Segregation and Discrimination of Kelderari Roma in Russia

The tragedy of my people and of myself is

that we cannot share our talent with humanity,

 but only with our children.

(Rom Mowgly,

 from the Kelderari Roma tribe  Kombuyoni, Siberia)

 

The ghetto was not only a place of refuge for a persecuted minority

but a great experiment in peace,

in self-discipline and in humanism.

(Isaac Bashevis Singer) 

 

Introduction

Recent researches on Russian Roma[1] have been approaching Roma as a homogeneous group without paying attention to particular groups among the Roma, such as the Kelderari Roma. Kelderari Roma communities usually consist of several hundreds or even thousands of people living all together in (self-built) houses in compact settlements. Kelderari Roma are the most noticeable of Russian Roma, with their traditional way of living in large communities, their traditional professions based upon the principle of craftsmanship and their rich and colorful cultural life. Unfortunately, Kelderari Roma are also the most hated and segregated, sometimes even discriminated by other (more integrated) “Russian Roma”. While “Russian Roma” most often face discrimination inside the justice system and in the economy, Kelderari Roma always face discrimination on a social level: they are frequently refused housing, education, health care and even access to public baths.

The complex discrimination and self-isolation of these Roma leads to factual segregation. Article 3 of the “International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination” states the following : “States Parties particularly condemn racial segregation and apartheid and undertake to prevent, prohibit and eradicate all practices of this nature in territories under their jurisdiction.[2]” However, the problem is not always obvious as often segregation is explained by the wish of Kelderari Roma to isolate themselves in their own settlements, their own spheres of employment and even special primary schools and classes reserved for their children only. The segregation in the educational sphere is the most striking and could therefore serve as a perfect example to illustrate the complicity of this problem. In some schools, where Roma children are kept in separate classes and even separate buildings the parents are against this practice and complain about it[3], while in the other schools, parents consciously support the separate education system and do not want their children to go to the ethnically mixed classes, fearing inter-ethnic conflicts, fights between different children and a general insecurity for their children.[4] This contradictory position explains that what looks like a free choice for self-isolation and segregation is in fact a forced choice of discriminated people choosing for safety, rather than supporting segregation. In this way, for Kelderari people, Roma settlements have become “a refuge for a persecuted minority” (I.B. Singer).

Kelderari : life-style and autonomy

It is important to see Kelderari,  Kotlyari as they are called in Russian or Kelderash in Romanian, as a particular minority, first because they insist on that themselves and some of them even do not register as ethnic “Tsigan” (Roma) but choose for the non-existing national identity “Besarabian” ( Besarabia - part of modern Moldova and Romania), which for them indicates that they are Roma from Besarabian origination and differ from other groups. Secondly, these Kelderari Roma live in rather isolated settlements in very big families or  clans (or even tribes), which no other group of Roma does anymore on the territory of the Russian Federation. This way of life is very different from everybody else’s and difficult to compare with the position of other minorities.

Their name relates to their traditional lifestyle and occupation, cauldron mending, the trade by which the Kelderash earned their living for centuries (the Romanian word “caldar” means “a cauldron”). In former times Kelderari went from estate to estate, calling out, “Who needs tin plating or soldering?..”. People brought damaged pots, samovars, and cauldrons out to them, and the Kelderari repaired them masterfully. These days tin-plating and soldering craftsmen are still able to deal with metal things. Many know how to fit pipes; others repair the moving parts in stoves. Now it is difficult to find these kinds of jobs: on one hand, the system of kolkhozes collapsed (in Soviet times kolkhozes were the main clients of Kelderari), on the other hand, new businessmen prefer to deal with serious firms, which can give a proper guarantee unlike free craftsmen.

The traditional craftsmanship profited from a nomadic way of life. However in 1956 Soviet government issued a new decree forbidding nomadism and declaring it a crime[5]. All traveling Roma had to settle down and get registration (propiska) in certain villages or towns. An old Rom from the Dukoni tribe in Penza remembers the arrival of the police in their camp in 1956 – tents were violently destroyed, men and women taken by trucks to a new and unknown place and left there. Later the Dukoni managed to build a settlement on the edge of Penza-town[6].

From that moment on, the only possibility for the ex-nomadic people to remain themselves was the choice for self-isolation in their settlements. It was a logical result of an attempt to save their identity in a standardizing environment. However the sad consequence of this choice became the segregation and even exclusion, that Rom Mowgly calls “the tragedy of my people” (see epigraph).

For the last fifty years, Roma in Russia do not travel, but many of them they still keep the habit to leave one place and move to another once every few years. Sometimes these moves are determined by the need to find work, as constantly growing settlements in one place make it difficult to share the limited tasks between all the workers and force some groups to separate in order to start a new settlement somewhere else.

Another reason for spontaneously leaving an old place might be connected to some fears of phenomena like unhealthy environment, such as produced by waste plants or radiation (for example Kelderari inhabitants of Chudovo had to flee from the Chernobyl disaster or the former owners of houses near Voronezh left them because of bad influence of the local atomic power plant). Such decisions can also have a mystical reason – Roma worry about ghosts, consider places, where an accident happens to any of them as a “damned place” (a big number of Kelderari families left Volgograd – former Stalingrad after a few children got killed when a World War II shell exploded).

The group has also preserved traditional building practices: homes, even quickly built temporary homes, are always tall and spacious.

Kelderari value their traditions and culture highly. They wear traditional clothing, practice their traditional trade, create settlements in their own way, and have their own standards of behavior. They have their own system of ethics with harsh punishments for those who violate the rules. They marry early but do not allow any relations before marriage. Violators of this rule are excluded from the community. The prohibition against sin and crime — drug dealing especially — is even greater. Theft, especially from “their own people” (and this includes neighbors and everyone that they have contact with at work, in school, and in town) is also considered unforgivable.

