roma Gypsies held in Geneva in 1978 appealed to the Czechoslovak government to follow the example of socialist Hungary and Poland and to grant the Gypsies the status of an ethnic minority, but to no avail. The government remains adamant. "When they know how to live in an apartment, they don't want to be Gypsies any more," asserted Miloslav Prucha, a senior ministry official who holds central responsibility for the Gypsy population, further adding that "They maintain their language, songs and dances" with no cultural loss suffered because of the denial of their ethnic identity.46

Milena Hiibschmannova remains the most persistent advocate of the Gypsy cause in the country. Yet, the difference in the message and in the medium available to her is instructive. In 1970 in the sociological journal of the Academy of Sciences, she presented a sharp critique of the government's assimilationist policies and its various advocates. In 1983, on the pages of a literary supplement of the weekly Tvorba, she once again approached the subject—under the ostensible pretext of writing a review of a Gypsy musical, the first original work stage in

48. F. Ruzicka, "Cikanska neromance," [Gypsy Non-Romance], Svobodne slovo, April 28, 1984,

p.4.

Demografie 2, p. 170.

VecerniPraha, April 19, 1983, p. 5.

Smena, July 5, 1983, p.5.

Henry Kamm, New York Times, January 24, 1982, p.A-10.

Roma language since 1974. In her pleas on behalf of the Gypsies, Hiibschmannova proceeded with the skills of an experienced, often bruised warrior.47

In her review Hiibschmannova explained that the author, Emil Scuka, was a Slovak-born Gypsy who was a public prosecutor in Northern Bohemia. His Gypsy wife was finishing medical school. Despite his seeming complete integration, he had chosen to express himself in an illegitimate vernacular. The themes of the musical were that Gypsies had fought during World War II as partisans, that they were naturally collectivists, and that sexual fidelity, monogamy, and abhorrence of promiscuity were among their strongest values. However questionable some of these assertions might have been, the review pointed out that the theater ensemble called itself ROMEN, the same name used by the Gypsy theater in Moscow. Therefore, it was politically sanctified by its adherence to the Soviet model.

Hiibschmannova beat the censor with additional evidence. The performers, she pointed out, were not dissident intellectual Gypsy nationalists but hard-working members of the socialist community. One of the female artists worked full time as a ditch digger. The star, Marta Bandyova, could not afford to attend the conservatory and cultivate her musical talent. "She is writing her autobiography in Romany. Thus far no publishing house can be found willing to publish Roma authors in Romany," Hiibschmannova managed to write.

She described the enthusiastic response of the predominantly Gypsy audience, quoting both in Czech and Romany exclamations like, "Man, I am very proud to have been born a Rom! .... I used to be truly ashamed that I was born a Gypsy. Why don't they write 'citizen of Czech origin was a thief!' " Reference was made to a Czech woman uttering a well-intentioned, "you are such a decent human being as if you were not a Gypsy," eliciting this comment in Romany: "Rorn gadzske ca akor manus, kara dura avel." [For a white person, a Gypsy is a human being only when he is away from him.] However, she wrote, no one dares tell the author of this musical that he is a Gypsy because, above all, he is a prosecutor.

Yet, nowhere in this remarkable piece of reporting did Hiibschman-

47. "Co ty lidi dovedou" [What Those People Are Capable Of}, Tvorba 15 (April 13, 1983), pp.vi-vii.

nova dare to repeat the demand of the past, for recognition of the legitimacy of the Gypsy ethnicity, the way she did over a decade ago.

In 1986 the weekly Tvorba published a long feature story entitled "The Trailblazers from the Village Zlate Klasy."48 In this West Slovak village exactly one-third of the total of 3,750 residents are "citizens of Gypsy origin." Without using terminology such as "integration," or "assimilation," these were presented as model citizens. Ninety-seven percent of adult males were gainfully employed, 31 individuals had completed middle level education, and eight were university graduates. A special committee of the local administration met each month to deal with pressing problems, notably with truancy among the Gypsy youth. The administrators promoted interest in local folklore, Gypsy cultural activities, and rejected the practice of rozptyl—dispersal of the Gypsy population. Lectures on self-improvement were regularly given. In short, this story presented a favorable picture of Gypsy life which did not follow the official line.

