Author says the Luník IX housing estate in Slovakia was never an "experiment in socialism", but a ghetto based on race from the start
"In the historical awareness of those who live in Košiče, the urban legend is strongly entrenched that Luník IX was built as a model housing estate in a pleasant environment near a forest. The legend also claims that an 'experiment in socialism' was undertaken at that housing estate according to which non-Romani and Romani families were meant to live together there. The non-Romani families were meant to be employees of the armed forces, i.e., the army and the police. However, the experiment went awry and the outcome was that the Romani residents destroyed the housing estate," author Ondrej Ficeri describes the "classic story" about the creation of the housing estate in the introduction to his book entitled Luník IX: Zrod romského ghetta [Luník IX: Birth of a Romani Ghetto].
This interpretation of the rise of the most notorious housing estate in Slovakia can commonly be found in various online and print sources where it is usually presented as fact. In his book, Ficeri carefully confronts that narrative with the available facts from archival materials.
On the basis of that evidence, Ficeri tells the story of Luník IX once more, explaining the context and the circumstances of its creation, why it featured the attributes of a ghetto for Romani people from the start, and what this favorite “legend” tells us.
A favorite story
The allegations that Ficeri presents in the book, backed by academic theories – namely, that Luník IX showed the features of a ghetto for Romani people from its inception – naturally counter the customarily recounted and more pleasant version about the housing estate being built as the result of an altruistic relationship between the authorities in the regime of state socialism and the Romani minority, whose integration into the majority society was allegedly being attempted. Ficeri describes that narrative as having a series of identifiable characteristics, including key events and a plot: In Košice, Luník IX was meant to be a model, the most modern housing estate with above-average equipment in an attractive natural environment near a forest and was supposed to become a prominent socialist estate where the regime would test this experiment of coexistence between “inadaptable” Romani people and the families of the armed forces.
Ficeri has not managed to actually identify who exactly started the legend about Luník IX, but that was not meant to be the aim of his research. Nevertheless, he says he can claim with certainty that it was created by local political elites...
This was also supposed to be about applying the coexistence of the majority and the minority on the basis of the “ABC concept”, i.e., A – armada [the army] (soldiers), B – bezpečnost [security] (police officers) and C – Cigáni [Gypsies], but the inadaptability of the Romani people allegedly led to the A and B units moving away from there. What is essential is the part of the story alleging that the Romani people caused the destruction of the housing estate and are responsible for the state it is now in.
Ficeri does not cast doubt on the fact that the buildings on the housing estate were destroyed by local residents, but he does ask which specific people were behind the destruction and emphasizes that it is unethical and unfair to blame an entire group of the housing estate’s inhabitants. On the basis of the archival materials he has analyzed, he assesses the other allegations of the legend as untrue.
“That’s why this narrative, in its complexity, needs to be identified as a rumor, or rather an urban legend or urban myth,” Ficeri says, adding that although this rumor cannot be verified, what it does provide to those who receive it as true is an interpretation that makes sense to them, that satisfies their emotions, and that also carries a political charge because it confirms their moral standards. Ficeri has not managed to actually identify who exactly started the legend about Luník IX, but that was not meant to be the aim of his research.
Nevertheless, he says he can claim with certainty that the legend was created by local political elites, because it contains some facts and features that nobody else in the population could have known about. “Moreover, in the former Soviet bloc, the elites of the regime of state socialism made frequent use of conspiracy thinking to uphold their own power and strengthen their own legitimacy,” he points out.
The Tábor quarter
Romani people lived in Košice long before the building of Luník IX. The first mention of the municipal department of Tábor, where the indigenous community of Romani people resided, dates to 1686, according to Ficeri.
The dwellings there were classic row housing that was hierarchized in terms of the occupants’ social status to a significant degree: The “Gypsy nobility”, such as the families of the vajda (community leader), first violinists, bandleaders and musicians lived closer to the city center, while temporary dwellings and huts appeared further from the center. Ficeri’s book reviews the history of the Tábor quarter in detail.
For the purposes of this article we will fast forward to the late 1940s and early 1950s, when more Romani people moved into Košice from rural areas and from all over the eastern and southeastern region of Slovakia, as the intensive industrialization under socialism offered many opportunities for them to work, primarily in construction. Ficeri cites a source stating that in 1956 there were about 130,000 Romani people in all of Czechoslovakia, of whom 114,000 lived in Slovakia, of whom 51,000 lived in the Košice and Prešov regions of eastern Slovakia, i.e., approximately half of all the Roma living in Slovakia.
...in 1956 there were about 130,000 Romani people in all of Czechoslovakia, of whom 114,000 lived in Slovakia, of whom 51,000 lived in the Košice and Prešov regions of eastern Slovakia, i.e., approximately half of all the Roma living in Slovakia.