Most of prejudices against Roma that cost a lot of suffering and exclusion of Kelderari from the life of Russian society have in fact nothing to do with the real ways and traditions of this special ethnic and cultural group.

Therefore, analyzing the specific problems of discrimination and segregation of this group has to be given particular attention. It is clear however that many general recommendations are of the same value for this group as for other Roma in Russia or even other minorities, but the ways to reach them might be quite different, because of the situational differences, thinking in terms of position in society. In order to be understood and accepted by any minority that they want to defend from discrimination, researchers need to respect this minority’s identity and understand it in every aspect. 

The question of respect of the autonomy of minorities who have no kin sate is an important question for modern civilization that is present not only in the relations between Russia and the Roma or more general Europe and the Roma, but also in many other countries where modern civilization destroys traditional ways of life and oppresses non-assimilating minorities. The examples can vary from the phenomenon of self-isolation of North-American Indians, and the problems connected to their reservations, to the justifications of the Apartheid ideology in South Africa, where the traditions of local peoples were used as an argument to legitimize segregation. 

Traditions and Human Rights

          Dealing with a phenomenon of segregation and discrimination we cannot ignore the importance of the problem of traditions and rights. In some ways traditional Kelderari-Roma do not understand the modern approach to Human Rights especially as far as women and children rights are concerned. The most problematic usages to tackle, from a human rights perspective, are the following customs: the traditional practices of early marriages, especially the parties chosen by parents, many children families, the importance of the older people and – especially - the dominating role of the men in the communities.

However, these practices existed for thousands of years and a change in the mentality cannot happen at once. The best way to improve the situation with Roma children and women rights is definitely the enlightenment and human rights education based on cultural integration and development. It is clear however, that some ideas of Roma-parents can be opposed immediately and clearly rejected, like the preference shown by them sometimes to see their children separated in schools from other children, as the choice for segregation in schools is not a part of any tradition or culture, but just a wrong idea driven by fears. The school education is a modern and multi-cultural phenomenon ; it has to become a starting point of cultural and ethnic integration.

It is essential to understand, that most of the Roma – regardless of age and gender – consider their traditions of craftsmanship and future-telling, of their special culture of living all together and of their family relations model - as very important cultural heritage and demand real respect for them.

The possibility to leave their community and to choose for a more modern way of life is usually there, but most Roma do choose tradition. The same counts by the way for adopted children taken by Roma families from orphanages (we’ve met dozens of them in each community), most of them prefer to follow the ways of their adoptive parents.

The only effective way to influence Roma in a way of choosing for more respect towards individual rights seems to be education based on respect to traditions and minority rights. People have to believe in good intentions and feel safe as a minority within the environment in order to be able to open up themselves to any new idea or modern concept.

         The first step therefore has to be overcoming discrimination and oppression, establishing mutual trust and interaction. That is what is mostly missed in modern Russian reality.

Lack of factual data

The lack of available official data on the Kelderari Roma seriously hampers any development of governmental policy towards them, as well as towards many other Roma traditional groups.  The “Thematic comment no. 3 : the protection of minorities in the European Union states that “the data collected by the authorities should be as precise as possible in order to provide a sound informational basis for the development of adequate policies taking into account the specific situation of minorities. The factors which could bias the data should be controlled as far as possible.[7]” Although Russia is not part of the European Union, it did ratify the European Framework Convention on Minority Rights, which states that there must be a clear policy on minorities including collection of data.

  The Kelderari Roma were almost never recorded during the last census because their communities were regarded unsafe and dangerous places and as such not visited by the interviewers. Nikolay Mihaj told that he had been interviewed for the last time  in the communist era, so that the last census was missed out. The result he commented is that “In these days we’re just not considered as people.” [8]

Structural discrimination of Kelderari Roma

         This research is based on specially collected information during field-trips to all parts of Russian Federation, where these Roma live – stretching thousands of kilometers  from East to West (Krasnoyarsk – Kaliningrad) and from North to South (Archangelsk-Rostov-na-Donu). A number of missions were organized to such regions as North-West Russia, the Volga-area, the Urals, West Siberia, Central Russia and Southern Russia. This permitted for the first time ever to map the settlements of Kelderari-Roma, to discover the approximate number of each group, the name of its tribe, the social-economic situation, legal status and the omnipresent violations of basic human rights. During these missions more than 60 Kelderari settlements were visited; hundreds of interviews were collected and recorded. Some information was also obtained from the local authorities’ representatives, school directors and other officials. However, their knowledge of the situation was usually very limited and insufficient.

The most important of the interviews, that indicate the key problems, were incorporated in video clips and became important illustrations of the research on discrimination and segregation of Kelderari Roma in Russia. These video clips were published together with analytic texts providing comments to the interviews and photographs on the special website http://www.policy.hu/kelderari . The information about the website was made available through search engines and through announcements and hyperlinks on various Human Rights’ websites. The representatives of politically responsible bodies were specially informed about the possibility to view through this web-site the reality of existing discrimination and to read the analyses together with related recommendations on overcoming the problems.

The access to such information seems to be quite important as the Russian government completely ignores or even denies the problem of segregation of Roma (the best example is the latest report of the Russian Federation to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and the reaction of Russian UN Ambassador on the report of Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related

intolerance, Doudou Diène[9] ), while intergovernmental bodies do not know about it and therefore cannot protest.

There exists no clear policy of the Russian authorities towards the Roma , unlike for example, the very clear and repressive politics towards ethnic Georgians, who got persecuted in 2006 all over Russia after a command given by Kremlin. The general political climate characterized by intolerance and xenophobia vis-à-vis non ethnic Russians definitely negatively affects Roma, but there is no indication of any central directive how to tackle the problem of Roma as a discriminated minority. The policy of the federal government towards Roma can be best described as “no policy”, while a lot of local officials (e.g. the mayor of Archangelsk, the governor of the Novgorod province, the chief of police in Samara, a school-administration director in Tambov-district etc.) express clearly racist opinion about Roma and practice direct discrimination.