A new appeal to the Czechoslovak government by the World Congress of Roma Gypsies in Geneva to recognize the Gypsies as a legitimate minority just as they had been recognized in Hungary and Poland was met in 1986 with an angry rebuttal in the main Party daily Rude prdvo.49 The statement entitled "Such Are the Facts" opened with the success story of one Miroslav Zajda, an assimilated Gypsy, worker, student, Party member, and soccer referee. "I am happy," he confided. Rude prdvo condemned the international Gypsy organization as well as "one of the former Czechoslovak historians currently living in the West on the payroll of the CIA," for their charges that Gypsies in Czechoslovakia are denied development of their cultural life. "We are trying to accomplish their non-violent {nendsilne) incorporation into the life of the society," pledged the party daily, "to change the pattern of thinking left behind by capitalism."

Popular Prejudice

The Government's denial of the legitimacy of Gypsy nationality might have contributed but certainly did not cause the prejudicial attitudes characteristic of contemporary Czechoslovak society. On rather rare

51. Tvorba 16 (April 23, 1986), p.4.

52. Rude prdvo, June 21, 1986, p. 3.

53. occasions the media delve into the touchy subject and reveal, for example, that Gypsies are not admitted into some Prague restaurants. The daily Svobodne slovo reported the case of a Gypsy citizen who with his wife, "a shining blond" {zdrivd blondyna), went for a dance. She was welcome; he was ordered to wait outside. The story continued, "We asked about the fate of the so-called mixed marriages and were told that in most cases they don't work out well. "50

Generalizations abound about Gypsies habitually ripping apart an allocated apartment. Children are warned to avoid Arbes Square in Prague because of the Gypsies congregating there.51

A revealing picture into the subject is provided in an autobiographical documentary book entitled ". . . a bude hur" {". . . // Will Get Worse].52 The young author and recent exile Jan Pelc describes the underworld, not of political dissidents, but of those who had "opted out"—vagabonds, parasites, ex-convicts, fugitives from justice and the like. With the authenticity of an insider, he discusses the Gypsy way of life and how it interacts with the outside world. The author, while expressing considerable sympathy for these fellow outcasts uses language, epithets, and characterizations quite abhorrently racist by current western standards. A description of a Gypsy tavern illustrates the existence of two different worlds: "Whites" are not allowed in, and they would not dare to enter.

Rude prdvo, the main voice of the Party, reported a case of an "honest, hard-working Gypsy" who with his family of eight was evicted from his own house so it could be illicitly transformed into a country cottage with a tennis court for a Prague bureaucrat. In this morality feature story justice prevailed.53 Yet at roughly the same time the Party did permit its newspaper Nova svoboda in northern Moravia to publish a call for a "fundamental solution" to the Gypsy problem by expelling from the city of Ostrava all those "who do not live a normal life."54

Until recently Czechoslovak society was convinced of its racial tolerance. In some ways, this was always an illusion, but in recent years the

57. Ruzicka, "Cikanska neromance," p.4.

58. Ruzicka, "Cikanska neromance," p.4.

59. Jan Pelc, ". . . a bude hur" (Cologne: Index, 1983), p.512. (On the Gypsy subject, see

pp.l67ff, 242ff, 254ff, 302, 410, and 413.)

60. Rude prdvo, April 1, 1983, p. 3-

61. Nova svoboda, September 11, 1982, p. 3-

62. Zivotstrany 8 (1983), p.38.

63. illusion has been exposed as such. While the number of the Gypsies has been growing visibly, society at large, traumatized by the 1968 invasion and the subsequent adjustment to the life of "normalization," has experienced a change in lifestyle, mores, and an overall decline in civility. The populace has become less tolerant, more impatient, and egotistic. This development is one of the perpetual themes in the media, lamenting the alleged infestation of petty bourgeois mentality. The overall decline in civility on the part of the frustrated and increasingly intolerant populace is further aggravated by the widely shared and frequently exaggerated belief that the Gypsies are beneficiaries of a host of privileges on their path to the less-than-cherished goal of integration.