Such enormous numbers of people naturally needed somewhere to live. The Romani residents of the Tábor quarter started moving into the city, according to Ficeri’s sources, during the Second World War; during the immediate postwar years the Romani settlement in what was then called Zahradnická Street mainly grew in size and some of those families then managed to settle in dilapidated historical buildings in the center of Košice.
The District Secretariat then evicted Romani people who were “not involved in the labor process” from parts of the Tábor quarter in March 1948; as early as 1939 the state authorities had already labeled the public health conditions of housing in the Tábor quarter absolutely unfit for habitation, as there was no supply of water and no sewage system. Ficeri points out that the unfavorable housing conditions of most Romani families did not begin to be reviewed by the authorities in Košice more significantly until 1958, after the adoption of a resolution by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia “On labor among the gypsy population in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic” and the adoption of Act no. 74 of 11 November 1958, Coll., “On the permanent settlement of traveling persons”.
“According to the intentions of these policies on the Roma, local authorities were meant to guarantee dignified housing and employment for Romani families. Concentrations of Romani families in localities which were substandard were meant to be destroyed and the Romani families were supposed to be dispersed among the majority population, where they would assimilate in cultural/ethnic and social terms,” Ficeri describes.
Resolving the housing problem
The situation of the Romani residents of the Tábor quarter and those who moved into other localities in Košice, as well as the authorities’ efforts to cope with them between 1958 and 1965, are also thoroughly described by the author, who dedicates an entire chapter to this called “Inter-urban Dispersion”. The next chapter is called “The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia adopted a resolution on dispersion as the basis for the assimilation of gypsies, but it is ineffective in the conditions of Košice” and carefully summarizes the next five years, during which the coordination and implementation of policies related to Roma were transferred from the level of the regions to the central bodies of the state administration, describing the concepts and plans, their subsequent transformation, and the reasons why they were either rejected or allowed to stagnate.
Under the given situation, on the one hand local political elites decided to solve the housing issue of Romani families living in concentration, as had already been proposed in the 1960s, but on the other hand, this concentration was to be pushed to the outskirts of the city, i.e., to a segregated locality...
During the next “Five-Year Plan”, specifically in 1972, a Government resolution reflected on the failure of these policies regarding the Roma, and the regime abolished its assimilation program of merging ethnic Roma with the majority society, replacing it with a program of the cultural and social integration of the Roma. Ficeri writes that in 1975, local political elites found the dispersion policy in Košice had led the situation of ethno-racial coexistence among non-Roma and Roma into a state of latent ethnic conflict, and the local authorities openly declared the inability of a significant part of the Roma to acculturate in the new environment, their non-conformity resulting in continually escalating displays of essentializing antigypsyism in the attitudes of the non-Roma toward the Roma.
“Under the given situation, on the one hand local political elites decided to solve the housing issue of Romani families living in concentration, as had already been proposed in the 1960s, but on the other hand, this concentration was to be pushed to the outskirts of the city, i.e., to a segregated locality,” Ficeri describes. Politicians hoped to achieve the disciplining of the Romani residents this way (ideologically this was required through these policies regarding the Roma in their sections on “re-education”, where the politicians argued that they were convinced they could never achieve the necessary impact on a large number of dispersed persons) and also hoped to achieve the elimination of inter-group contact (they assessed the increase in ethno-racial tension as disrupting societal reconciliation, which had the potential to degrade the legitimacy of the governing powers, and what is more, since the politicians all came from the majority society, they were defending their own interests first and foremost).
The search for and the discovery of an appropriate locality for “resolving the housing problem of Romani families in concentrated segregation” was aided by the administrative reform of 1969, thanks to which the city of Košice was designated a separate district from that of Košice-venkov (rural Košice) and was directly governed by the East Slovakia Regional National Committee. Košice also was meant to be transformed into an industrial megalopolis and its built areas were expanded significantly.
In 1972, the Head Architect Section identified a locality south of the municipality of Myslav where a Romani settlement of a smaller size already existed to be used for the purposes of relocating the Romani population of the Tábor quarter (which then became part of the expanding city), and that was where the housing estate of Luník IX was later built.
(Ondrej Ficeri: Luník IX, Zrod rómského geta – used with the permission of Ondrej Ficeri)
The ABC housing estate
However, the path to the construction of Luník IX was not a straightforward one – originally it was meant to be a neighborhood of single-family homes with full civic and technical amenities, but the project was once again reworked because, as Ficeri writes, the city had most probably informed the designers that it wanted this new quarter to be inhabited by “residents of the Tábor neighborhood who came from either the second or third category in the typology of Romani families per their level of acculturation.” Besides the financial aspect, there were also difficulties with the contractor meeting technical norms, as well as the fact that the city needed to address housing for residents in its historical center, so the decision was made to transform the original concept of a neighborhood of single-family homes into a housing estate made of prefabricated panel buildings.
According to the reports accompanying the documentation of the construction project, the “character of the inhabitants” required oversized school facilities and other buildings of a civic nature. “The greatest interest is to secure all the basic living, cultural and social needs within the perimeter of the housing estate for the purpose of the purposeful re-education of the gypsy population and to rule out the unwanted dispersion of the gypsy population into the surrounding housing estates,” the report states.
