Vitamin “C”: church, circus, gypsies - Zinoviy Yakovlevich, there are numerous pedagogical tests, which in my centuries-old backwardness I deeply, beggarly and arrogantly despise. They claim to be able to determine intellectual potential

Chapter 15 The Last Hundred Meters On the South Summit, which is separated from Everest by only a hundred vertical meters, Adams met a dejected Beidleman. “I don’t know why, but he was extremely taciturn and seemed to be in a bad mood. I sat down, took off my backpack and took out a flask. Very

We most often judge the life of Roma in the post-Soviet space from films and real-life examples. In the first case, this is the story of Budulai performed by Mihai Volontir, or the “camp passions” of the series Carmelita. Songs, music, fiery dances and fatal love - a touch to the mysterious world unfamiliar to the white man. The reality, alas, is much more prosaic. This fall, the criminal investigation department is once again recording the traditional surge in crimes with a characteristic “gypsy style.” Begging and theft, fraud and even murder - these are the reasons why gypsies have been mentioned in the media lately (the mass murders of old women in the Drogichinsky district have not yet been forgotten, and the Supreme Court of Belarus left the sentence of the criminals unchanged). The latter, in turn, blame everything on society, which is turned against them. What will help guide the “horse thieves” of the 21st century to the truth: the carrot or the stick?

Theft with minimal risk

At about 10 a.m., four women dropped in on a pensioner from the village of Mochul, Stolin district, and introduced themselves as social workers. A 79-year-old lonely old woman happily let attentive guests into her house. Two of them went into the room with the hostess, closed the door and talked with her for about fifteen minutes about her health, life, and everyday life. At parting, they promised to look after the pensioner. Delighted by such attention from the state, the old woman happily escorted the ladies to the threshold, repeatedly inviting them to visit. She took back her words only when she returned to the kitchen, where she saw on the floor near the stove a black cloth ribbon with which she had wrapped her savings for old age - under the pillow on the stove her grandmother kept one and a half thousand euros, 400 dollars and six million rubles.

If you believe the encyclopedias, in Gypsy culture the cult of age is expressed not just by respect for older people, but by respect for those who are older in general. The opinion of elders is perceived as authoritative, except in special cases (for example, if a person is considered narrow-minded). It is considered a terrible crime to raise a hand against an old person, even if he is physically strong. A reference to the opinion of an elderly person is one of the most powerful arguments in any dispute. Obviously, this only applies to “our” old people.

According to the criminal investigation department of the Brest Regional Department of Internal Affairs, this year the Roma have committed more than 30 similar crimes. Posing as social security workers, doctors, gas workers, insurance agents and other representatives of government agencies, the gypsies, carefully disguised with the help of wigs, large sunglasses and makeup, come to the homes of the elderly. Old people are defenseless, trusting, many have problems with vision, hearing and memory. Such victims not only have difficulty describing the thieves. Many people do not immediately discover the loss, and if after a month or two they notice the disappearance, they are guilty of their own absent-mindedness. So in reality there are several times more “gypsy thefts” than official statistics say.

In the Brest region, gypsy criminals became more active in the Kobrin, Pruzhansky and Kamenets districts. They are responsible for both thefts and robberies. Still fresh in my memory is a series of murders of elderly women in the Drogichinsky district, whom two gypsies strangled and then robbed from their homes. As a rule, gypsies do not steal where they live. In the Brest region, for example, “vagrants” from the Gomel region operate, while those from Brest go to the Grodno and Gomel regions. The handwriting is the same everywhere. They drive up to the village in a pre-hired car with a driver, an illegal cab driver, popularly called a “bombila,” choose huts with elderly owners on the outskirts of the village and “go into battle.” Often, as already mentioned, they pose as government employees, or secretly enter the house while the owners are away. This is why spring-autumn, when residents work all day in their gardens, is the best time for theft...

Why did people who have an ancient, rather interesting culture, living in entire diasporas with us, choose this particular way of earning money? Only they themselves and those who live with the gypsies on the same land can answer.

