Soviet College Admission — My Dad's Story (1970)

Thanks to the OP for posting this. I want to read it to my kids, so they understand how lucky and spoiled we are.

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.

Thank you for posting this. I like such stories, even though I have never been to the former USSR. I once was working with an (incredibly skilled) C++ guy who was a former officer/engineer in the Soviet army. He told me similar stories.

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.

>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.

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).

Ah, Russian problem sets! Brings back fond memories of high school spent desperately trying to crack these tough problems. Although surely not as challenging as the ones listed in the link, these were some of the toughest, yet the shortest problems, and solving every one of them was a challenge which, when completed, let to an inner sense of satisfaction so great, it was intoxicating...and addictive.

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 don't think the experiences are equivalent.

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?