Therefore it seems especially important to make the governmental institutions face the problem of existing segregation and to insist on developing a federal action plan on Roma in order to combat discrimination in different fields and in different parts of the country.

          The Kelderari Roma are isolated in their settlements, which makes them vulnerable to  all forms of discrimination – in housing, access to resources, access to education and health, access to employment. A choice to oppose all forms of discrimination and to demand equal rights for Roma in all the above mentioned fields, should not mean the choice for assimilation and the refusal from their right to live in their own way and to follow their traditions. To make a full and honest analysis of this phenomenon, we have to consider it in all its complexity. 

Discrimination, segregation and poverty have pushed Kelderari Roma into a position of marginals and outsiders. The compact settlements in which they live are usually situated at the outskirts of big cities and towns. From the moment, that they have been forced to settle in 1956, the Kelderari Roma have developed their own style of creating settlements, renting useless marshy lands, making those fit for the construction of houses, building first temporary houses, then permanent houses and finally constructing infrastructure (e.g. water, gas, electricity, school etc). As the population of Kelderari Roma settlements is usually rapidly growing, construction works are carried out permanently. In most of the cases, Kelderari Roma settlements have been constructed without prior consultation with or permission of the local authorities and therefore none of them has all its houses registered.

The growing commercial interests of the local authorities, that handle the privatization of land, have resulted in serious restrictions on the formation, growth and well-being of Kelderari Roma settlements. In the village Solontsy, which is situated in the Emelyanovsky district of Krasnoyarsk, a wall has even been erected between a newly built settlement of cottages and the local Kelderari Roma settlement, barring the Kelderari Roma from the regular road and therewith from unlimited access of public services like ambulances or fire brigade.[10] The fact that most Kelderari Roma have neither the financial nor the political means to sustain the natural growth of their communities, poses a structural problem. Moreover, Kelderari Roma clearly feel the threat of being evicted from their houses and settlements, if they are not able to come to a workable agreement with the local authorities.

The undemocratic political developments in modern Russia made political gaming on racial hatred very popular to gain votes in elections. In some parts of Northwest Russia local politicians decided to use anti-Roma sentiments as a catalyst in their election campaign. They presented their plan for “cleaning” their city from “gypsies” as the biggest promise to be fulfilled after winning the elections. In their propaganda, presented by the mass media, these politicians openly accuse the entire local Roma population of earning a living on drug trade. The problem of growing drug addiction among young Russians is constantly used as a reason to scapegoat Roma as the greatest problem facing the Russian society. However in order to evict Roma officially, some other arguments were presented in the courts. The reactions in the mass media, most notably on internet forums show the extreme hatred and racism among the population and their support for the politicians in question.

Given the grave violations of their basic rights and the abominable living conditions most of them live in, it’s obvious that a change in approach towards Kelderari Roma and their settlements is needed. This change of approach should be implemented on a local level, where private interests not only continuously interfere with local politics, but in many cases directly threaten the position of local Kelderari Roma communities. This often results in violations of the law and is as such opposed to national politics and justice. Therefore it’s important both to fight for justice in the courts and to confront the policy makers with a true analysis of the actual problems and possible solutions, also given the fact that in Russia courts tend to be kept on leash by politics. A national action plan for compact Roma settlements could normalize the life in the compact settlements and prevent local politicians to actively scapegoat and persecute the Roma in the hope of electoral support. 

The main aspects of segregation, exclusion and discrimination

of Kelderari Roma in Russia

As the structural discrimination composes a chain of problems, I have chosen the pivotal members of this chain to describe the most important aspects of this discrimination and segregation. The following problems were chosen as the most significant : registration, housing, evictions of Roma settlements (including one case study), lack of documents and migration, access to resources, access to education, health care and social aid, employment, violence and persecution (committed by police and non-state actors).

Registration and relations with local authorities 

The relations with local authorities are regarded a crucial matter by Kelderari Roma communities, who often take the initiative in negotiating agreements, that regulate mutual relations. The approach of local authorities towards Kelderari Roma communities differ to a great extent and often policies depend on (changes in) the political line. Registration, in Russia referred to as “propiska”, is one of the fields, that is used by the local authorities to grant or deprive locals from their privileges. According to the definition in the “Third report on the Russian Federation by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance  (Strasbourg, 2006)” propiska can be described as follows : “All persons living in Russia are required to register their place of residence, permanent and temporary, with the local police. The registration appears as a stamp indicating the place of residence on the identity document, for instance on the internal passport for Russian citizens.” A very relevant point is made by ECRI here is : “that in the vast majority, if not all cases of arbitrary refusal or unlawful additional  requirements relating to the registration system, the victims are visible minorities.”

Another problem related to registration practice is that registration depends on the amount of square meters of living space available or on the rights of the tenants of a given living space. This means, that if one rents a room, it should offer at least 12 square metres for each registered person. If there is less space, no-one else can be registered in the same room. This rule should not be applied to the owners of private houses, but in some Roma settlements (see the Sviyazhsk case below) even the owners of houses were not allowed to registrate all their relatives in their place.

