Soviet College Admission — My Dad's Story (1970)
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As a preamble there most definitely existed anti-semitism in Soviet Union. I am a Russian living in the US with Jewish family in Russia. This is a throw away account.
With that said, stories of anti-semitism told by Russian Jews in US should not be taken at face value. These folks are subject to a very strong selection bias. Most of them came to the US as refugees who were recognized by the US State Department as being discriminated against for being Jewish in USSR/Russia. Secondly they have interest in maintaining the story anti-seminitism because it validates their narrative and could potentially help their relatives immigrate to the US.
Additionally many stories of anti-semitism that I heard were something a non-jew would experience as well but attributed to anti-semitism. As a personal example, I was at first denied admission to a specialized school in very late Soviet period. They eventually let me in because my mother found out that I had the highest score on the entrance exam of any one. Their excuse was that they had to let the kids who were in the paid summer program at the school first and now the class was full. A Jewish kid's parents would have been told they already have too many Jews in the advanced program. Both cases are just the admissions persons asking for a bribe.
Since you asked "how big", I would say greater than zero but less than discrimination against certain other groups. These other groups include Chechens, other people from the Caucuses, people from the *stans, and gays. People in these groups are both more numerous and face worse discrimination. Non-Moscow residents are of course officially discriminated against in Moscow (Moscow residency is essentially a second internal citizenship that has been struck down by the courts but still exists in practice). Additionally 50% of the population are subjected to sexism to a significant degree.
Agreed. Between the military draft and pandemic levels of deaths of young Russian males it's hard to think otherwise.
This dates back to the days of the USSR, but the prejudice is not limited to Jews anymore. Chechens, Georgians, Tajiks, Ukrainians, etc. (even ethnicities indigenious to parts of Russia) -- all of them can be routinely discriminated against based on looks and/or name.
What has changed, though, is that the bulk of discrimination has shifted from the state to the people. E.g. folks are not discriminated against when trying to get into a college, but can be singled out on the street.
Better dressed - hate you Better car - hate you Not from Moscow, you're a village idiot.
Regarding the second point: we have no more relatives in Russia, so the narrative is not meant to help anyone immigrate to the US.
As far as the story goes that Russians were equally discriminated against, and it was a case of bribery, you can take a look at my comment below of more family examples. Or you take a look at this list of Math problems that were specifically given to Jews during their admission exams into Moscow State University: http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 . Thanks to @Prognosticus for sending me the link!
Regarding the second point, it is perfectly illustrated in your first point. The narrative of antisemitism in Russia was used by the Anti-Defamation League to petition for increasing immigration quota.
About the Jewish Problems List, yes I have seen it, and have serious issues with it. I also have serious issues with oral exams as done in Russia. Both the Jewish Problem List and oral exams are big topics and should be separate discussions.
they have interest in maintaining the story
As far as the comparison with others, including other ethnic groups as well as individuals: indeed, Jews were far from the only target, and often were targeted not as Jews specifically. Several (more than 20) ethnic groups suffered much worse under the Soviet system than the Jews did. However, when we talk specifically about college admissions, Jews were targeted as such, and in this aspect they (I guess I should say we) suffered more. Here too Jews were not the only targeted group (or in many cases not the only non-privileged group) but it was much more widespread against the Jews, and I would say more cynical as well.
When in the US I am asked if the stories about Jewish persecution in the USSR are true, I usually say "the short answer is yes but the correct answer is yes but". In addition to the above, I usually also point out that this is almost nothing compared to, say, the way the Nazis persecuted Jews, and all of the families that were targeted by the Soviet system were (directly or indirectly) also targeted by the Nazi system, and here the Soviet system takes a very distant second. Not such a great achievement, of course.
I'll mention my grandparents perspective as it's not well known in the US but describes many Russian Jews accurately: essentially, they were culturally Jewish, but strongly secular. While they supported Israel the country (as they saw it as more civilized than its neighbors), they rejected the Hebrew language (preferring Yiddish) and the concept of Zionism (they rejected it as a form of nationalism, which they opposed having witnessed it Ukraine and Baltics).
Yet our own family's stories of anti-Semitism are very similar to those the "refugee" families we later befriended (contrary to my grandparents' advice) told us. It turned all out of them were just as secular (you can have our salo when you pry it from our cold dead hands...) as us, so it can't be ascribed to general anti-religious discrimination that happened during the Soviet times.
Keep in mind that today Jewish population in Russia is minuscule and -- due to greater openness and multi-way competition (between Israel, United States, Western Europe, etc...) for intelligentsia -- anti-Semitism in academia has gone down a great deal. I don't think that you can use the experiences of your Jewish family in today's Russia (which is effectively a different country even when compared against Russia of 1996) to come to any conclusions about anti-Semitism during the Soviet days.