Between home and prison

In the Brest region, the majority of Roma live in David-Gorodok, Stolin district. In the region where they live, gypsies, as a rule, do not operate, but their names often appear in crimes recorded by the police in neighboring regions.

In order to stop this crime, we probably need a whole department that would deal only with Roma,” says Vladimir Golovach, chairman of the David-Gorodok City Council. - Alas, it’s not like the department - there won’t be enough ordinary police officers. There are 345 Roma living in our city today. Many people start stealing from a young age. So judge what the crime situation is like. Yes, we put the Roma under special control, we have lists of families, but it is impossible to keep track of everyone.

In order to seriously engage with the Gypsy issue, you need to at least understand their life and customs. And not by what is written in “learned books,” but by reality. For example, theft and begging are mostly done not by men, but by women. Traditionally, among local gypsies, the main function of a man is “child production.” The woman should be the breadwinner in the family. Even if the gypsy committed a crime, his wife should go to prison for him, taking the blame upon herself. Recently, stereotypes have begun to break down, but degenerate centuries-old traditions leave their mark on the current state of affairs. It is really not easy for illiterate large families, which must be supported by a woman, to survive in the garden or on the local collective farm with a fairly low salary. This year, however, in the summer, private farmers, perhaps for the first time in history, over forty gypsies went to work in David-Gorodok. However, alas, the figure is not that significant. There are gypsy families living a normal life, but there are very few of them.

Of the Roma women who contacted us, not one has yet taken the job offered to her,” says Sergei Shilo, head of the Stolin employment center. “They come to us to receive targeted social assistance, and mostly women. The men never contacted us at all. One obligated by Decree No. 18 from David-Gorodok is literally forced to work.

Our gypsies haven’t really worked since their settlement,” says Vitaly Savitsky, acting chief of the David-Gorodsky city police department. - 20-30 years ago they were engaged in speculation. Then, when it became unprofitable to resell vodka, they sold drugs from Ukraine. Now they just steal, and in their free time they mostly drink and party. According to the principle of stealing, drinking, going to jail. Although recently the punishment has become more lenient. They are convicted, but they are not sent to prisons, which are already overcrowded. Here's an example. In one of the villages, two gypsies swindled four million rubles from an old woman. We found them and forced them to return the money. One was detained. And what do you think? A week or two later, the remaining gypsy woman again scammed the money that had already been returned from the same grandmother! As a result, neither one nor the other is in prison.

In addition, despite their unique national characteristics, they remain citizens of Belarus, with all rights and social benefits. This does not force them to work at all. So, most gypsy women, although they live with their husbands, are not officially registered. They'll have a gypsy wedding - and that's it. Moreover, most of these families have many children, therefore, according to our laws, formally they are single mothers who are entitled to all state subsidies. First of all, a housing loan with almost one hundred percent repayment. This is a solid platform for parasitism.

Past the school yard

If you can’t force gypsies to work, if you can’t put all criminals in prison, is there even a solution to the problem?

“Everything comes from family and education,” continues Vladimir Golovach. - The child, of course, adopts the lifestyle of his parents. We need to somehow break the vicious circle, but don’t take a child away from his parents because they don’t force him to go to school!

According to local residents, Roma are indeed reluctant to study. But what’s most interesting is that the state doesn’t seem to care much about it.

If a Belarusian student does not go to school, there is a big noise, - Nikolai Berezovsky, an honorary citizen of David-Haradok, is indignant in the presence of the mayor, - parents are called to school, they are reprimanded, they are threatened with legislation. All this can reach the district. But it seems like there’s nothing to take from a gypsy! As a result, if he has completed four classes, he is already considered an academician.

Roma parents are also called to school, says Vladimir Golovach, they nod their heads and promise to send their children to study, but that’s where it all ends.

As a result, even if they want to work, illiterate adult Roma have no prospects. Today, even getting a job on a farm without education is quite difficult. As a result, when life forces you, of all the sciences you have to comprehend the thieves.

Can't you not steal?