In Tyumen, the local authorities developed an active approach towards the communities of local Kelderari Roma. An additional registration, carried out by local authorities, who visited every house and photocopied all documents of the Kelderari Roma whose houses were to be demolished, was carried out in 2006, while in the same year, these same local authorities stopped putting the usual registration stamp in the newly issued passports of youngsters.[11]

Both in Barnaul and in Krokhal’ (Novosibirsk province) the local authorities refused to issue new passports after old ones had been destroyed as a result of fire. In Krokhal’ an entire Kelderari Roma community of hundreds of people are living without documents proving their identity. 26 houses of the local Kelderari community burned down in 2004, together with passports and other documents of the owners. The local police refuses to issue new (copies of the) documents and meanwhile keeps on arresting Roma and demanding payment of penalties for the absence of their documents.[12]

In Novaya Bykovka (Vladimir province) the local authorities do not issue any documents at all, including birth certificates for new born babies.[13] 

The disadvantages resulting from not being registered are twofold. Firstly, it means an ongoing problem with law enforcement bodies, who repress those without registration, and secondly it leads to exclusion from social benefits. As many Kelderari Roma happen to be registered in some other municipalities, than where they actually live, they are unable to apply for social benefits out of practical reasons. It is not unusual, that all inhabitants of a compact settlement are registered in one or two houses of the settlement, that are legally fit for that, which gives authorities the right to restrict certain social benefits.

In Sviyazhsk (Tatarstan), where all people are registered in one house, they are not allowed to register their children.  The local authorities explain their refusal to register more people in the same house by the fact that there is a lack of square meters per person. As a result of absence of registration – “propiska” in Russian –those families receive neither child nor other social allowances (for handicapped, elderly people etc).[14] The contradiction of this practice towards the Russian law was also noted in the ECRI  third report on the Russian Federation, where “ECRI expresses its deep concern at information according to which in some areas registration remains a prerequisite for the exercise of a wide range of basic rights in contradiction with the 1993 Russian Federal Law on the freedom of movement and choice of residence. It means that a person without registration can be refused access to many public services. In the case of state pensions and allowances, the law apparently states that they cannot be granted in the absence of residence registration.” 

The segregation in land and housing 

Land and housing are a crucial part of modern Kelderari Roma traditions. After they had been forced to settle down in 1956 the Kelderari Roma soon developed their own way of finding places for their communities to live and making these places suitable for life and work. Communities are sometimes migrating in search of a better and happier life, but generally tend to remain and develop on the spot. Usually, the community concluded a user agreement with the local government for a certain parcel of territory or a certain amount of houses.

In Soviet times, the Kelderari Roma were often directed to the outskirts of towns, to places with hardly any facilities. Nowadays however, these suburbs have become popular with the “nouveaux riches” and, for the resulting financial and practical reasons, the location and expansion of Kelderari Roma communities has become a problematic issue. Though the land is for sale, it can be only obtained through buying it on a public auction, where it is sold to the highest bidder. The impact of this is clearly felt even by the Kelderari Roma communities, that are richer than others, like the ones in Yekaterinenburg[15] and Chudovo (Novgorod province)[16]. In some other cities, like Tyumen (Shopping zone)[17] and Ivanovo (Airport)[18], huge projects are planned on spots, where Kelderari Roma communities have been dwelling for decades.

On the outskirts of the city of Ivanovo Roma built 37 houses on a piece of land that they rented and which is situated near the local airport, that had been defunct for many years. According to the inhabitants of the houses, Mr. Luzhkov, mayor of Moscow, showed sudden interest in the airport in order to resume the use of it. The rent of land was declared illegal and the houses were ordered to be destroyed by May 2007. Women of the settlement complained, that they stopped receiving social benefits for children, although they were not informed about the end of their registration. In fact, that indicates, that the local administration cancelled their registration without informing them.[19]

 In the town of Tyumen, the local authorities developed an active approach towards the communities of local Kelderari Roma. As explained above, an additional registration of the Kelderari Roma inhabitants of houses to be demolished was carried out in 2006, while in the same year, the local authorities stopped putting the usual registration stamp in the newly issued passports of youngsters. These two big settlements happen to be in the central district of Tyumen city. Now this city rapidly develops, they are being surrounded by big hypermarkets and other modern development projects. All together 100 houses of Kelderari Roma are to be destroyed. During the last years, children born and growing up in these settlements are no longer being registered and those receiving passports get no official registration stamps in them. It is unclear whether the authorities are planning to give the communities alternative housing or not[20].

These cities are not the only places, where Kelderari Roma have been facing eviction during the last years. In some places, like Barnaul, the user agreements were annulled and the territory sold, thus putting the local Kelderari Roma community in the position of illegal occupants of the land..[21] In Omsk, the sale of a factory led to the destruction of a Kelderari Roma settlement situated on the premises of that factory. [22]

In the village Vlasikha near the city of Barnaul (the Altay Region), about 30 houses are to be evicted from day to day. The local administration made a court case to prove their illegality and after having won it, sold the land on which the houses are situated. [23] An interview with the street administrator Zhanna Gdanova gave the impression that the sale had not been done in accordance with the law and could still be challenged.[24]

In Yekaterinenburg, about 50 well constructed and maintained houses are illegal. The community has been living there since 1956. As the city is expanding these streets became part of the centre and the land is expensive. Community leaders were warned by the local adminstration, that their homes are to be relocated, but the Roma would prefer to legalize their houses and are ready to pay for that. The local authorities refuse even to discuss such an option, both with Roma as well as with Memorial[25].

The most worrying situation takes place now in Chudovo (Novgorod Velikij province)[26] where the Kelderari community has been settled since 1986, when they fled the polluted Chernobyl region. They have been living in Chudovo ever since in accordance with a permission granted to them in 1986. During a round table in 2005 the local government and the Kelderari Roma community expressed mutual commitment to regulate issues like housing, education and access to resources. In 2006, the situation suddenly changed to the worse. Simultaneously, some community members were put under criminal investigation accused of violence, a complaint against the illegal construction of houses was filed by the local prosecutor, who got inspired by the local administration. A local TV program staged Mr. Prusak, the Governor of the Novgorod Velikij province, expressing his wish that the settlement should be demolished. Kelderari Roma, who attempted to legalize their houses got the answer that no decision will be made until the decision of the courts about illegal houses demolition. The court of first instance already decided that the houses have to be demolished and the appeal got the same decision. 