Sudoplatov, an NKVD agent who worked for Beria, wrote in his memoirs that the original Soviet post-war plans were actually to establish a Jewish republic in the Crimea, with the hope that they would be able to use it in order to get money for Soviet post-war reconstruction from Jewish organizations around the world.
When they failed to gain world traction with the idea, and were cut off from British/American planning of the alternative (Palestine), Stalin moved to a policy of anti-Semitism (the "Doctor's Plot" and a campaign against "Rootless Cosmopolitanism") so that the Arab world would turn to him instead (in their dissatisfaction with the plans for Israel).
One passage from Sudoplatov's memoirs:
"Stalin and his close aides were interested in the Jewish issue mainly to exploit it politically, either for use in a power struggle or for consolidating their power. That's how the flirtation with anti-Semitism started in high party echelons...Stalin's efforts after the war were focused on extending Soviet hegemony, first over the countries of Eastern Europe bordering the Soviet Union and then everywhere he was in competition with British interests. He foresaw that the Arab states would turn to the Soviet Union when they were frustrated by British and American support for Israel. The Arabs would appreciate the anti-Zionist trends in Soviet foreign policy...I was told by Vetrov, Molotov's Assistant, what Stalin said: 'Let's agree to the establishment of Israel. This will be a pain in the ass for the Arab states and will make them turn their backs on the British. In the long run it will totally undermine British influence in Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and Iraq.'"
"The establishment of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Birobidzhan in 1928 was ordered by Stalin only as an effort to strengthen the Far Eastern border region with an outpost, not as a favor to the Jews. The area was constantly penetrated by Chinese and White Russian terrorist groups, and the idea was to shield the territory by establishing a settlement whose inhabitants would be hostile to White Russian emigres, especially the Cossacks. The status of the region was defined shrewdly as an autonomous district, not as an autonomous republic, which meant that no local legislature, high court, or government post of ministerial rank was permitted. It was an autonomous area, but a bare frontier, not a political center."
The problem with saying that it was paranoia that some people in the Jewish community were trying to undermine the Russian government, is that, especially after the fall of the USSR, right wing Jews have openly boasted about how they HAD been working to undermine the Russian government, and were using the Jewish community in the USSR to do so. The documentary record of this is extensive in not only Hebrew but English. On the one hand, they brag about how they subverted and undermined the government - then on the other hand, they talk about how crazy and paranoid the USSR was for thinking there were plots against them from the Jewish community.
Many Jewish people bragging about how they helped bring down the USSR kind of undermines these arguments about how the idea that some members of the Jewish community were working to subvert the government is crazy. Because nowadays, they openly admit it.
I am pretty amazed that when people make ridiculous comments about history, sources are not required. Jews did not go through Russian pilot training only to get paid more money in the Israeli air force (comment history) nor did Jews have an organized resistance to the oppression they experience in Soviet Russia.
As far as my comment history, anyone reading it can see this poster is full of nonsense as I never discuss the Russian air force in any respect. As far as "distaste for Jews", the reader can play a mental game if they wish - again one can read my comment history and conjure up a mental image of a theoretical Jewish person in the US. They are assimilated, secular, educated, intellectual, deracinated, grandparents were labor organizers, older cousin has stories about the Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz they once lived at. Then conjure up a mental image of an orthodox/ultra-orthodox, religious, insular, Zionist, anti-communist Jew. THEN conjure up an image of a fundamentalist, evangelical, religious, insular, and Zionist, anti-communist Christian goy. I have met people in my life who could be categorized in any of these three categories. I would say I enjoyed being with one of those types of people, and had a distaste for the other two. The above post says I have a "distaste for Jews". I leave it as an exercise to the reader which one of these types I enjoy spending time with, and which two I have a distaste for.
One thing I want to bring to your attention, which specifically bothered me, is that an oppressed minority living in an oppressive land who has members that try to resist is not proof in itself of a hypocrisy of the entire minority, nor is it some kind of evidence that the oppression was just.
My European family was murdered in Poland. I was raised in an area surrounded by racists and bigots. I was beaten up as a child for no other reason than my race (at the age of 5). My neighbor and friend growing up (of German decent) would tell me how Jews were intrinsically thieves, though I was different, and how Hitler was a genius.
I do have personal reasons to be critical of your words. Your reasoning, however, is not valid. Right wing Jews can openly talk about anything they like. People tend to bend history when they get the short end of the stick. It is a coping mechanism. Please don't judge an entire people based on flimsy evidence. I like B trees too.
Antisemitism was of the same nature and origin in Russia as everywhere else - 'evil' Jews were a good excuse for the rulers' own failure and incompetence.