And yet I wanted to hear about the problem first-hand. We decided to walk through the gypsy huts of David-Gorodok together with senior district inspector Vladimir Tukin. Vladimir has been working on the land for a long time, he knows the fate of each ward. We go to visit the gypsy Matvey Fedorovich,

whose son is now in prison.

Matvey's hut is located in a small courtyard, next to a horse grazing near the barn. Behind the apple tree is a small vegetable garden. In short, there is a small farm. When asked why people have a stereotype of a gypsy thief, and whether it is possible to live without theft, Matvey laughs.

How to live here! There isn't enough for food. When there are 5-6 children in a family, how to feed them? What prices!

Go to work, for example.

Where to work there! On a collective farm you won’t get more than 50 thousand a month. There are no jobs in other places. You can’t feed yourself from a garden alone either, so you have to steal. In general, I’ll tell you honestly: if a gypsy doesn’t steal, he’s not a person!

Believe me, people!

We look into another house. It's a small shack with two guys and three women having lunch inside. They are dressed more or less decently, but the situation in the house is more than poor. The question about the stereotype was answered by a woman who introduced herself as Efrosinya Nesterova.

Not all gypsies are like that. There are many literate gypsies with a rich inner world. For example, I spent my whole life in Orthodox monasteries and even wrote a spiritual book about the life of Jesus Christ. Now your colleague from Brest is processing it. It’s just thieving people from our tribe that cast a shadow on the entire nation. But among us there are many decent, deeply religious people. How can we stigmatize all gypsies? My grandfather, for example, Vladimir Yanovsky, twice hero of the Soviet Union. He fought with the Nazis. Shall we classify him as a criminal too?

Indeed,” the district police officer explained a little later, “Efrosinya speaks sincerely, and if all gypsies were like her, there would be no problems with them.” True, her son has already been convicted.

And Efrosinya’s neighbors, the Voloshin brothers, complained that, having a license, they could not get a job as a taxi driver. They say they would drive cars, but they don’t take them based on their nationality. Difficulties also arise with the driver commission. The certificate is not issued, according to the brothers, because they did not serve in the army. Many young Roma, who legally formalize early marriage and have children under three years of age, really do not pay their honorable debt to the Motherland. However, as the district police officer says, the Voloshins have already been caught in thefts. Or maybe trust them and give them the opportunity to work as taxi drivers?

Another David-City Gypsy asks for trust - Nadezhda Malinovskaya. She really is a single mother of many children. The house in which she lives with her children can hardly be called a crumbling hut.

The floor had rotted to such an extent that it had created holes in the crawl space. The roof has collapsed - there are huge holes gaping in it, and the dilapidated walls seem about to collapse and the family will simply die under the rubble of their own home.

A woman is standing at an employment center, but there is no work yet. In the summer I worked part-time on a farm, but this money is not even enough to live on. Children do not study at school - it is simply a shame to send them to school, since today studying at school requires funds, ranging from school uniforms to contributions for classroom repairs.

Here, of course, there is a problem,” says Vladimir Golovach. - Even to a large family in the city, a loan is issued only for the cost of the house, which is assessed by the BTI. In fact, only to the hut. But a person sells it, of course, taking into account the garden and outbuildings, so the market price of housing is much higher. The solution is to move to the village. There, the entire yard will be included in the loan amount.

The only question is: will there be work in the countryside?

Understand and... Help

On September 17, Roma Tatyana Vishnevskaya returned from the colony to David-Gorodok, having served time for drug trafficking. During this time, her debt to the state for custody of three children amounted to about 20 million rubles. She had already tried to get a job three times, but was refused three times. Tatyana herself says that she dreams of returning to a normal life. She no longer wants to go to prison and understands that her gypsy life is over. To live, you need to work and teach children. For now, alas, she is still on the sidelines.

On the sidelines there are still over three hundred Roma of David-Gorodok and hundreds of representatives of this people throughout the republic. Perhaps they are worth taking a closer look at, and those who really want to get out of the social bottom should lend a helping hand. Then, perhaps, many of them will take their rightful place in our society.

photo by Valery KOROL (

Chapter 7 THE LAST GYPSIES

There were also gypsies in Kholodnogorsk. Fifteen people from different camps. Two old men of them once sang in the gypsy choir of the famous Yar restaurant.