The eviction of Kelderari Roma from Archangelsk – case study 

A very well documented case is the legal fight and the eviction of a Kelderari Roma settlement in Archangelsk.[27]  It can be used to illustrate the fundamental problems between the compact settlements of Roma and the local authorities, who adopt a purely ad hoc approach towards the Roma dictated by local considerations . These problems are interwoven and based upon a lack of understanding at the level of policy makers. Moreover, the local authorities have simply ruled out the possibility to have a Roma settlement, that could fit into their city development plans. This attitude forces the Roma to choose for making tricky deals with the responsible officials in this or that sphere, followed by their own initiatives. 

In the Northern city of Archangelsk, Roma were officially accused of building illegal dwellings. Quick legal decisions were made to declare Roma housing illegal and to force Roma to leave their homes. However, as analysis clearly shows: the claim of criminality had a deciding impact on the public opinion and not the courts’ decisions on illegal construction.

The group of Kelderari Roma families involved in the dispute arrived from Volgograd in 2004, following their leader, Khulupi Bakalaevich Gomon.  Having lived in Archangelsk several decades before, the community decided to return there once more after selling their homes and possessions in Volgograd.  Before all the families made the move, however, Mr. Gomon began arranging the necessary permits and arrangements for them to do so, and by September of that same year the families obtained legal permission to rent their current parcels of land, which are located in the Novy Posyolok region.  The permit was signed by Arkhangelsk's mayor at the time, Nilov, and other local authorities. 

The dispute over “allowing” the Roma to remain in Archangelsk began when mayor Nilov’s political opponent, Donskoy, accused the former with charges of corruption for permitting the Roma to settle there, and accused the Roma themselves of illegally building homes on their land parcels.  The permit given to the families allowed for them to occupy the land, but did not yet grant them permission to build houses, although the necessary legal provisions for them to do so were already being considered at the time.  Regardless of the contract, it was in any case indispensable for the Roma to begin construction on proper homesteads in order to provide shelter for their large families during the coming winter months (within their time in Archangelsk alone a total of 9 children were born, adding to this necessity).  In November 2004, however, former mayor Nilov began the legal dispute over the Roma's right to live at all on the lands which he granted them himself, due to the accusations of corruption he was charged with by the far-rightist Donskoy.  

In his campaign speeches Donskoy charged that the only possible way the Gypsies could have been permitted to settle in Archangelsk was through corruption in Nilov’s administration. At the same time he explicitly promised that he would do all that was necessary in order to rid Archangelsk of its Roma community—not because of the legality of their homes, but because according to him, all Gypsies are “beggars, swindlers, and thieves [and] are incapable of doing anything else”.  When Donskoy won the election for mayor later that year, he kept true to his promises and began demanding that the courts not only demolish the Roma's homes, but expel them from their lands completely.  Had his discriminatory stance towards the Roma been unclear before, he further upheld it during a round-table meeting on the subject, in which he openly stated in front of journalists that his “position has not changed”, and that such criminals cannot be allowed to remain in Archangelsk because no citizen “would want Roma for neighbors”.  Thus, the suits being brought against the Roma are clearly not matters of legality, but of straightforward and simple discriminatory politics.

Regardless of the temporary nature of these houses, it is not disputed that they were illegally constructed. Nonetheless, the Russian legal system clearly stipulates that it is possible to legalize homes with such a status in order to protect their residents.  The mayor's team first insisted that Roma had to be evicted because they were illegally constructing houses on the territory and later these authorities proceeded to declare that the contract which granted lands to the Roma in the first place was not valid because it did not properly adhere to the legal procedures necessary in such an action.  Furthermore, they claimed that although the administration itself was to blame for this mistake, it was still necessary for the Roma to abandon their land, since it was not obtained by means of a proper contract.

The Roma principally agreed, that they would leave, if they had a place to go to and if they would receive financial compensation, for their work carried out to make the marshy parcels of land, that they had received, fit for the construction of homesteads as well as reimbursement of their travel expenses. Mayor Donskoy reacted by creating a special fund and campaigned to fundraise the required sum of money, but only managed to raise money for train tickets.

Finally, on the 20th of July 2006, the Kelderari Roma community were evicted, rounded up and brought to the Archangelsk train station. There they were put on the train to Moscow in two wagons, that had been especially reserved for them and were guarded throughout the journey. Once arrived in Moscow, they were left to themselves. The ombudsman of Archangelsk Ms. Akhramenko labeled this event “a deportation” in her letter of protest to mayor Donskoy.[28]

Lack of documents and migration 

After the Soviet Union fell apart, it took quite some time to install a functioning system of border control along the newly formed borders and to settle the administration problems raised by the new independencies. In practice many people did not feel the change, until the new borders were equipped with checkpoints and new national passports were introduced to change the old Soviet passports. In Russia, it took more than 10 years before Russian passports were introduced and Soviet passports became invalid. Many Roma and especially Kelderari Roma failed to obtain Russian passports, which had far stretching consequences for them, as they had become de facto undocumented.

For example in the Nikol’skoye village near the Atomic Power Station in the Voronezh province nobody can be registered anymore in the house of Nikolay Mihaj, who failed to get ownership rights registered. His daughter in law has never had any documents proving who she is and now she has two children who are refused documentation.[29]

In the Voronezh province there is a village called Podgornoye and there live about 300 people for twelve years already. Most of them have no passports, registration etc. because they moved there from Ukraine in the post-Soviet era, as a result people have not only problems with obtaining social aid but even with police and some of them like Valery Boloso, whom we interviewed, are often stopped, beaten and forced to pay bribes and once they even came to his house at 6 AM and took him, his wife and children to police station, where he was kept the whole day for the sole reason that he doesn’t have any documents. He and his wife Angela have two sons, 16 and 17 years old, both married and fathers themselves and all three generations are undocumented, and although they have their own house in which they live for more than 10 years, the local police calls them “three generations of homeless.” [30]