Here's the response from my mom:
Yes, it's typical. The only thing which surprises me that the dad's dad insisted on military in 1970 - there was an antisemitic campaign in military in 1961 and grandfather could not miss it. Usually families knew which colleges accept Jewish kids, which did not and usually there was a "plan B". There was a category of "top" colleges which ran exams in July, while all others ran exams in August, like this guy who failed in top choice in July still had option to take exams in August (like my mom who failed with Institute of mechanics and Optics in July applied for Pedagogical Institute in August, or Alik [her uncle] who was not admitted in Moscow university applied in Kharkov in August etc.) And some people who were fighting actually succeeded (like Alena [her aunt] whom they gave either 4 or 3 in math said she knows well enough to get 5, so the examiner said, "I will have to call a head of the commission", Alena said, "So call him." And started all over again. Vitya, my cousin, had the same experience: they told him his solution is wrong, he gave them another one, and one more, and they also called for the head of admissions, and she showed him the right solution - then he showed her his first solution, etc. So it's a little weird that for this family this all sounded as a surprise. It was every family experience ;-( and one of the reasons of emigration (same situation with jobs.)
My close friend's mother could not believe it until her son, a straight-A student from K to 12, was given a failing grade at an entrance exam in physics which he knew and understood very well. Oh, it's funny to remember now, by the way. They would give him a problem, then come back before he would finish the solution, say "you did not solve it" and mark it with a minus. Several times he was faster than them. Still, after a while they got a sufficient number of minuses and said good-bye to him. He expected it would be a losing battle, but still was a little shocked at their arrogance.
She also had trouble because she applied for a visa to Israel before she finished Med School and was of course denied, but once you have that on your record no one is allowed to hire you so she had to do some more blackmail to get into residency when she completed residency she was finally given permission to leave. (Which was nice because she had no idea how to get a job once she finished residency after being a refusenik)
An interesting story from there is that as so many educated Jews were fired from their jobs they started filling in other positions. Someone tells a story of applying to be an elevator operator and being asked if she had a PhD.
1) Most colleges admit large numbers of students who are officially reported as "race/ethnicity unknown."
2) The definition of "race" categories in current United States regulations is arbitrary, acknowledged by the Census Bureau to be unscientific, does not match categories used in any other country, and has changed several times in my lifetime.
3) "Jewish" has never been an officially regarded category in the United States for tracking data on the issue of college admission, but Jews once faced considerable barriers getting into many colleges.
4) The subset of United States high school students who are college-ready by what courses they have completed during high school has a much different "race" composition from the general United States population.
Several of the replies in this interesting thread ask questions about the system in the United States, so I will refer here to the definitive FAQ about "race" in United States college admission,
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/13664...
so that those of you who like to look up reliable sources and check facts are able to do that about this contentious issue. The FAQ will have to be revised, of course, after the Supreme Court issues its opinion in a pending case (cited in the FAQ). Full references to the facts listed above can be found in the FAQ.
The collection of "Jewish Problems" (very tough mathematics problems reputedly given to Jewish applicants to Soviet universities) by Tanya Khovanova and Alexey Radul on arXiv
http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556
is directly on-topic for the main submission here. How many of those problems could you solve to get into university?
In India, Russian authors (e.g Irodov, Kratov, Invanov) have a reputation of being incredibly difficult, yet having very elegant problems; while American authors had the reputation of writing long winded 'real-world' problems that took effort to first understand the context of, were illustrated by colorful figures etc (of course there are exceptions).
I'm not sure that I approve of ANY targeted racial goals for schools, though I'm generally in favor of class-based advantages for lower-income applicants.
I find it hard not to favor this. What's the point of encouraging diversity of skin color if you're not getting much actual cultural diversity? Students at top universities have much more to learn from the experiences of poorer students than they do from other upper middle class students who happen to have darker skin.
40% of UC students are asian (and it's higher at Cal, UCLA and UCSD (i.e. the better schools)).[1]
23% of Stanford students are asian (probably higher since that excludes "international" and "decline to state").[2]
26% of MIT students are.[3]
In other words, at (a small sampling of) the top schools, Asians are over-represented by anywhere from 400% to 1000%. It just doesn't seem like any sort of quota system exists, looking at the data.
[1]http://diversity.universityofcalifornia.edu/documents/divers...
[2]http://www.stanford.edu/dept/humsci/external/under/demograph...
Note that Stanford's and MIT's percentatges are notable lower than UC's. Why?
California has this:
> California’s Master Plan for higher education, adopted in
> 1960, guarantees a place in college for every state
> resident who can benefit. The historic blueprint produced
> systems and programs that have served as models for other
> states and for countries across the globe.
This one might be incorrect, but California being on the west coast might mean that there are more Asians per person in California than in many other parts of the US, too.