The Kholodnogorsk gypsies told me a lot about why and why their fellow tribesmen were arrested in the USSR; They also talked about their investigative “cases.” In most cases, these were politically humorous “crimes” and in the stories about them the facts were mixed and intertwined with Gypsy prison folklore...

- Look! Why are gypsies tearing out their hair?

- And he’s in a hurry to go bald. He’s afraid that the Soviet government will take away his last hair.”

This is a humorous saying that the Russian people made about the gypsies in the Soviet Union.

Here's another saying:

“The gypsy camp was liquidated, his horses were collectivized, his guitar was nationalized, and his skin was isolated in prison.”

I talked about such folk art with the leader of a gypsy camp who was sitting in Kholodnogorsk.

– Are these sayings about you correct? – I asked him.

He grinned and replied:

– They are correct, but not quite.

- Why?

– The Soviet government did not take everything away from us.

- What did she leave you?

- And three letters.

– What letters?!

– From the Russian alphabet . S, O and V. This is now a gypsy brand. Like a horse. Only they use it for horses’ skins, and for gypsies for investigative cases...

Gypsies are dangerous people for the Soviet government. They are nomadic, do not recognize state borders and do not want to go to collective farms. Therefore, the Bolsheviks organized the complete liquidation of Gypsy camps. Gypsies are arrested and sent to concentration camps without trial, and on the folders with their very short investigative files they write: “S.V.” or "S.O." – initial letters of words: sociallydangerous and socialharmful. Sometimes gypsies end up in prison for specific, albeit very outlandish crimes.

Every year there are fewer and fewer gypsies in the Soviet Union. They are dying out in prisons and concentration camps, guiltlessly guilty of communism.

“We are the last people for the Bolsheviks,” the Kholodnogorsk gypsies told me.

And their new songs, which I heard in Kholodnogorsk, sounded hopeless and doomed:

From a young age I've been lost in prison

And I have no way out..."

...In the last camp

The Last Gypsy

Sings his last song...

The gypsy Kiril wandered around the North Caucasus, dodging in every possible way the persecution of the Soviet regime. Finally, the authorities found him. Representatives for subscription to the “Industrialization Loan” came to the camp and began to agitate:

- Comrade gypsies! Let's do our duty! Let's all sign up for the loan as one! 300 rubles each.

– What kind of loan is this? – asks Kirila.

The representatives explained it to him. He listened, and then hit the tops of his boots with his palms and shouted to the whole camp:

- And what kind of state is this beggar! Even a poor gypsy can borrow money!

The Roma refused to sign for the loan. That same evening the entire camp was arrested and subsequently sent to concentration camps. Kirila, as the instigator of the “anti-loan riot,” was shot.

Two gypsies stole horses at night on state farm No. 25 near Pyatigorsk. The judge who heard their case issued the following sentence:

“Defendants Stepan Glotov and Yakov Chaly, taking the horses out of the state farm stables at night, scattered the harness and forgot to take the bridles with them. Therefore, they were found guilty of mismanagement and negligence...”

The leader of the camp, Nikita Tsygankov, was summoned to the NKVD department with the express purpose of putting him in prison. But Tsygankov didn’t want to sit there. Therefore, he consulted with experienced people and they taught him how to answer the questions of the NKVDists.

A gypsy came to the NKVD department. One of the investigators asks him:

- Who is your father?

Tsygankov grinds his teeth with anger at the Soviet regime, but answers as written:

– Our dear leader and teacher, Comrade Stalin.

- Who is your mother?

– Our beloved Soviet government.

– Who would you like to be?

- An orphan! – the gypsy could not stand it... He did not return to the camp.

In the hungry spring of 1932, in the village of Shelkovskaya, Kizlyar District, a poor gypsy woman stole several baked potatoes from a collective farmer. She pulled them out of the oven hot and stuck them in her 8-year-old son's bosom. The collective farmer noticed the theft and raised a cry.