While condemning western racism with forceful indignation, the people in this part of the socialist orbit are thoroughly uninhibited about making racial slurs and expressing racist prejudice of the old-fashioned vintage. Gypsies are called "dirty," "lazy," "dishonest," "primitive," "parasitic," and "inferior."

As a part of a research project into novel forms of dissent in Eastern Europe I conducted a survey among recent young refugees in 1984—85. The Gypsy question was not an important part of this project, but I did ask respondents about the potential for Gypsy assimilation. The answers were uniform. Some of them will make it, but the majority are still beyond reach. All of them are beneficiaries of privileged treatment; they do not get away with murder, but with plenty of infractions of the law which the state will not tolerate from the rest of the population. This leads to a great deal of resentment on the part of the public.

The nationality issues in prewar Czechoslovakia served as the pretext for the destruction of the State by Germany. After World War II and the restoration of independence, the solution of the minority problem was a paramount task. This was done by drastic means—the expulsion of some three million Germans. However, the planned, equally forcible exodus of the Hungarian minority did not fully materialize, thus permanently burying the hopes of creating a purely Slavic republic. According to the 1980 census, the Hungarian minority was 580,000 strong. Whereas 4 percent of the population in Slovakia were Gypsies, 11 percent were Hungarians, a high percentage of them farmers and relatively few engaged in white collar positions. Concentrated in the southern part of Slovakia, in the district of Komarno (110,000 pop.) they represented a 72 percent majority.55 Constitutional recognition of the

Hungarians as an ethnic group entitles them to their own schools and to Csemadok, their ethnic-cultural, albeit nonpolitical organization. As a rule, in Slovakia official pronouncements on nationalism invariably concern relations not only with the Czechs but also with the Hungarians. Tensions exist, mutual recriminations are common, and the Hungarian human rights activist Miklos Duray (a signatory of Charter 77) was put in jail.

The communist government in part inherited, and is in part responsible for the continuing problems concerning the Gypsy and Hungarian minorities. But now some new ethnic problems may be developing. These are quite minor, and the numbers involved are almost insignificant, but they reveal an interesting aspect of Czechoslovak feelings about ethnicity.

Importation of foreign labor and their temporary stay may well be a mutually beneficial arrangement to alleviate unemployment in one place and a labor shortage in the other. A practice known for decades in Western Europe, it started to be practiced in Eastern Europe on a much smaller scale in the late 1970s. On the basis of the Czechoslovak-Cuban treaty of 1978, by April 1983 over 4,500 young Cubans were placed in 67 Czech industrial plants for a term of four years (the first six months spent on language training). In the few accounts in the media there was nothing but praise, a quaint echo of the glorification of Stakhanovite heroes of socialist labor who exceed the production quotas and who excel in their devotion to ideological advancement. In addition, some eighty Czechoslovak-Cuban marriages and fifty births were reported.56

This success has not been repeated with the far more numerous guest workers from Vietnam. The first contingent of 420 arrived in 1980. By the end of 1982, the number reached almost 30,000, i.e., one per 300 Czechoslovaks employed. Because of their concentration in assigned work places their presence throughout the country is felt unevenly. Several factors contribute to the less than harmonious state of affairs: the sudden influx of the Vietnamese (mainly southerners, Catholics wearing crosses) in 1982, their poor language preparation, complaints over labor assignment, remuneration, climate, diet, separation from families, and various facets of cultural incompatibility. Some violent

58. Zivotstrany 8 (1983), p. 38.

59. Zemedelske noviny, May 5, 1983, p.6; Prdca, September 3, 1983, p. 1.

60. clashes with the local people were reported in the foreign but not in the Czechoslovak press. However, some information has been provided by the daily Mladd frontal1 admitting shortcomings, poor selection practices in Vietnam, unjustified phobias of the Czechoslovak public as to the alleged importation of mysterious tropical diseases into the hygienic center of Europe. Following public pressure, thorough medical examinations^ of jointly used swimming pools were undertaken, and no sources of plague-like banes were detected.

A new racial slur denoting the Vietnamese, Rdkosnici, was coined and universally adopted.58 As indicated above, Czechoslovak society in the post-invasion period has forfeited much of its civility. The frustrated have turned selfish, ill-tempered, and intolerant. Without previous exposure to much racial heterogeneity, the overall reaction to the strange outsiders is one of rejection, negative generalizations, and stereotypes.

