Gypsies in the Russian Empire: Theories and practices addressing their situation during the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century

Abstract:The history of Gypsies in Russia is a tabula rasa against the background of myriad studies in the development of diasporas (Jews, Germans, Poles, Finns, Chinese, and Koreans). There are few publications, and based on a limited range of subjective sources. Reasons can include both the absence of written sources, authored by Gypsies, and specialists' ignorance of an array of historical sources that have been preserved in the archives. In our paper, we will review the history that surrounds the formulation of basic legislative acts concerning Gypsies in the Russian Empire until the mid-1850s. By using specific examples, we will demonstrate the practice of enforcing tsarist edicts and the way Gypsies adapted to them. We employed both published laws and archival documents from the archives in St Petersburg and Pskov, which are first introduced into academic research. These allow us to conclude that the tsarist policy towards Russian Gypsies had common features with similar campaigns in European nations as well as its own individual features. In terms of its content, the policy was not intended to eliminate Gypsies as a special ethnic group, even in the context of military-police absolutism established by Paul I and Nicholas I. But even a limited goal–to turn nomadic Gypsies into sedentary farmers or townspeople–was not achieved.