Abstract
State policy towards the Roma took various forms in communist Czechoslovakia. In the first decade after the onset of the communist dictatorship (1950s), it oscillated between two poles.
While the first half of the decade is characterized by efforts to emancipate the Roma population, including the support of Roma culture, in the second half of the decade the state government took restrictive measures, including a ban on nomadism. However, the state-encouraged and welcome emancipation of Roma fellow citizens was an ambivalent enterprise.
On the one hand, the dictatorship took care over the Roma for fundamental ideological reasons and offered them a chance to become members of the majority of the society. On the other hand, it expressed its intention with a discriminatory language confirming the power asymmetry between the majority of the population and the Roma.
At the end, the state did not only fail to overcome racist stereotypes of Czech public, but rather confirmed them.