This is a widely studied and easily Google-able topic. Private schools discriminate against Asian Americans is through the combination of Affirmative Action (favors non-Asian students), athletics (favors non-Asian students - completely bizarre to non-Americans) and legacy admissions (favors non-Asian students).
I attended a famous public high school where Asian girls (officially) had to meet a much higher grades+scores standard than others. Many lawsuits, so I'm not sure whether this is still in place.
However, this study appears to show a quota in place (starting around 2003) at the Ivy League schools.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-...
Or alternatively perhaps the poster refers to latent preference for 'blue blood'-connected individuals and networks?
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/12/19/fears-of-an-...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California [2] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-08-25-SAT... [3] http://nationsreportcard.gov/hsts_2009/race_gpa.asp?tab_id=t...
Private universities don't have to admit anyone if they don't want to. It's silly to talk about them, when they do all sorts of wonky things.
There is no doubt there exists discrimination against Asian-Americans in some American public universities.
I think the real question is whether or not there is a systemic or conspiratorial discrimination.
In the Soviet Union, where anti-Semitism in education was known to be organized, the State gave harder tests and used the poorer test scores as proof of legitimacy.
In the United States, Asian Americans perform above average (though not necessarily substantially so). It doesn't seem to match the character of a conspiracy, at least as we understand it historically.
Black students perform considerably worse than average on the ACT standardized tests nationally than Asian Americans perform better. They are underrepresented in college, overrepresented in poverty.
Black children, who cannot choose to whom they are born, are overrepresented in the worst school districts.
Our government's interests in affirmative action are incredibly complicated, much more so than in the Soviet Union. Recall that until 1954, less than one generation prior to the experience of the gentleman in the article, black students were generally not co-educated with white students in much of America.
Pre-Brown v. Board and Jewish Questions is the evidence of systemic, organized discrimination. Not excellent test scores. You and many of the commenters have the consequence of the evidence completely backwards.
There is a solution: We live in a free country. If Asian Americans are discriminated against in universities—which I remind you I believe to be true, just not in a conspiratorial way—the best solution is to found a goddamned university for Asian Americans.
That wasn't an option in the Soviet Union. Now do we all understand why the experiences aren't equivalent?
So, quotas... are there quotas, official or unofficial, in the USA university system?
So you can't say "we're letting in 300 of RACE this year." But, when you have 301 of RACE, you can say, "I feel like the number of RACE we've admitted this year negatively impacts the diversity of our student body."
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action#cite_ref-6
In general, both public and private schools tend to over-admit minorities (in proportion to their presence in the population), so from the other perspective, are discriminating against majorities.
My uncle actually studied at the University of Warsaw and was the best student in his year, while doing engineering. He wanted to go on a foreign placement in the UK, which was a very rare opportunity to see some world. So he applied,studied hard, and fulfilled all the requirements. Only to be told a week before going that sorry but he can't go, because the son of the State Secretary is going instead. He had to complain to some very high-positioned officials to be allowed to go next year, but not without being threatened to be kicked out of academia for life first.
Funny thing is, that I am currently studying at the same university in the UK my uncle did his placement 40 years ago. Feeling quite proud of that.
I have a bucket for links called "Mythbusting" on this service I made named Scrooty.
I called the bucket "Mythbusting" not as a reference to the TV show but rather for a particular category of content.
I often run into misconceptions and tropes that bother me. One of those among people I encounter often is that the Soviet Union was so great compared to the US then or now. Another is things like, say, the excessive praise of Japanese longevity/health.
This is a link I'm saving for the next time somebody tries to tell me how devoid of racism the Soviet Union was.
Another recent link for this bucket was the (recent, but it's been ongoing) outrage among Chinese farmers not getting recompense for their land from the gov't confiscations.
Stories like this are starting to be shared more. Here's hoping it keeps coming.
We have a similar quota system in America that limits asian admissions and with talks of extending quotas to limit male admissions in STEM degrees. What's not clear is if these Jewish quotas were proportional to population or not.
There are no asian quotas at the governmental level in the US. You're referring to an unfortunate side effect of diversity policies and affirmative action at the university level.
The US gov't going to silence or jail you for speaking up about university policies you believe are racist.
Don't compare the incomparable, it's an injustice to those that suffered under oppressive governments.
Edit: You've exemplified the sort of notions that caused me to make a 'Mythbusting' bucket.
Jews were disproportionally represented in universities in USSR even with all the quotas.
Similar quotas also existed for Russians and other non-locals in national republics - e.g. it was much harder for a Russian to be admitted to the university in Uzbek SSR compared to an Uzbek. This was a bit more nuanced than just Anti-Semitism.
