Preserving Baltic Roma Heritage: Baumanis Grant Report from Agnieška Avin

The project I carried out using the AABS Baumanis Grant involved a collaboration of academics and researchers across the Baltics. I gathered a truly pan-Baltic team of experts which produced an interdisciplinary book on Roma communities in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Several other experts worked on this initiative: Gopalas Michailovskis from Lithuania (CEU), Ieva Vivere from Latvia (University of Latvia), Ieva Garda-Rozenberga (University of Latvia), Anette Ross from Estonia (Helsinki University), Eva-Liisa Roht-Yilmaz from Estonia (University of Tartu).

The main focus of this initiative was on studying national archives and their collections on Roma, analysing the material, preparing commentaries, introductory texts from the critical theory perspectives. We analyzed the situation of contemporary Roma heritage in Baltic states as an omen of historical marginalization, institutional negligence and overall systemic racism towards the Roma in the Baltics.

The final result – a completed photography book – presents unique and mostly unseen for the wider public visual documents about the Roma. It was a great discovery to find a picture from Lithuania dating 1899! It is supposed to be the oldest discovered photograph showing Roma in Lithuania. These materials serve as a proof that Roma has been historical communities in all the states and they constituted diverse cultural landscape in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. From the comparative perspective, one can notice similarities and slight differences among Roma in three Baltic states. For instance, Latvian Roma were active in the interwar period, they had their own organisation. Most of the social capital of the communities perished along people during the WWII.

The main goal of this book was to raise public and community awareness of the history of Roma in the Baltics, to disseminate archival materials and to strengthen academic pan-Baltic cooperation in the field of Roma studies, Baltic studies and cultural heritage. Recently developing multivocal and multidimensional approaches to local histories lay the ground for minority perspectives and novel ways to read and reinterpret national historical narrations. A right to be listened to and to be heard is a basic social right of any group in our countries, not a privilege. Public inclusion of marginalised voices that sometimes might disturb or put into question taken-for-granted national mythologies is a process of social justice and a sign of advancing democracies.

During the project development we have discovered that each of the Baltic states have had different approaches and development of the archival resources containing Roma-related materials. In Latvia and Estonia there has been historical ethnographic fieldwork collecting Roma songs, folk tales, life histories, and other cultural elements.

In Lithuania, instead, the recognition of Roma heritage and a need of preservation has been emerging in the past years. In Lithuania, up until now there has not been any sustainable governmental plan to systemize and create a special archive for Roma history. The Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre has digitalized some of Roma folk songs in their database.

Much more active and persistent in such endeavours have been civic society organisations that coordinated sporadic initiatives which contributed to first attempts of creating a solid Roma archive in Lithuania. Such initiatives are The Lithuanian Roma Oral History Archive published in 2022 and The Lithuanian Roma Folk Song Archive project in 2024.

Archival documents pertaining to the Lithuanian Roma community are scattered across various national and regional museums and archival institutions. Lack of thorough cataloguing and systematization is particularly felt when it comes to visual materials like photographs.

Due to onward digitalization of archival materials and joint online platforms of museums and archives, one can find online a few dozens of items related to Roma.

Nevertheless, there has been little systematic effort to research or consolidate them. Up until now, the biggest work in this area has been done probably by journalists who would research archival resources to accompany their articles about Roma history with some old black-and-white photographs from the interwar period. These images reside in museum databases, maintained with apparent neutrality.

However, the decision of which materials are researched, highlighted, and made public is inherently political. Most photographs can be found using key terms such as “Gypsy/Gypsies,” along with descriptions of the image content. This raises questions about whether the simplistic cataloguing performed by museum staff is a naive routine or a form of institutional negligence, perpetuating the racial slurs and marginalization that Roma have long faced.

As the Roma’s presence continues to be overlooked and excluded from cultural, social, and political narratives, their past remains under-researched and under-documented.

For the book selection, Lithuanian national and local museums were contacted to share existing materials on Roma. Even though Roma communities historically have inhabited various regions across Lithuania, only few local ethnographic museums have arranged and systematized archival documents on Roma.

In Lithuania we have cooperated with the Lithuanian Central State Archive, National M.K. Čiurlionis Art Museum, “Aušra” museum in Šiauliai, Kupiškis Ethnographic Museum, Vrublevskių library at the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, Vilnius Museum.

In Latvia valuable materials were found in the Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation, the National History Museum of Latvia, the Latvian Museum of Photography, the Latvian State Archives of Audiovisual Documents, the Museum of Writing and Music, the Limbaži Museum, the History and Art Museum of Gulbene Municipality, the Jurmala Museum, and the Ventspils Museum.

The Estonian photo collection was gathered thanks to Estonian National Museum, Estonian History Museum, The National Archives of Estonia, Virumaa Museums, Tallinn City Museum and Valga Museum.

This project was a great lesson in archival work, analysis, and preservation. I have established strong pan-Baltic partnerships with colleagues from Latvia and Estonia. I am sure we will develop common ideas in the future.

– Agnieška Avin