SUMMARY:

The article reconstructs a long and conflicting story of mutual adjustment between various Roma communities practicing “service nomadism” as an economic model and lifestyle, on the one hand, and the evolving Russian imperial regime, on the other. Different groups of Roma who made their way to Russia at various times and under various circumstances, specialized in providing particular services to the immobile local populations, and in order to make their business economically sustainable, they had to move around in search of new customers. In turn, the Russian government was motivated by concerns about enforcing social control and, even more so, securing fiscal revenues from the population. This explains the persistent attempts of the government since the 1760s to ascribe Roma to regular social estates and then to make them register as permanent residents with urban or rural communes. Furthermore, taking upon itself mission civilisatrice, the imperial regime perceived sedentarization as a necessary precondition for the primitive “nomads” to advance to a higher civilization stage as settled agriculturists or artisans. Roma were ready to pay taxes but not to give up their mobility. They would even obtain the formal status of private serfs, paying the landowners the required dues in exchange for travel permits that allowed them to migrate legally. The government persistently closed one loophole after another trying to make Roma settle permanently, which led to the destruction of Roma economic practices and made them paupers, which eventually contributed to rising criminality and social tensions. There was a legal way of accommodating nomads in the Russian Empire by granting them the status of inorodtsy. However, the imperial regime did not pursue this option, in contrast to its treatment of Siberian indigenous peoples or the Jews.