Soviets had a quite complex migration policy, including moving people around "by order" (both forced mass movements of nationalities and also job location assignments that could move you 2000km away), and also 'carrot/stick' with having opposite policies in various parts of USSR to achieve whatever people/nationality migrations and grand social engineering plans they had.
The other significant difference is that all these policies were completely opaque, not like you can find out how much Jews the university can accept this year. Officially, no such policy existed, but everyone knew it did.
In my dad's case, he was told he failed the health exam, which was a complete lie.
There were many other cases in my family where a similar thing happened:
- Besides having a passing score, my grandmother was not accepted into a tech university, while her Russian friend with the exact same grade was.
- Another one of her friends disappeared (taken to a political prison camp), after she publicly complained that she wasn't accepted into her desired university because of religion.
- my mom wanted to be a teacher, but had been told by her neighbor (who worked as a professor) to not even try applying to the Pedagogical University of St. Petersburg, as they flat out didn't accept Jews.
- post graduation, my dad wanted to work at a high-tech Moscow university lab. Back then, you were assigned to a job after graduation based on your grades. The Moscow lab was reserved for the top of the class (and my dad was in the top 5%). However, during the assignment committee, the director repeated "David Vladimirovich" twice. This was a common Jewish name, and he made sure that everyone knew it. The committee decided that my dad was to go work in a lab in Ufa (2000 km away - http://goo.gl/maps/a342A). Far places like that were reserved for lower placing students. When my dad asked why he didn't place into the Moscow lab, they told him, "we're the ones that ask the questions here."
Note that she wasn't denied admission: this happened mid-flight. This is very different from being turned down at one university, choosing to attend another university, and from that point being judged solely on academics. Another example is Moscow State University having a computer program that looked for Jewish sounding student last names and automatically lowered their grades.
Anti-Semitism/Anti-Judaism in Tzarist Russia was incredibly harsh (see the etymology of the word "pogrom"), but it was codified and known: one knew what the Jewish quotas were at the universities and the entire nascent capitalist sphere was open to Jews (e.g., a Jew could become a "merchant of first guild"). Being baptized was also the way out for some (e.g., Anton Rubinstein) as Jewish identity was considered a religion as opposed to an ethnicity.
Again, I don't mean to white-wash the harsh and destructive anti-Semitism of the Tzars -- indeed, it contained many seeds (Protocols of Elders of Zion, conflation of Judaism with both Marxism and Capitalism, etc...) for the racist anti-Semitism of Nazis and Soviets, but there's something to be said for at least an official acknowledgement that the system existed as opposed and being able to work around it.
After WWII my grandfather wanted nothing to do with his Jewish heritage. He bribed officials for new papers that changed the families last name and official ethnicity.
There is no doubt in my mind of the discrimination Jews faced in the Soviet bloc. On the other hand, I think it's a little more nuanced. Jews often occupied important positions in the system and were entitled to privileges that came along with said positions.
I was through similar experiences to your dad's roughly at the same time.
Quotas, where they were in place, WERE proportional to the population (2%). There was a number of very good schools where we Jews were more than welcome (e.g. MIIT) - your dad was supposed to be aware of this. You have to thank God that he was not accepted to Military Academy - you probably won't be here if he was.
I don't blame them for not accepting me to Moscow University. I blame them for not letting us go, locking us in their country and using as hostages in "peace" negotiations with US. (Every concession from US was accompanied by opening the gates for a small number of people).
People of Russia were (and still are, to large extent) victims of brainwashing. Beware of brainwashing, it's effective regardless of country.
And Americans aren't?
FYI, it was often known how many Jews were allowed each year. My dad had to take last two years of HS in one year (via extern) in order graduate a year early to get into Kiev medical school (circa 1970). Limit was only 1 Jew per year and he was the same age as the son of the dean (who was also jewish).
[Disclaimer: Soviet Jewish immigrant to the United States. We immigrated to a heavily Asian community (Cupertino) when we moved to the United States, so I'm also acutely aware of the prejudice many brilliant Asian students face in college admissions here.]
The anti-Asian discrimination in elite private universities in US, is nothing compared to the Soviet system.
For starters, in Soviet Union, if one did not get into the one university they applied to, they would be drafted into the military. In United States if an individual does not get into Stanford, they would probably be accepted into Berkeley, UT Austin, UW, UCLA, or the like -- provided they're qualified to get into Stanford and are denied due to affirmative action. That, in a nutshell, is the huge difference.
There is, however, one major similarity between Soviet Union's anti-Jewish discrimination and the anti-Asian quotas/"affirmative action"/discrimination in the United States: they are both "plausibly deniable", vague, and ill-understood. This in opposition to the strictly set percentage-based quotas used by Ivy Leagues against Jews in the early twentieth century and in Tzarist Russian Universities at roughly the same time: an applicant knew what the quota was, so it was possible to calculate how well one would need to do to get into a specific university.