Neighbors came running and took the gypsy woman, along with her son, to the police station located nearby. There the policeman on duty began to interrogate them, but to no avail. The arrested do not answer his questions. A large portrait of the “Father of Nations” with a mustache and a pipe hangs above the policeman’s head. The gypsy boy looks at him in fear and grabs his bosom with both hands.

Hot potatoes bake his chest. The boy cries and says:

- Oh, mom, goofy... goofy. The gypsy woman looks sideways with fear, first at the portrait, then at the policeman, and mutters quickly to her son:

- And I told you that run to the tent and put it on the container and there won’t be a spike...

Listening to their conversation, the policeman shouted:

- Yeah! Are you starting a counter-revolution here? Well, this will backfire on you...

A short time later, in the Kizlyar department of the NKVD, the gypsy woman and her son were interrogated “with passion.” The indictment for their “case” read:

“The accused, standing in front of the portrait of Comrade Stalin, waged anti-Soviet agitation against him and made counter-revolutionary allusions to his brilliant historical figure, that is, they loudly repeated: “Stupid snout... stupid snout...”

In vain the gypsy woman swore that neither she nor her son even thought of insulting Stalin, and the word gouporylo in the local gypsy dialect means “hotly”...

Two weeks later, she died during interrogation “from a broken heart,” and her son was sent to a colony for street children.

A gypsy girl, Liza Bezrodnaya, worked at the editorial office of the Pyatigorsk newspaper Terek. She wrote city chronicles and poems from gypsy life. The poems were good, but not suitable for the newspaper. The editor called them ideologically inconsistent and out of tune with the era, and therefore threw them into the trash.

One day he told Lisa:

- Comrade Bezrodnaya! You must reforge. Give up your gypsyism and go to the collective farms as a special correspondent.

“But I’ve never been to collective farms and I don’t know agriculture.” “And I don’t know how to write about collective farm topics,” the girl objected.

– Learn by doing. And in general, I ask you to turn your face to the village,” the editor demanded.

Bezrodnaya went to the collective farms, nevertheless deciding to prove to the editor that she knew nothing about agriculture. In her first letter from the collective farm she sent the following verses to the editors of Terek:

The entire editorial staff laughed at these poems, but the editor did not like them. For three days he frowned and got angry, and a few days later Lisa was summoned to the city department of the GPU.

Soon after this, the editors learned that Bezrodnaya was sentenced to five years in prison “for a mocking anti-Soviet attack against the party’s printed organ.” However, her comic poems about the collective farm became widely known, first in the North Caucasus, and then throughout the country. They were even recorded on a gramophone record, with an “ideologically consistent” propaganda eight-line added to them.

In 1936, the Soviet film “The Last Camp” appeared on the country’s screens. It was filmed on the gypsy collective farm "Trud Romen", Mineralovodsk region (in the North Caucasus). The main role was played by the famous artist of the Moscow Romen Theater Lyalya Chernaya.

The film showed how gypsies leave their camps, voluntarily join collective farms and work there post-Akhanov. But in reality it was different. Two years before the filming of the film, several camps were forcibly driven into the Mineralovodsk collective farm and, under the threat of concentration camps, they tried to force them to work. The freedom-loving nomads, who had never engaged in agriculture, worked poorly. There were frequent cases of sabotage on the collective farm.

I had a chance to visit the fields of the Trud Roman collective farm in the spring of 1937. Arriving there as a special correspondent for the regional newspaper, I was very surprised that in the midst of spring sowing the collective farmers were not working. Gypsies with whips in their hands ran through the fields, shouting and cursing.

- What's the matter? Why don't you sow? – I asked the chairman of the collective farm.

He waved his hand hopelessly.

- On the third day, the first brigade changes horses from the second. Potsygansky. What kind of gypsies are collective farmers if they have never plowed or sowed?

When the war with the Germans began, the regional administration of the NKVD, on orders from Moscow, liquidated the Trud Roman collective farm, and all the gypsies who were there were sent to northern concentration camps.

