Thread, from the author of
Queer Roma - Taylor & Francis.
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@InclusiveLucie
Roma in the Ukraine [a long thread on the history]
Ukraine’s largest Romani community are the Servos, who sometimes call themselves ‘Ukrainian Roma’ & whose dialect is closely tied with the Ukrainian language. Members of Servo Roma communities have a long history in the region /1
with the earliest mention of a Roma presence in Ukraine dating back to the 15th century. At the time, most of modern Ukraine’s territory formed part of the Grand Lithuanian Duchy. The traditional crafts of Roma, such as blacksmithing and barter trade, enjoyed considerable local/2
demand: groups of Roma would migrate from village to village during the summer months and spend their winters hosted by locals in their homes.
At the end of the 16th century, when these territories came under control of the Polish crown in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth /3
the authorities ordered the expulsion of Roma from the Duchy. Many Roma from northwest Ukraine, particularly the Carpathian region, were forced to relocate to the scarcely populated steppes in what is the southeast of modern Ukraine. Between the 15th & 17th centuries, this area/4
also hosted numerous disenfranchised Ukrainian villagers and gave birth to Zaporizhzhia Sich - the cradle of Ukrainian national identity. The prospect of freedom offered by these lands also attracted Roma from elsewhere, escaping slavery in the principalities of Wallachia and /5
Moldavia (present-day Romania & Moldova). These were the ancestors of the modern sub-ethnic group known as Vlax (Vlahurja), whose dialect of Romani is also regarded as ‘Ukrainian’ due to the strong influence of the Ukrainian language on its development.
At around the same time /6
as in mainland Ukraine, a Roma community began to develop in Crimea. In the lands of the Crimean Khanate, Roma predominantly lived among the local Crimean Tatar population. ‘Tatar Chingine’, as locals called them, were Muslims – like most of the Crimean population until the 2nd/7
half of the 20th century – and depended on traditional crafts such as veterinary care, metal working and music. Although Tatar Chingine were ethnically distinct to the Crimean Tatar majority, their status was not very different from the ‘autochthonous’ or indigenous Muslim /8
population and they were closely integrated into local communities – to the point that by the 19th century, most had forgotten the Romani language and spoke Crimean Tatar.
With the expansion of the Russian Empire to the north coast of the Black Sea and the region then known as /9
Bessarabia, many new and distinct groups of Roma came under its rule. Historians suggest that the expulsion of Tatars and other Muslims by the Russian rulers of these lands forced many Muslim Roma to relocate to Crimea, where Islam was still widely practised by most of the /10
population. Today, the ancestors of these displaced Muslim Roma call themselves ‘Kyrymlytica Roma’, ‘Kryms’ or ‘Krymuria’, signifying their links with the Crimean Peninsula.
Due to more recent historical events, particularly the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, they /11
are now scattered all over Ukraine and can also be found in Odesa, Kherson, Donetsk, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr and Kyiv. Their dialect of Romani, which is the only one in Ukraine classified as a member of the so-called ‘Balkan group’ of Romani dialects, bears alongside strong Balkan/12
and Romanian influences significant evidence of Crimean Tatar. The majority of Kyrymlytica Roma still practise Islam.
The jurisdiction of the Russian Empire also extended to many Christian Roma, who for centuries had been enslaved by Romanian landlords, Greek and Romanian /13
Orthodox monasteries in Bessarabia and even other, more privileged Roma community members: according to Romanian law, they were regarded as the property of the state. However, the Russian authorities allowed Romanian landlords & monasteries to continue exploiting Roma as their/14
slaves. In order to ‘regulate’ the status of itinerant Roma who were ‘owned’ by the state institutions, Russian authorities also attempted to settle them on state-owned lands. These policies underline the history of the villages of Kairo (now Kryva Balka) and Faraonivka in /15
Odesa region, where Roma communities still reside. Yet these attempts at sedentarization were largely unsuccessful as many travellers feared that it would lock them into servitude.
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Much more in OP
https://twitter.com/InclusiveLucie/stat ... 7014049795
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