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

I was surprised to read about that too. The same guy, Sudoplatov, was involved in that, though, and writes:

"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."

As an example, my mom was not allowed to defend her Ph.D. dissertation (despite having done the research and having finished her dissertation!) because of an informal, ill-understood Jewish quota. This wasn't even Moscow State: this was in Belarus, one of the least anti-Semitic of Soviet Republics (the birthplace of the Marc Chagal, the creator of Modern Hebrew, and many other prominent Jews) -- the lab director simply said "I don't want any Jews coming my way, I'm involved in ethnic politics 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.

>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.

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.

Some basic facts about college admission in the United States:

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?