Gypsy Policy in Socialist Hungary and Czechoslovakia, 1945–1989

Abstract

In discussion of ethnic minorities in Eastern Europe, one hears regularly of appalling official misbehavior—not just about attempted genocide (though that too), but also about bureaucratic cruelties inflicted in every field of human activity and at every level of control. Nonetheless, it is always useful to have a measurable basis for assessing unfairness; and historians have the special task of inquiring rationally why and how unfairness came about. Hence the following paper, which attempts not just to condemn, but to explain and evaluate the Hungarian and Czechoslovak official treatment of the Gypsies in recent decades. As is fairly well known, this treatment has included not only harassment of populations which presently exceed 600,000 people in each country, but also (in both countries) systematic abduction of children by the state from unwilling Gypsy parents, and (in Czechoslovakia) equally systematic sterilization of Gypsy women. Since the point of the paper is to reach beyond mere indictment, I will use a comparative method. Specifically, in recounting each stage of the development of policy towards the Gypsies I will compare what was being done to two other groups: the Jews, on the one hand, and the physically disabled on the other.