The "holistic" admissions process in American universities as well as the rigged exams, deliberately lowering of grades, etc... in Soviet universities were essentially unpredictable -- no one had a clear picture of what their chances were when applying to a specific university.
In both cases prejudice at the most elite universities (Moscow State University in Soviet Union, Stanford and the Ivy Leagues in the United States) lead to many strong students/grad-students/post-doc researchers going to what were once "lesser" colleges ("Public Ivies" in the United States, universities in non-Russian Soviet republics, e.g., Belarusian State University -- where my dad was a professor) which in turn made them more academically rigorous and reputable.
Overall, American system with all its flaws is many orders of magnitude better: I'll gladly take American system at its worst (e.g., being a Jewish student in the 1920s and 1930s) over the Soviet system as its best. There are simply far more opportunities for young people who do not fit the "mold": if you do not get into a good university in US right out of high school you can attend a community college and then transfer. Even if one doesn't have the means, time, or requisite psychological profile to graduate from a university it isn't a career death sentence: while drop-out success stories are over-stated, it's still clearly possible (even if significantly harder) to find knowledge-work (i.e., enter the "intelligentsia" class) for someone who did not graduate from or even attend a university.[1]
The downside of collectivism and equality is the attitude that "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down". America's "rugged individualism" has a cost (often times "in-your-face" inequality), but individual freedom -- broadly understood, not only in the political realm -- including the freedom to carve out your own educational and career path is what made the (difficult) decision to immigrate to the United States worth it for us. My parents abandoned a privileged lifestyle (a flat in city center, a country home, a tenured professorship, guaranteed retirement, excellent public transportation, etc...) to come to the United States as they knew it would be one of the few places where someone like myself (or even my older and already college educated brother) could have a fulfilling life and career.
[1] To any young hackers reading this: please don't take it as encouragement to drop out from or -- even worse -- not attend college in the first place. Even if there was absolutely no career benefit to attending a university, it is still worth it. Here's just one example: unless you get lucky, it will be a long time in the industry until you're considered to have enough experience to be "allowed" to build an operating system, TCP/IP stack, a compiler -- or to build something non-trivial in Haskell, Lisp or ML; yet, these are routine projects in undergrad CS classes. On the other hand, if after making a genuine effort, you discover you simply cannot learn in a structured setting such as a secondary or tertiary educational institution, do not surrender your career inspirations: plenty of choices are still available to you.
"It is important to note that my family was not religious at all. My father was not brought up in a religious tradition, and neither was I. Religion in the Soviet Union was in fact all but non-existent in those days. Most Christian Orthodox churches were destroyed or closed. In the few existing churches one could typically only find a few old babushkas, like my maternal grandmother. She occasionally attended service at the only active church in my hometown, Kolomna. There were even fewer synagogues. There were none in my home town; in Moscow, whose population was close to ten million, there was only one. Going to a service in a church or a synagogue was dangerous: one could be spotted by special plain-clothed agents and get in a lot of trouble. So when someone was referred to as being Jewish, it was meant not in the sense of religion, but in the sense of ethnicity, “blood.”" --http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-Fifth-problem--...
Perhaps I was just caught in a bad moment (just after the collapse of the USSR, on the wave of "independence" of Armenia). Or perhaps it's my first name, which is totally Russian (my last name is Armenian and not even Russified like yours - I suppose it's kind of a curious juxtaposition of the 2). I was constantly fighting other kids in the street and had to go to the only Russian elementary school in Yerevan, otherwise my school life would probably be miserable. When I lived in Moscow afterwards, I was just going to the local school with the Russian kids. This is not to say Russians are as a rule extremely welcoming to immigrants, but in my case I had a much better time there.
As far as the good old days, of which I don't remember much - I'm guessing Russians always had a bit of a superiority complex, being a "metropoly" within the USSR, but generally things were kept more in check than now, given the state's declared internationalist policy. Both my parents are half-and-half, which was very common in Armenia - so it must have been not so bad on an everyday level.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57556662/north-korean-...
The best change since then is the fact that the practice of administering oral and written exams by each university is GONE :)
IMHO this was THE MAIN way to deny admission during USSR times. This happened to both of my parents: a. My mom scored perfect on first 2 exams and scored 1 on the final essay. The university in Russia rejected her appeal. Oh, and did I say she was writing for her high school bulletin and won several state essay competitions? b. Same story with my Uzbek dad. Scored well on Math and Physics just to fail the final oral exam. Ended up serving in Army in Saint Petersburg for a few years.
Now concerning discrimination in USSR colleges: I have relatives who are Tatars and Uzbeks and I know plenty of Jewish Russians who had no problem getting into universities during USSR times. I also know a few Russians who thought they got perfect scores but ended up getting a ding. Based on my experience, I'd day everyone was against odds due to corruption and lack of connections.