One of the singers of the gypsy choir of the Yar restaurant, who was sitting in Kholodnogorsk, composed a song he called “Gypsy Prison”. The Kholodnogorsk gypsies often sang it with tears in their eyes.

Here's the song:

Every day he dances squatting

How hard it is for us and how painful it is,

With a five-foot log.

How high is the prison fence?

In a human trap

We envy the beast:

Gypsy prisoners

In Bolshevik and in heaven...

"Sokolovsky Choir at Yar"

Was whenthen famous...

And now the gypsy guitar

It won't ring for us.

Our Yarovski gypsies

Scattered all over the country,

So that in the concentration camp fog

Reminisce about the old days

Behind iron bars

Curse your fate

Between a bullet and a whip

In Bolshevik and in heaven.

After "Yar", after the choir

Our leader did not live long:

At the interrogation very soon

Got a heart break.

Our dancer Yasha is far away.

He's alone in a concentration camp

Guitarist dashing Danilo

He went to a collective farm as a shepherd;

We continue to introduce readers to the life, traditions and customs of different peoples of Crimea. Today we will talk about gypsies. There are many stereotypes about this freedom-loving people. They say that gypsies wander around the cities and towns, telling fortunes, dancing and stealing... To separate truth from fiction and find out how the Roma live in Crimea, Gazeta met with a gypsy baron, who is also the head of the public organization "Roma Cultural and Educational Union" German Filippov.

- German Petrovich, who is the gypsy baron? What are your responsibilities?

A baron is the leader of a group of people or a tribe (as it used to be). I got this title from my father, and he got it from his father. Baron is like a supreme judge. I can punish violators according to our laws. There are Russian laws, and there are also our internal ones - the laws of our ancestors, the laws of the Roma. The most terrible punishment is the expulsion of a person from the gypsy society. But there are others. For example, it used to be like this: a person did something wrong and stole something - they beat him with a whip. Yes, this is still practiced, just very rarely. They have already stopped stealing, robbing, and doing bad things. And before, I remember how my grandfather took a whip and, in public, beat a person with it until he lost consciousness, and he never did this again in his life.

Everyone must fulfill the baron’s word unquestioningly. If anyone disobeys, then other gypsies will look at him askance and stop communicating with him, to the point of expelling him from our community. Well, if I pass a sentence to expel a person, then this will spread throughout the whole world - not only in Russia, but also in America, France, Italy, Yugoslavia... This is a very cruel punishment. A gypsy would rather agree to serve 10 years in prison than accept this sentence.

- Is it true that there are “non-gypsy” professions that are prohibited for Roma?

No, there is no such thing. There are simply professions that are historically familiar to most people of Roma ethnicity. This is blacksmithing, for example. You could say they were born blacksmiths - they forged horses, made horseshoes, swords... And modern people do anything: some with scrap metal, some with equipment, there are journalists, doctors of sciences, and writers... There was even one president. Nicolas Sarkozy. He is a purebred gypsy, although he has been in exile for a long time. That is why he took revenge on the gypsies until their deportation from France. There were many famous gypsies, take for example the actor Charlie Chaplin.

- Is there any special tradition that unites all gypsies?

If a gypsy whom I don’t know comes, say, from Romania or from Moscow, and he is poor - he has no money, no food, no roof over his head - we are obliged to help him. Both morally and materially - with money, food, and housing.

- And how often do such “guests” come?

Lately often. When the war began in Ukraine, refugees left the Donetsk region. We help them as much as possible - we collect money, food, clothes. Our public organization has been doing this for more than a year. And we collect money for apartments; someone provides them with their own housing if they go somewhere. We help everyone - not only the Roma, but also the Russians. For us there is not much difference in nationality. If a person feels bad, if he is poor and asks for help, we simply have to help him.

- Everyone has heard about “gypsy magic” - is it just a way to make money or some kind of special gift?

