ABSTRACT
The Communists’ theory of Gypsy assimilation was based on their understanding of how people acquire their ideas. On a level deeper, the opposite of Rom was not Magyar but gazo, a term used for the non-Gypsies but among other things also meaning “stupid” and “ignorant” of the way to lead a good life. Most anthropologists and sociologists who have studied the Gypsies have noted the opposition of Rom to gazo and explored some aspects of the notion of the non-Gypsy while retaining the accepted translation of gazo as “non-Gypsy. It seems logical to suggest that, if the Communists were to have persuaded the Rom to become Magyars, they would have had to avoid repeating the behavior of the Gypsies’ traditional “other,” the gazos. For the most part in Hungary, housing policy had involved the transfer of Gypsies from their old mud-brick houses to new “reduced-value” (Cs) settlements.