For instance he says:
"You could apply to one and only one university. If you didn’t get in, you’d be conscripted into the army the following Fall."
And then explains how he applied to a second university and then how he was offered to apply to a local university in Tashkent.
Just to be clear, I don't disagree with his premise, it's just the whole thing is overly dramatized. My uncle also almost didn't get into MSU because they decided he was Jewish, and my dad was rejected and had to go to a different school. The whole thing was really weird because they decide your jewishness solely based on your last name. (which is sorta black magic)
Also, from everything I heard, antisemetism wasn't institutional - ie. directed from top down. I've never heard of the quota thing (if it existed, it was done on a school by school basis). For instance MSU was known for being very antisemitic, while other branches of government were not. You've got to remember that a lot of the revolutionaries were jewish, even Lenin was a jew (sorta).
But the bottom line is, even if not everyone likes you in the US, you can still live a fully actualized life even if it takes a bit of hard work. In Russia, institutional racism created a hard ceiling that most of the time could not be broken, even with hard work. If you tried to hard, you would go to jail or worse.
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-Fifth-problem--...
which was previously discussed on HN here:
Apparently one day he had to take an examination. What they did was an army radio transmitter, an AK47 machine gun, and they shoot some holes in it. Then they handed it to him and said: Fix it.
Another story he told me was about a friend who was in the submarine navy. Days before his university courses would start they got an order to go on patrol. And then he was underwater for a year instead.
Also the stories how new soldiers were assigned to bases thousands of miles away from home, apparently so they don't desert and go home etc.
I find all that very interesting. It's so different from my experience in (West-) Germany. Everything was easy in comparison here.
I think the persecution of the Jews in any culture is wrong.
And so is the persecution of any religion.
I think the freedom of religion, including the right to pray in schools, on T.V. and radio, in government, etc. is a freedom that the U.S. was not only founded on, but what people have died for, and I am grateful for that.
I'm glad that things have changed in the former Soviet countries. I wish that things weren't changing for the worse here.
I have to put up with people telling me about "separation of church and state", which was never meant to be interpreted as it is today. If you can have atheism practiced in schools and taught by teachers, I should be able to have prayer in schools and religion taught by teachers. That is separation of church and state. No one should tell me what I can or cannot do as long as I'm not impeding others' freedoms and pursuit of happiness.
And I put up with my government that:
* attempts to restrict our freedoms in the name of protection
* tries to act in our best interest, but never actively asks what our best interests are
But, we are spoiled. I'll take my every phone call and Google search being scanned by the U.S. over the crap people had to put up with in the Soviet Union before.
Religion isn't taught in schools because people have different religions (and, within religions, different interpretation of religion). Religion is taught at institutions focused on particular religions (i.e. churches).
[0]:http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Rigor-Mathematical-Breakthroug...
More reading about anti-Semitism in that territory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmelnytsky_Uprising#Jews
There are lots of books on this topic. "Why the Jews" is supposed to be good. There's also "Antisemitism Explained" by Dr. Steven Baum, my former psychiatrist, which I would expect to take a deep psychological analysis (but I haven't read it).
No, I did not intended to say "Or are they asking for it?". However I do not care if people down vote my comments.
Thanks.
The original root-cause was sheer politics: the pagan rulers of Egypt (not talking about Exodus, Egyptian Empire was heavily influential in the Levant) and the Roman Empire despised henotheists and monotheists, because their/our religious practices pretty well implied disloyalty to the conquering empire.
The sheer number of revolts we threw against them didn't help.
But after that? Well, by now it's just persisting because it persists. A virus needs no reason to exist.
My dad did understand. He was Jewish.
Oh God damn it, not again!
Russophilia, xenophobia, cronyism and nepotism were rampant in the former USSR. A "prominent" Muscovite Jew (but otherwise a lousy student) would have been treated better than the most talented Uzbek/Kazakh/Tajik.
I was born in St. Petersburg, and my family immigrated to the US when I was 6 years old. My parents are kind, quiet people who weren't risk takers -- the idea that they left everything behind was always bizarre to me.
My dad graduated #2 in St. Petersburg for Math/Science (he still has the silver medal for this) but did not get in to the top engineering school. They never gave him a real reason, but he had a Jewish last name.
He doesn't seem angry about it, nor does he really bring it up much -- but I can't help but to imagine the risk taker / creator that could've been if he wasn't stomped all over in the soviet days for being Jewish.
It's disgusting what decision makers during the soviet regime were able to get away with.
In my country the mandatory army service law was active until 2007. If you didn't get admitted to a college, after finishing the high-school you would've had to serve 1 year in the Army. You would also have to serve even if you got into college, but only for about 6 months after graduating.