The co-author of the project, architect Milan Motýľ, also denied that this designation meant
The name Luník IX was given to the housing estate on 22 December 1975 because it was a continuation of the development of other housing estates called Luník I through VIII. However, Ficeri points out that Luník IX was never part of the planned project of the Nové město – Terasy quarter and is separated from the closest Luník VIII housing estate in the city plan.
As for the designation of Luník IX as the “ABC housing estate – armáda [army], bezpečnost [security], Cikáni [Gypsies]“, Ficeri writes: “That widespread legend is immediately negated by the subtitle of the project, which explicitly defines the quarter as ‘a residential group for citizens of gypsy origin’. The alleged ABC concept was never developed and it is never mentioned in any of the other projects, concepts or analyses, not at the local or the regional or the central governmental level. The co-author of the project, architect Milan Motýľ, also denied that this designation meant ‘army – security – Gypsies’. According to the architect, the first three letters of the alphabet were used to designate the initial residential complex because further construction in the western sector of the city was to continue.”
Another component of the Luník IX myth was the claim that it was above-standard, which Ficeri refutes on the basis of facts by referring to its proximity to the city garbage dump in particular. The building of the housing estate had not yet been given the green light – The Construction and Technology Ministry of the Slovak Socialist Republic had ordered a halt to a version of the project featuring apartment buildings with wraparound verandas in 1976 after the Government Commission on Gypsy Population Questions insisted on the principle of their dispersion.
Photo used with the permission of Ondrej Ficeri.
However, the Košice Municipal National Committee did not stop the project, which had already begun, but changed its parameters such that it would be a regular housing estate without any special purpose. Ficeri reviews in detail the transformations of the concept plans and the numbers of people to be relocated there, which were continually transformed until 1980, when the first units were finished.
After the use permit was issued in June 1981, the first wave of renters moved into the units in August and a second in December. “According to the records, 240 Romani families moved into Luník IX, i.e., 1,187 Romani individuals, 64 families from the Tábor quarter numbering 315 people and 140 families from the historical city center numbering 872 people,” Ficeri writes.
However, the Košice Municipal National Committee did not stop the project, which had already begun, but changed its parameters such that it would be a regular housing estate without any special purpose.
According to the authorities cited by Ficeri, it was still necessary to address the housing of at least 158 more Romani families, so Luník IX in 1981 had resolved just 56 % of the “Romani question” in Košice. The Romani families who were relocated in these two waves received almost 40 % of the available units at Luník IX.
These families were placed in 14 sections and seven of the 16 apartment buildings were allocated to the Roma. However, over the months to come, their relatives also relocated there and the number of Romani people at Luník IX rose to 1,600, or more than 50 % of the housing estate residents.
In the chapter called “1982: The Luník IX Scandal – Relieving the Symptoms of Anomie”, Ficeri describes the problems which started quite quickly among some residents: Destruction of the apartment interiors and shared spaces, non-payment of rent, overcrowding, requests from both “acculturated” Roma and non-Romani neighbors to relocate, a growth in juvenile criminal activity, cases of child neglect, complaints about the stench from the nearby garbage dump, complaints about the excessive concentration of Romani people at Luník IX per se, and others. This was also publicized, which Ficeri says significantly contributed to antigypsyism among majority-society members in Czechoslovakia.
“In the television broadcasts reviewed, many guests said the acculturation program of the socialist regime was ineffective because Romani people – generalizing about the entire ethno-racial group – do not want to adapt and the Luník IX housing estate is a negative example of their attitude,” Ficeri says.
The Luník IX scandal
Ficeri reviews in detail the development of the situation, not just at Luník IX, but also by mapping the approach to relocating other Romani families from other localities in Košice before and after 1989. His conclusion summarizes the fact that “not only were the elites in Košice never forced to take responsibility for their contradictory behavior, they manipulated the ‘Luník IX scandal‘ to their own advantage: In 1984 they managed to persuade the state authorities that the Government’s policy of dispersing Roma who had not integrated and awarding them standard rental housing was counterproductive financially and society-wide as a consequence of the growing tensions in inter-group coexistence between Romani people and Non-Roma.”
That led to a transformation of housing policy toward Romani families who were not integrated, for whom apartment buildings of a low standard started to be built in localities which were segregated. According to Ficeri, toward the end of the regime of state socialism, the legalization of racialized spaces and their reproduction was underway.
“Would Luník IX have resonated in the awareness of the population in Slovakia as it does today if the original Romani quarter had featured low-standard single family homes as the Košice political elites originally intended? Probably not,” Ficeri writes.
Most of the Romani families who were relocated into the first-category apartments were not prepared to live in them – they had never asked for them, couldn’t afford to live in them, and didn’t even want to live in them.
First published in Czech in the magazine Romano voďi.