This is by no means a way to make money. It really is in the genes. But some unscrupulous people use their magic for profit. This cannot be done; after some time such a person will lose his gift. Trust only those people who can predict the future or help you without money, who will not name prices. If you decide to show your gratitude yourself, then, of course, you can bring food or give two or three rubles. And if they tell you a specific price, don’t believe it, these are charlatans, scammers and swindlers.

I’ll tell you more, there is also gypsy hypnosis. People who possess magic also master hypnosis. Sometimes a person with a bad soul uses hypnosis. There are many like this among our nation. She will meet you on the street, look you in the eyes and say: “Take off the chain, take off the ring!” And you will do it. This is a scammer. If we see such people, we immediately expel them. If they don’t listen, we contact the police. We have been living in Crimea for 52 years, we are known on the good side as a respectable family. They knew my father, my grandfather. We don’t do anything illegal, we live our lives, we do a little business... But stealing is not something we do.

- I heard that the gypsies are loyal to thefts and even believe that God himself allowed them to steal...

It's just a beautiful legend. They say that when Jesus Christ was executed, a gypsy woman stole the fifth nail and hid it in her hair. Therefore, Jesus was not beaten to death, and God, as a reward for this, allowed the gypsies to steal. I don’t believe in this and condemn theft. But in every nation - not only the gypsies - there are thieves and swindlers.

- How are responsibilities distributed in a gypsy family?

A woman should be the keeper of the hearth, and a man should be the earner. Of course, a woman should not remain on the sidelines if she is young. You've probably seen that there are gypsy girls standing at the Central Market, selling shoes, clothes... This is their business, this is how they make money. Someone works as a saleswoman, someone as a hairdresser, someone picks apples.

A woman, of course, must listen to a man. She cannot go anywhere without her husband’s permission, even to her friend’s. Even if the husband cheats and the woman finds out about it, she must remain silent and not contradict. That is, men can do everything, but women can do nothing.

- Doesn’t this seem unfair to your women?

They think this is very fair and condemn those who do whatever they please. Our women reason like this: I have a husband, I have a family. So why should anyone look at me? Why should I be in such a place or in such a society where someone will look at me? Our women feel uneasy just from such thoughts. They are very faithful and do not cheat on us. And we change.

- And you talk about it so calmly?

Yes, but what's wrong with that? I can say this to the press and to anyone, even to my wife. This is normal for us; you can even have two wives. But this is only with my permission. I don't know many such cases. Maybe he allowed one or two. But only those who are able to provide for a family, give knowledge to children... Not everyone will do this. Nowadays it’s hard to feed one wife, let alone two.

- How many children are there in an ordinary gypsy family?

It varies, sometimes one or two, but more often there are five, seven, eight... There are even twelve. But having children is not enough. We need to give them knowledge, culture, education, life lessons... There are families who cannot cope with this. We are fighting this. Our public organization (and myself) travels around Crimea. Sometimes we go to a family with many children, but they are all illiterate - they can neither read nor write. Sometimes there is no money to get the child ready for school, sometimes their classmates bully them. If there is no money, we dress these children, buy them notebooks and textbooks. We communicate with school directors so that they can provide a class where they will not call people names and offend them... It happens that parents themselves do not want to send their children to school. We used to live our nomadic life - so we got used to the fact that even an illiterate person can live in the world. Like, when a child grows up, he’ll go sell potatoes, and he doesn’t need to know anything except these potatoes and money... But this is nonsense! We have to explain to people that now is a different time, that children need to be educated.

■ About 17 thousand Roma live in Crimea.

■ In the XVIII-XIX centuries. Many gypsies moved from the Czech region of Bohemia to France. The French began to call them Bohemians. Since the creative part of French high society led the same noisy, eccentric and riotous lifestyle as the gypsies, they were dubbed bohemians.

■ It is believed that it was the gypsies who invented belly dancing and spread it to Arab countries. Scientists still can neither confirm nor refute this theory.

■ An inexplicable but very interesting fact: Gypsies never get leprosy. Modern medicine has not yet established the cause of this mysterious phenomenon.

Photo: oldro.me; personal archive of German Filippov