Recently, there has been considerable interest among researchers and tour guides in the history of the various ethnic communities that lived in our city and throughout Sloboda Ukraine. Thanks to this, anyone who loves the history of our region can learn about the German, French, English, Polish, Jewish, and even American sides of Kharkiv.
Of course, at times the quality of the material leaves something to be desired, as it is not always based on archival documents. However, this multinational perspective on the history of our city and region is, in my view, a positive and necessary approach. For centuries, the lands of Sloboda Ukraine have been home to many different nationalities, each of which has made its own distinct contribution to our history and culture. That is precisely why, in today’s article, I would like to revisit the topic of ethnicity and, this time, discuss the Roma.
Incidentally, one of the earliest legal documents in what was then the Russian Empire concerning the Roma—or Gypsies, as they were called at the time—is connected to our region. In the personal decree and imperial resolution of Empress Anna Ioannovna dated June 7 and July 5, 1733, issued on the occasion of the establishment of the Sloboda regiments—the Sumy, Okhtyrka, and Izyum regiments—we read:
It was ordered: in addition to the regiments’ upkeep, to impose levies on the Gypsies—as is done in Little Russia—as well as in the Sloboda regiments and in the cities and counties of Great Russia assigned to the Sloboda regiments, and to appoint a special official for this collection, since the Gypsies are not listed in the census. In this regard, Lieutenant General Prince Shakhovsky’s report explained, among other things, that it was impossible to include the Gypsies in the census because they do not live in households.
The reason for this decree is extremely simple—the need to support the army. After all, in those distant times, the funds needed to provide for military units were collected from specific groups of people within a certain territory.
A year earlier, the census of the Sloboda Cossack regiments had recorded 4,500 Roma. Of these, only eleven were settled. And a Senate decree dated March 1, 1766, mandated that starting in 1767, all Roma be subject to a tax of seven hryvnias. It was further specified that those “who are not settled reside primarily in the Sloboda-Ukrainian, Moscow, Voronezh, Astrakhan, and Kazan governorates.” The renowned historian Mikhail Melentyevich Plokhinsky, in his 1890 work “The Gypsies of Old Little Russia,” published in the journal “Ethnographic Review,” notes that the number of members of this people on the territory of present-day Ukraine fluctuated frequently in the 18th century. When circumstances were favorable, their numbers increased. Gypsies would migrate from Great Russia, from the Sloboda regiments, or even from Poland. If circumstances were unfavorable, however, they would migrate away, most often to the lands of Sloboda Ukraine.
An edict issued by Empress Catherine II on December 21, 1783, classified all Gypsies living in the empire as members of the peasant class, mandating that taxes and levies be collected from them. However, no serious measures were ever taken to enslave the Roma. Nevertheless, the Roma were still required to pay taxes; therefore, despite their nomadic lifestyle, attempts were made to somehow settle them in a specific territory.
Our primary source of information is the material cited in the “revision records.” These documents are the results of censuses (revisions) conducted in each province during the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries for the purpose of levying a poll tax on the taxable population of the empire. In cities, such documents were compiled by representatives of the city administration; in villages of state peasants, by village elders; and on private estates, by landowners or their stewards. In total, 10 such censuses were conducted in the empire between 1719 and 1858:
1 — 1719–1725
2 — 1744–1745
3 — 1762–1763
4 — 1782
5 — 1795
6 — 1811–1812
7 — 1816
8 — 1833–1834
9 — 1850
10 — 1857–1858
All materials from the first three censuses are now stored at the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts. However, materials from the remaining censuses—which also pertain to the Romani history of Sloboda Ukraine—can be accessed at our city’s archive if desired. And it is precisely there that the oldest written document (or, more precisely, a census) related to the history of the Roma in our lands is located.
The information contained in the “Census Report on the Roma in the Districts of the Kharkiv Governorate” for 1782–1784 is quite interesting. From this 89-page document, one can learn the last names, first names, patronymics, family composition, and ages of the Roma living in various settlements in our region, including Kharkiv. Of particular interest is the information on settled Roma, where the appendix indicated their occupation as well as whether they owned real estate. Similarly detailed information can also be found in the document from the fifth census of 1795. However, the number of people recorded in it is significantly smaller. The clerks who compiled the census were extremely honest, noting next to some surnames: “Owns a house but no land. Makes a living by fraud and the sale of horses, but does not wish to be registered as a merchant or townsman.”
In any case, all these decrees and censuses are an integral part of the past of our beloved Sloboda Ukraine. The renowned Kharkiv historian Volodymyr Masliychuk, at the conclusion of his speech on June 11, 2008, at the international conference in Kyiv titled “Roma of Ukraine: From the Past to the Future,” made a perfectly valid point:
In conclusion, I would like to note that the second half of the 18th century and the significant encounter between the three ethnic groups in the territories of Hetmanate Ukraine and Sloboda Ukraine were marked by a series of controversies; however, the Romani people and the Ukrainian population of the 18th century found numerous ways to reach mutual understanding. I hope that this mutual understanding extended much further.
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