This was a really interesting article. I think I'm going to check this place out.
This was also how Caucasians and other non-Slavic minorities were often portrayed in Soviet films (completely unlike today):
Budulaj is only one of these types, the hero of a Soviet novel written in the 1960s that was adapted as a play at the Teatr Romen, a film, and then a television series--all titled simply Gypsy. Budulaj is a decorated veteran of the Great Patriotic War (World War II) who travels about the country by motorcycle seeking relatives. On stage or screen the Russians he meets are shaken in their prejudices about Gypsies by his proletarian good sense and literacy--he joins a collective and reads books. But Budulaj also tap dances and glares at people from under thick, dark eyebrows, remaining somehow still a "typical Gypsy." It is this typicality, signs of his primitive difference and "closeness to nature," that Russians appreciate most of all.
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