DAVID CROWE and JOHN KOLSTI, eds.  The Gypsies of Eastern Europe. 
Armonk, New York:  M. E. Sharpe, 1991.  Pp. 194.  $9.00.


This collection of essays on the Gypsies of Eastern Europe is an interesting
agglomeration of thought on an "arcane" culture, or rather on the persecution
of that culture.  The gypsies are here treated with unusual consideration and
with substantial scholarly detail.  Unfortunately, the articles focus on the
persecution rather than expansion on Gypsy/Romani culture itself, giving the
impression that there is little to study other than their admittedly horrific
persecution.
     The collection opens, appropriately enough, with a chronology that gives
the newcomer a structured introduction to a topic that is mired in legend,
misunderstanding, and deliberate falsification by those who might wish to
exterminate Romani culture and history.  Even this format, which usually errs
on the side of objectivity, concentrates mainly on the disasters befalling the
Gypsies to the exclusion of other events that may have import for the people
themselves.<1>  This focus is allowable (even if lamentable), given part of the
title is "A Chronology Leading to the Holocaust and Beyond (11)."  Still, it
seems a bit lopsided.  The reader might wonder when culturally significant
musicians or magicians were in their prime, or when recognizable migrations
occurred for political or other reasons.<2>
     Thereafter begins the detailing of the mistreatment of Gypsies in
Germany, Albania, Romania, Croatia and Serbia, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. 
While the back cover sports a blurb from Joseph Rothschild who froths about
the "moral passion" of these articles, it is difficult to receive this information
in any form other than 'nationalistic' fervor.<3>  More interesting from an
academic point of view (and perhaps more instructive morally) might be a
study of the psyche of modern Western Europeans and why they need to
persecute groups such as Semites and Gypsies.  Perhaps this line of research
would reveal the emotional and spiritual price of a rational and capitalist
society.  In this unenviable situation, the Western participants know that their
system is contrived and extremely shaky.  Any reminders of their former
'savage' nature (or that their present social structure is not the only possible
scenario) would be received with hostility.
     A systematic study of comparative culture might further illuminate this
subject matter, as well as provide sorely needed information on Gypsy culture. 
In the present collection the paternalistic defense of the Gypsies takes on a
strange structure:  1) The stereotypes are bad.  2) The stereotypes are valid. 
3)  It is not the Gypsies fault, and therefore should not be held against the
Gypsies.  Consider this example:  "Of those polled, 28 percent alluded to
immoral or illegal Gypsy behavior, while 21 percent felt that Gypsies abused
the welfare system..."  offered as evidence of the continued difficulties posed
by stereotypes and misunderstandings.  Later in that same paragraph comes
the report that in a relief aid situation "several thousands of them lounged in
the emergency quarters...destroyed the furniture in the cultural centers and
schools, sold in the market places the canned food, quilts, and sheets given to
them as flood victims...(125).
     The feelings of outrage occur, not because the behavior is morally
reprehensible in some objective sense, but rather because the behavior is
functionally repugnant to Western society.  The fragility of Western structures
becomes obvious in situations like this one.  The offerers of aid have no way
to insure that their long-distance alms will be used to good effect: they have
to take it on faith.  When that faith is broken the breaker-of-faith is abused,
and the frustrated Western psyche projects its uncertainly and angst onto the
Other.  It is this complex relationship between abuser and the abused which
deserves attention, rather than the epiphenomenon of abuse itself, and this
relationship should have been further explored by the contributers to The
Gypsies of Easter Europe.  

          Jason Carr
          University of Texas at Arlington
          Arlington

                             NOTES



<1>All but five entries in this chronology detail oppression of the Romani.

<2>Our chronology provides, for example, that in 1500 "Maximillian I orders all
Gypsies to be out of Germany by Easter 1501," but it does not reveal where
those Gypsies went, if they survived this persecution.

<3>'Nationalism' here seems inadequate, given the fragmented and heterogenous
nature of the Gypsy peoples, but the comparison of Gypsy to other forms of
nationalism is instructive.  Gypsophile or Gypsocentric may be closer to the
intended meaning.  
http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/uta/