And now it's a scam so that the Washington Post Company can receive money from federal student loans.
Are you sure about that past tense? http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/12/19/fears-of-an-...
For one thing, before World War II, there was a Jewish quota in US Ivy League schools. Why focus close to home in 1940 USA though when you can hear a yarn from 1970 Uzbekistan, about as physically far from the majority of HN readers as possible?
Secondly, before World War II, the center-right, even moderate trope in Europe (and the US) was that the USSR was run by Jews. The typical picture ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WhiteArmyPropagandaPosterO... ) of the Red Army, run by Trotsky, and a politburo with Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev, as well as others who probably were Jews with converted familiies (Krestinsky). So the right got to bash the USSR with being run by Jews when it was convenient, now they get to bash it for being anti-semitic when that is convenient. They get to have it both ways, shifting from one to the exact opposite depending on the times.
Third, after the establishment of Israel, Israel and the USSR came more into conflict as Israel allied itself with the US. Things were not that solid in that regard in 1948, but it became clearer over time, and was certainly clear after the 1967 war. This incident happened after 1967.
Jews in the USSR would go to a top flight school in the USSR, get their diploma, then immediately go to Israel or the West and get paid a high salary. In fact, certain parts of the Jewish community in the USSR encouraged this behavior. The USSR had limited resources, why should it spend enormous funds with its top scholastic positions educating Jews who were just going to leave?
The reality is this is what the other side demands. That the USSR give free Bachelors and Masters and Doctorates at its best schools, blocking those positions for Russians, and then the Jews who would get those degress would skip town with their free doctorates as soon as they get their diplomas, so as to make big money and build up the West.
Where could Jews get free education in the US? I'd like to get a free education at a top school in the US. That doens't have to be paid back, and the recipient would immediately move to China and build up their country. We don't have that now, yet people like to pontificate that the 1970 USSR should have offered that.
Also, most right wing Jews seem torn over their discussion of the USSR in two poles. On one pole they'll openly discuss (in English! Not even Hebrew) on Youtube videos and elsewhere how they used the Jewish community in the USSR to subvert and undermine the government. On the other hand, they talk about how crazy these governments were to think that Jews were trying to undermine their governments. They say they were trying to subvert the Russian government, but they can't help to boast in pride, in English even, how they did undermine the government and were successful in doing so. The US interned all Japanese people in the 1940s for much less. Yet the USSR didn't hand a free education to every Jew who wanted a free doctorate from a top university before skipping town, so let's bemoan how bad they had it in a country which no longer exists, in something that happened over 40 years ago...
Complete and utter anti-Semitic horse shit: my dad was prohibited from as much as leaving the Soviet Union to attend a scientific conference until 1989. Even so, he still did not want to leave the USSR or the post-USSR state until it was clear (after Soviet Union's collapse) that economic opportunities for our family were much better in the US (we finally moved in 1996).
Believe it or not, leaving everything behind and immigrating to a country with a completely different economic and political system, a different language, and often a need to work in a completely different industry is hard and often the last resort. My dad researched mathematics at a university in USSR, but that was simply not an option for him in US -- he ended working as a grossly underpaid engineering manager in a startup; yet he was lucky -- friend's dad had a Ph.D. in Economics, but ended up doing menial labour and later started a moving company. Going from masters/Ph.D. and "intelligentsia" to menial or clerical labour was the rule for immigrants, not the exception.
> Where could Jews get free education in the US? I'd like to get a free education at a top school in the US.
Except that while university education in USSR was cheap, it was not actually completely free: you could receive a stipend to help (if you qualify), but it was not guaranteed.
All Ivy Leagues provide need-based scholarships. Top-tier public universities can be extremely cheap (e.g., UT Austin) and many offer full-ride scholarships. Getting a STEM degree free of charge is very well possible in the United States.
Not to the mention, the idea that if a state pays for someone's education they subsequently own them is quite repugnant.
In 2005, the US Congress voted 302 to 126 that declaring bankruptcy would now not wipe away student debt.
The US doesn't let debts fall by the wayside either no matter where the lendee is in the world - the US funded the Argentina military overthrow of Argentina's democracy in 1976, and then "lent" the dictatorship money to carry out the Dirty War, killing off opponents who wanted to restore a democracy. The US demands Argentina pay that debt back today - in October 2012 US courts got Ghana to seize an Argentinian ship in order to pay that debt.
I don't undestand the logic here: so if the Government doesn't pay you to attend Uni, this is not even free, but only 'cheap' education?
Bullshit. Education was free and you got stipend. Size of the stipend depended on your academic achievements but even if you did not get stipend you did not have to pay. Not only that, but in a significant amount of cases dorm was also provided for free.