"Our Domestic Kukluxklan" is the title Olga Sulcova, a politically proscribed publicist, gave to her incisive essay that circulates in samizdat and was published abroad in 1986.59 The author demolishes "the legend of the alleged antiracism of our citizens" pointing out that these citizens were free of racist attitudes as long as they had no opportunity to encounter people of different colors, physical features, and cultural mores. Numerous examples are provided: brutal abuse of dark-skinned passengers in the Prague metro, contemptuous recommendations to the Vietnamese to return to their jungles, graffiti with genocidal messages VSICHNI ZLUTI DO PLYNU! [i.e., "all yellow folk be gassed!"]

"If our domestic Kukluxklan were organized and became a member of the National Front," writes Sulcova, "it would be a numerically strong, powerful component! No sociological probes are required to arrive at this conclusion; it suffices to live in this country, to walk in the streets, to shop and use public means of transportation."

In the in-depth interviews of the survey mentioned earlier, questions about the acceptance of and coexistence with the Vietnamese "guest

61. Mladd fronta, December 11, 1982, p.8; January 4, 1983, p.2.

62. Derived from rdkos, a Czech word for "reed." Hence, rdkosnici are people made of reed,

resembling the fragility of reed? The word is one of mockery.

63. Listy (Rome), October, 1986, p.73.

64. workers" elicited fairly uniform responses. Unlike the Cubans (many of them veterans from assignments in Angola) the Vietnamese are not aggressive, they avoid trouble, and keep to themselves. Both the Cubans and the Vietnamese have no access to the hard currency stores (a privilege abundantly exploited by foreign students and other visitors), and their material poverty triggers no envy. The Vietnamese have entered the unofficial Czechoslovak market in providing illicit services (e.g., house repairs) for lower prices, to the delight of prospective customers and resentment of the less accommodating local competition. Nonetheless, the Vietnamese are occasionally being evicted from restaurants, refused rides in taxis, denied service in barber shops, and kept out of public baths.60

Media coverage is rare and of the predictable type—the model stories of fraternal socialist cooperation, such as the case of Nguyen-Thi-Thu, an exemplary female worker in a cookie factory.61 A different genre appeared in a trade unionist daily: a Slovak woman identified merely as "Eva" inquired about the procedures on how to obtain a permit to marry a Vietnamese citizen who had impregnated her.62 The rule of the overall anemic media coverage was suddenly broken by state television's extraordinary report (September 3, 1986) entitled "Special Program of Investigation." Pictures of two Vietnamese males covered the screen—alleged murderers and corpse mutilators. A nation-wide hunt was declared (hardly a difficult undertaking in a police state of modest size).

Interviewed citizens have expressed rather xenophobic displeasure over the presence of these Oriental interlopers in the country, regardless their eventual merits in contributing to the strength of the global socialist commonwealth.63 The temper of the country is such as to suggest that a further influx of foreigners is unlikely. The preeminent interest of the government is the maintenance of the status quo and tranquility. This

65. The Czech language periodical Hlasy (Melbourne) 15 (August 1, 1986), p. 11, carried an

intelligent, perceptive interview with a Czech-Australian who revisited his native land that

he had left after the Soviet invasion in 1968: he found the people ill-tempered, intolerant,

and disliking everybody. On the top of their hate list are the Russians—followed by the

Gypsies, Germans and the Vietnamese.

66. Rudeprdvo, January 26, 1985, p.3.

67. Prdca, January 11, 1986, p. 10.

68. Amerkke Listy (New York), September 19, 1986, p.9.

69. surely would be endangered by a further import of 300,000 Vietnamese and 80,000 Mozambiqueans as was rumored and reported in the western press. The guest workers, including the most exemplary ones, may be deported from the country on short notice to assuage public resentment should the need be recognized by the government.

But no such solution is applicable in the case of the Gypsies, whose ranks are rapidly growing. Total cultural assimilation remains the goal of the government which, however, no longer offers any specific deadlines for this accomplishment. Deep seated racial prejudices not only persist in Czechoslovakia, but are likely to grow.

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