In the Saratov Province in a village called Storozhovka are Kelderari Roma who originate from Odessa (Ukraine). They are living in self-made shelters, without electricity and water for more than three years already. Their twenty children do not attend school as a result of the absence of Russian documents and registration. The local administration refuses to provide them with these papers. They would like to move back to Ukraine, but they are afraid of problems on the border.[31]In the Janvarsky district of the city of Perm live a group of Kelderari Roma, who are also from Odessa (Ukraine) and have similar problems.[32]

A Kelderari Roma community was cruelly evicted from Dzerzhinsk in the year 2000. They were all loaded into trucks and brought to another place. However, these people did not have their registration in Dzerzhinsk annulled, which creates problems too, making it impossible for them to get any other registration. like The family of Elizaveta Khristova belong to the people from the former Dzerzhinsk community. Her sons Alexei, Laszlo and Stepan are also fathers of children without birth certificates and there is no chance to solve that. Their meager literacy and understanding of legal matters prevent them from solving their problem[33].

Access to resources 

Crucial factors determining the quality of life of Kelderari Roma are the supply of drinking water and energy (gas, electricity). Water supply is often absent, though could be easily created in many cases, like in Solontsy, which is situated in the Emelyanovsky district of Krasnoyarsk [34]. In the case of the Kelderari Roma community in Peri (Leningrad province) pollution prevents the use of the locally available water and a community of several thousands of people is depending on the purchase of water in nearby villages[35]. In Novinki (Suburb of Nizhny Novgorod) the community depends on the supply of electricity to pump up the water[36].

There are often problems with the supply of electricity connected to arrears in the payment of bills. In the case of the suburb area Chapayevsky belonging to the city of Perm, the local electricity company cut off the electricity supply of the local Kelderari Roma community when the temperatures were down as much as minus 40 degrees Celsius[37]. In Chapayevsky as well as in most other compact settlements, non-registered houses do not have any meters to count the electricity consumption. The electricity companies tend to count the amount of people and the number and capacity of household appliances to measure this consumption. The debts of individual Kelderari Roma are treated as collective debts and therefore the electricity supply of the whole compact settlement is switched off in case of individual arrears – a common practice in the city of Perm.

In Ryazan the gas supply to 220 houses was cut off in the autumn without any alternatives for heating of these houses available[38]. In another case in Yekaterinburg, a girl was refused a passport on the pretext that her mother had not paid the electricity bill yet.[39] In the settlement of Kosaya Gora near Tula gas and electricity supplies were switched off under the surveillance of 150 OMON riot police officers with dogs.[40] Other cases were reported of prepayments made, without paid services being delivered. In Omsk, a substantial amount of money was paid to construct gas supply[41] and in Barnaul, money that had been paid for the construction of a water supply was given back and the water supply was cut off.[42] 

Access to education 

A long term perspective for Kelderari Roma is being undermined by the poor state of the education that Kelderari Roma children receive. Education is regarded a major issue, both among Kelderari Roma, as well as those who show a positive attitude towards them. Despite of the Russian law on education, access to education for Kelderari Roma is often limited. In some cases, notably in Perm, Kelderari Roma children are unable to attend primary school, in other places, like in Solontsy[43] (Emelyanovsky district, Krasnoyarsk), Konakovsky Mokh [44] (Tver province) and Osel’ki (Leningrad province) Kelderari Roma children are segregated and kept apart in special classes. In Savvatyevo (Kalininsky district, Tver province) Kelderari pupils are studying in a segregated school housed in a ramshackle condition building, that was long ago abandoned by Russian pupils.[45]

In Nizhny Osel’ki, Leningrad province, the primary school for Kelderari Roma is also organized in a separate small building which is of a much worse quality than the bigger building for Russian pupils and since the year 2006 even those Kelderari Roma who attend secondary school were brought back to this same separate small building. As a result the Roma children attend school in three shifts.[46]

 The school in Kalinichy village, Tambov province is in a ramshackle building attended only by children belonging to Roma and Kurdish ethnic minorities. No Russians go to this school. Parents and children complain about this school as a very bad one, with only five teachers for all the classes, but they have no alternative. The teachers and the administration of the school were too frightened to talk to us.[47]  

In Sviyazhsk (Tatarstan) Kelderari children go to school number 53, where all Roma children regardless of their age and level are segregated into one class whereas Russian children are divided, as usual, into classes according to their age. Twelve year old Albina Milanova complained: “I go to school for three years already and I’m in the same class as the children, who come for the first time. The director is unjust to us”.[48] The same situation was found in Pashino, Novosibirsk Province, where rom-parent Mikhail Khristov even tried to complain about segregation of Roma children in school, but achieved no result. [49]

A peculiar example of a segregated school is the primary school, situated in the Kelderari Roma settlement Plekhanovka (Tula), where the local administration chose to create a special segregated school after the building for Roma pupils belonging to a segregated Russian/Roma school had burned down. The administration was forced to take measures to secure education for the local Kelderari Roma but meanwhile faced protests from ethnic Russians against a mixed school. This made them decide to buy a house in the Kelderari Roma settlement from a Kelderari Rom and to create a school there. They motivated this move by proclaiming it “a matter of prevention of ethnic conflicts”. Though the school is limited to primary education, the attendance is unusually high – even though there are only 140 pupils registered, 160 children attend on a daily basis. The school delivers pupils a daily meal worth 13 rubles for free, which is regarded a very positive fact by poor parents[50].

