Abstract
The text questions the relations of the post-war Czechoslovak society towards the Roma on three mutually interlinked levels: it summarizes the developemnt of policies focused on "Gypsy population" on the central level, as well as their impact and reception in the context of interethnic relations on the regional level, and introduces the ways in which members of the local Romani communities position(ed) themselves vis-a-vis these policies and evaluate(d) them. While not denying the fact that the Roma represented a specific group of citizens often viewed as "problematic" in the eyes of Czechoslovak state institutions, the text however attempts to problematize the general image of the Roma in post-war Czechoslovak history as solely unwanted / discriminated citizens or as victims of the communist dictatorship.
The author presents particular examples of differenty defined groups of "gypsy citizens" as "wanted" and "cooperative" as well as "unwanted" and "problematic" showing the scale on which such defintions moved and underlining the contextual and individual changes/developemnts in the perception of the "unwantedness" of different groups of Roma or Romani individuals in the eyes of the non-Romani actors. The author also comments on some of the heuristic problems the researchers face when styding the histories of the Roma as historically marginalized communities.