Living a parasitic lifestyle. Roma population and the policy of systematisation in communist Transylvania

The systematisation policy was one of the more significant projects of the socialist leadership in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union aiming at eradicating existing disparities between the centre and the periphery, and finally leading to the much desired ‘socialist city’. In Romania, the “re-organization of settlements and territory” affected millions of people in urban and rural areas. This paper deals with the Roma marginal communities living in Transylvania during the communist years and the changes they encountered due to the systematisation process which, mostly in the 70s, explicitly targeted them because of their peripheral social behaviour, as they lived in “inappropriate neighbourhoods” and were practicing a parasitic lifestyle – considered harmful to the socialist society in the making. Some of the research questions to which the essay aims to provide answers are the following: Which were the peripheral dwelling conditions in the rural and urban areas in post-war Romania? When and how did the communist authorities decide to destroy peripheral Roma settlements? How do Roma remember forced displacement / forced residency (in case of the nomads) during the communist years? In order to give relevant answers, the research took as a starting point the archives and the post 1989 historiography. After that, an oral history approach was used to collect and recover life stories of Roma from Transylvania in the communist period which intends to complete the Romanian historical narrative.

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