An example of deliberate segregation for educational reasons is Volgograd school number 46, where there are segregated Roma classes for the primary level, but where those Roma, who want to continue their education on the secondary level, are integrated into Russian classes. Director Ms. Semenenko regards this approach as a way to overcome the arrears in the level of knowledge and skills of Roma children, compared to average schoolchildren. She also stated that some Roma parents had told her that they prefer this situation to a more integrated approach.[51] Another example of the organization of separate education for Roma is the initiative by school number 2 in the Traktorny village of the Lipetsk Province, that used to be a school for adults but especially opened a primary school department for the local Roma children.[52]

   Sadly enough, non-segregated schools only account for around 10-20% of Kelderari Roma children attending school. The distance between home and school is often a crucial factor in making decisions on attending school or not. Kelderari Roma often lack money for public transport or winter clothes that are indispensable for reaching schools. The Kelderari Roma children that go to school face the problem of adaptation, due both to the fact that Russian is not their native language and to the circumstance that their teachers are generally unfamiliar with their cultural and social background, thus creating a serious barrier in communication. Many Kelderari Roma children start attending school once they are already older and very few leave school with a diploma. On many occasions the attitude of the teachers and school administration is of crucial importance. 

Access to health care and social aid 

The access of Kelderari Roma to other state services like social aid and health care is much too limited. Partly, this has to do with the system of registration. Those without registration are automatically excluded from free medical care and social benefits, such as pensions or allowances for children. Even when Kelderari Roma receive social benefits, these are not improving their quality of life in a substantial way. Life expectancy among Kelderari Roma is lower than among Russians and they tend not to visit doctors on a regular basis, but rather to call for an ambulance in case of emergency. Cases of closing available medical care like in Savvatyevo (Kalininsky district, Tver province), where a local medical station was closed, only strengthen this tendency.

The practice of discriminatory segregation of Roma has also come to light in many hospitals (including children’s hospitals), maternity houses and public bathhouses.  In Toksovo Children Hospital in the Leningrad Oblast, Kelderari Romany children are placed in separate wards.  This unwritten rule is enforced even when the warmer and more comfortable “Russians only” wards are empty.  In Lower Osel’ki, Leningrad Oblast, the local Kelderari community is barred from visiting the public bathhouse, even on a commercial basis.[53] 

Employment 

Most of Kelderari men are freelance craftsmen and in Soviet times they always looked for a possibility to get permission for this almost forbidden way of earning a living. A lot of Kelderari had created cooperatives after the revolution, but in the beginning of the 1930ies all members of such cooperatives fell victim to repressions in which most of them were shot or died in prison.[54]

Only much later were some people able to restore their position as freelance craftsmen. An interesting example was given by Vladimir Afanasiev, whose family already for decades lives in the town Bataysk in the Rostov province. In the late 1970s, his father went to Moscow to apply for permission to do “home-based work”, giving as a reason the fact that all the men in his community had very many children and therefore could not work far away from their homes. The permission was given and all the men of this settlement started to work together in the workshop in their street and professionally survived. They produced metal tanks, pipelines etc. for agricultural firms. Later, during perestroika era, this business became private and enabled them to continue their independent style of life. Since the end of the 1990s their business started to decline. It became very difficult to find orders as there appeared strong competition in this branch. Therefore, the poverty increases and the private economy declines, even among those who used to do well after the breakdown of the Soviet system[55].

In modern Russia, Kelderari Roma are depending on certain niches in free professions ever since full employment ceased to exist. Collecting scrap metal is one of such niches, which is mainly considered a way for the poor to survive. Richer and better skilled Kelderari Roma earn a living by trading metal, welding metal or refitting electric engines and gear boxes. Small communities like the Bobokony of Novosibirsk manage to lead a prosperous life with their hard and intensive work on refitting and trading mining equipment.[56]

Kelderari communities themselves regard this way as the only perspective they can imagine to reach prosperity. The leader of a very poor and big community in Shakhty (Rostov province), of whom most of people have no permanent work, Dudury Burlin proposes to help his community by creating working places for all of the men and women of his community in metal work by organizing a cooperative workshop in the settlement, that he could coordinate in a just way. Unfortunately, they have no funds nor resources to accomplish that themselves, but if they could, they would share the work and in this way share the prosperity[57].

The majority of Kelderari Roma women are working in the streets by telling fortune, although this traditional way of earning money is disappearing because of targeted persecution by police in the last years.

          Examples of Kelderari Roma employed in regular jobs by state or private companies mainly show the difficulty for Kelderari Roma to overcome discriminatory practices. In Usad (Vladimir province) Kelderari Roma workers at the Lespromkhoz wood products plant mentioned a double standard, being paid much less than their ethnic Russian colleagues for doing the same job. Their complaints were not taken into consideration by the company’s director Mr. Zotov.[58]  It is commonly the case that the standard income generated by Kelderari Roma is significantly lower than by Russians.

Another aspect of discrimination in employment is the refusal of companies and entrepreneurs to employ Kelderari Roma. In  Ryazan’, local Kelderari Roma tried to get employed through the service for migrants workers, to do cleaning jobs and construction work. They were refused as being gypsies. The only option available was to do season work in Kolkhozes, that would pay not in money, but in kind with part of the harvest. As a result these hard working Kelderari Roma do not know how to survive winter.[59] Kelderari Roma of the settlement Plekhanovka (Tula) received help from the local head of administration Mr. Ivantsov, who called upon local factories and tried to get Kelderari Roma workers employed, but even he was refused when he mentioned that the job seekers were Roma.[60]

The widespread practice of corruption aimed at forcing Kelderari Roma to pay for any violation of the law or just for state protection has often replaced the practice of paying tax. Sadly enough, Russia’s Kelderari Roma community has not been able to profit from the economic growth of the country and neither they nor any experts see any perspective in the short term.  

Violence and persecution 

The often complicated relationship between Kelderari Roma communities and local authorities could best be described as chaotic and largely depending on the good or bad will of those responsible.The fact that a special policy on this problem is not present can be well regarded the reason, why local authorities are not effective.  At best, they are indifferent and treat Kelderari Roma as any other Russian citizens. Most often however, they discriminate against Kelderari Roma and sometimes it comes to an orchestrated persecution of a whole Kelderari Roma community. In the city Cheboksary on the Volga, many Kelderari Roma families sold their houses and fled after systematic actions by law enforcement bodies against them on the pretext of investigating a murder. The Kelderari Roma man who was suspected in that murder was eventually found innocent by a Cheboksary court. Evidently, this and likewise cases have contributed to a lack of trust among Kelderari Roma towards the authorities.[61]

In August 2006 the Kelderari Roma settlement in Ust-Abakan (Khakassia) was raided by OMON special police forces, who arrived masked and armed. All the people were forced to leave their houses. Their houses were searched. Children and women were threatened with dogs and all the men were taken to police station, where their documents were checked.[62] The responsible police officer, Mr. Takhtobin, explained that they had been sent to this settlement in order to search it for drugs and that the problem of the legality of this act was not his but the public prosecutor’s responsibility. As he commented: “We have to obey our orders, when we are sent to check the Roma”.[63]

Some Roma settlements were violently evicted by law enforcement forces. The most notorious case became the destruction of Roma homes in Kaliningrad in 2006, that was very well documented[64]. Kelderari Roma also suffered from similar ill treatment.  One of the first examples is an eviction of the Burikony tribe, who moved from the Voronezh province to Krasnodar, where they rented land and built their homes on it. However, the governor of Krasnodar, the notorious nationalist Alexander Tkachov, publicly declared his unwillingness to accept these Roma in his city and decided to evict them. On 12th of October 2001, police troops came to the Kelderari settlement and violently and abruptly evicted people out of their homes and then pushed them into specially prepared busses. The homes of the victims were destroyed in front of their eyes and people were taken by busses all the way to the Voronezh province (500 km) escorted by police. Women, who protested were threatened with machine guns[65].   A similar eviction took place in the year 2000 in Dzerzhinsk, where Kelderari Roma belonging to the Toshony tribe were thrown with their possessions onto lorries and were driven out of town. Most of them are still homeless and not registered in any other place[66].

In 2004 in Omsk in a district called Nemetsky on Dunayevskaya street 35 and 37, about 30 houses were destroyed. These evictions took place in March on the frost in the harsh Siberian climate. No alternative housing was offered. The community of 150 people is still homeless and people are officially registered in their destroyed homes. The living conditions of this community, which includes about a hundred children are unbearable.[67] In an official letter on this question received from the Omsk authorities, were two arguments motivating the evictions, namely, that the houses had not been properly registered and secondly that the Russian neighbors had complained about the noisiness of the Roma community.[68] 

It’s not only in organized actions, like police raids on Kelderari Roma settlements, that law enforcement bodies violate the rights of Kelderari Roma. Cases of discriminatory, offensive and humiliating practices by regular police are numerous. In Ryazan the local police was reported to have cut the hair of arrested Kelderari Roma women, an act which can be only compared to rape, from the point of view of the humiliation felt by the women in question as well as the mutilating consequences for these women in their own community life, in which hair dress performs an indispensable symbolic function.[69]

The women in these cases had been arrested for fortune telling, which is considered an offence in certain parts of Russia. However, when a group of women living in the settlement of Savvatyevo (Kalininsky Rayon, Tver province) were once brought by local police to the police prosecutor in the town of Bezhetsk and left there, the prosecutor had them liberated, as he could not establish the nature of the crime nor the measure of punishment. As there was no public transport between Savvatyevo and Bezhetsk the women were forced to take a taxi, which they had to pay with a golden wedding ring.[70]

  The authorities often complain about their inability to rule the situation. Some look for opportunities to improve the participation of the Kelderari Roma community, proposing to regulate the issues, that Kelderari Roma would like to normalize. The idea (as proposed by the Chudovo authorities[71]) to give the Kelderari Roma a legal form of self-government over the area that they are inhabiting and thus creating an administrative unit, that would be responsible for dealing with public works, but meanwhile lacking a budget is an example of a policy that lacks perspective.

An example of a policy area in which the local authorities in Russia almost completely fail is the protection of national minorities, including Kelderari Roma. Local criminal gangs succeeded in organizing pogroms against Kelderari Roma settlements in the vicinity of Kemerovo and burnt their houses down. After the Kelderari Roma had fled to Pashino, near Novosibirsk, the movement against illegal immigration, DPNI, a coalition of extremist nationalist groups, succeeded in organizing a campaign there, accusing the Kelderari Roma, without any evidence, of selling drugs.[72] When part of the Kelderari Roma returned to the Kemerovo region, DPNI protests were brought to halt by the personal efforts of the local governor.[73] In the Novosibirsk area, there is no policy to protect local Kelderari Roma from  violent groups. The settlement Krokhal’ near Novosibirsk was attacked on a number of occasions by veterans of the Afghanistan war, without any intervention from the side of the police.[74]

A lot of Roma suffer from the race motivated violence of radical right-wing and neo-nazi groups. This phenomenon is especially dangerous around big cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg, Voronezh and Volgograd. In Voronezh people from the Bolosony tribe explained, that they avoid trouble and as they know the days that neo-nazis have their celebrations, they simply don’t leave their homes on these days[75]. The most frequent victims of racist violence against Kelderari Roma are women. Women often have to travel by local trains from their settlements to big cities, both because they are earning a living by future telling and for practical reasons like doing shopping etc. There are many recorded cases of attacks against them in Moscow and St. Petersburg[76].

Recently, new testimonies were gathered also in the Vladimir, Tver, Ryazan and Kaluga Provinces, indicating that the race motivated violence is spreading around Moscow. The most serious offences were recorded in the Usad station Kelderari settlement, where three women were attacked and beaten and one pregnant woman murdered in the end of 2005. In the summer of 2005, a group of violent fascists came with five cars to the settlement itself and attacked Kelderari in their homes. The Kelderari Roma started to fight back and in the end the police arrived to stop the fight. Three Roma ended up in hospital, one of them having a bullet-wound[77].