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Forgive me: This is both a comment on the content and in the process I mentioned something I made recently. I don't want any more users right now. I have a buc

Forgive me: This is both a comment on the content and in the process I mentioned something I made recently. I don't want any more users right now. 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.

jedmeyers 14y ago
Entering the university was not the biggest problem for Jews in USSR. And what scares me is that people, like the director of admissions, who actually discriminated the Jews usually did not hate them. They discriminated because they were told to do so.
- cema 14y ago
  Some did hate. Reportedly, the current rector of Moscow State University was quite happy to participate, among many others whose career, as you can imagine, did not suffer.
s_baby 14y ago
>This is a link I'm saving for the next time somebody tries to tell me how devoid of racism the Soviet Union was. 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.
- coolsunglasses 14y ago
  Jewish quotas were a governmental system. 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.
- chokolad 14y ago
  It the quotas were proportional there would have been way smaller number of Soviet Jews with university diplomas. 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.
  - PeterisP 14y ago
    It depends on the location - there are also documented instances where locals weren't admitted to universities/jobs, since they were assigned preferentially to Russian imigrants. 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.
- ivolo 14y ago
  Author here. As far as I understand, the Jewish quotas were not proportional to the population. 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 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."
dmishe 14y ago
wait, racism, in what part of the post?
- joshAg 14y ago
  discriminating against ethnic groups is usually also grouped into 'racism', and judaism is both a religion and an ethnic group. "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--math---anti-Semitism-in-the-Soviet-Union-7446 http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-Fifth-problem--...
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- dmishe 14y ago
  Oh I see now, there's huge gap between two walls of text, I never scrolled down.
sakopov 14y ago
I don't know if anyone from the Soviet era would tell you that antisemitism did not exist. I don't know why any Russian would tell you otherwise. It always did and it does now. Russians are incredibly discriminatory, especially in bigger cities. When i was around 7 i had adults come up to me and tell me that i am worthless shit because i am half Armenian and half Russian.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- vadman 14y ago
  Same thing happened to me, only it was in Armenia and grown-up Armenians were talking sh*t to me for being a half-Russian kid (think 1st-grade age). I wouldn't say "Russians are discriminatory", just "people from the former USSR are usually discriminatory". From my experience, in both countries, Armenia was a lot worse.
  - 10098 14y ago
    The same thing happened to me, except I'm 100% Armenian, but my native language happens to be Russian, because it was the primarily spoken language in our family. It's just xenophobia.
    - phishphood 14y ago
      its more than that. I remember being bullied and called little jew by kids, by teachers, by school principal, by janitors, by strangers on the subway when I was 7 or 8 because I have soft Rs and curly hair, and I am not Jewish.
  - sakopov 14y ago
    I have a lot of family living in Armenia and i never caught any discrimination when i was out and about in Yerevan. Not towards me or my mother who is Russian. And I'm more Russian-looking than Armenian, with light skin and brown hair. Just my observation. Of course a few visits don't measure up to years living there. So, i can totally see what you described happen there. I wonder if this was always a problem in USSR. Every time i hear my parents talk about the good old days, they seem to describe pretty amazing, peaceful time. Especially the 70s. And now...
dsrguru 14y ago
You might want to add Shin Dong-hyuk's first-hand account of life in a North Korean prison camp. Slavery, starvation, torture, rape, and murder are the norm, and given that it's illegal to be related to someone in prison, a ridiculous percentage of the country's population is enslaved in these prisons. The DPRK's human rights violations go well beyond the oft-cited starvation of the populace. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57556662/north-korean-prisoner-escaped-after-23-brutal-years/ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57556662/north-korean-... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5216332 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5216332 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5091962 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5091962
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

jedmeyers 14y ago

Entering the university was not the biggest problem for Jews in USSR. And what scares me is that people, like the director of admissions, who actually discriminated the Jews usually did not hate them. They discriminated because they were told to do so.

cema 14y ago
Some did hate. Reportedly, the current rector of Moscow State University was quite happy to participate, among many others whose career, as you can imagine, did not suffer.

s_baby 14y ago

>This is a link I'm saving for the next time somebody tries to tell me how devoid of racism the Soviet Union was. 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.

coolsunglasses 14y ago
Jewish quotas were a governmental system. 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.
chokolad 14y ago
It the quotas were proportional there would have been way smaller number of Soviet Jews with university diplomas. 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.
- PeterisP 14y ago
  It depends on the location - there are also documented instances where locals weren't admitted to universities/jobs, since they were assigned preferentially to Russian imigrants. 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.
ivolo 14y ago
Author here. As far as I understand, the Jewish quotas were not proportional to the population. 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 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."

dmishe 14y ago

wait, racism, in what part of the post?

joshAg 14y ago
discriminating against ethnic groups is usually also grouped into 'racism', and judaism is both a religion and an ethnic group. "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--math---anti-Semitism-in-the-Soviet-Union-7446 http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-Fifth-problem--...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
dmishe 14y ago
Oh I see now, there's huge gap between two walls of text, I never scrolled down.

sakopov 14y ago

I don't know if anyone from the Soviet era would tell you that antisemitism did not exist. I don't know why any Russian would tell you otherwise. It always did and it does now. Russians are incredibly discriminatory, especially in bigger cities. When i was around 7 i had adults come up to me and tell me that i am worthless shit because i am half Armenian and half Russian.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
vadman 14y ago
Same thing happened to me, only it was in Armenia and grown-up Armenians were talking sh*t to me for being a half-Russian kid (think 1st-grade age). I wouldn't say "Russians are discriminatory", just "people from the former USSR are usually discriminatory". From my experience, in both countries, Armenia was a lot worse.
- 10098 14y ago
  The same thing happened to me, except I'm 100% Armenian, but my native language happens to be Russian, because it was the primarily spoken language in our family. It's just xenophobia.
  - phishphood 14y ago
    its more than that. I remember being bullied and called little jew by kids, by teachers, by school principal, by janitors, by strangers on the subway when I was 7 or 8 because I have soft Rs and curly hair, and I am not Jewish.
- sakopov 14y ago
  I have a lot of family living in Armenia and i never caught any discrimination when i was out and about in Yerevan. Not towards me or my mother who is Russian. And I'm more Russian-looking than Armenian, with light skin and brown hair. Just my observation. Of course a few visits don't measure up to years living there. So, i can totally see what you described happen there. I wonder if this was always a problem in USSR. Every time i hear my parents talk about the good old days, they seem to describe pretty amazing, peaceful time. Especially the 70s. And now...

dsrguru 14y ago

You might want to add Shin Dong-hyuk's first-hand account of life in a North Korean prison camp. Slavery, starvation, torture, rape, and murder are the norm, and given that it's illegal to be related to someone in prison, a ridiculous percentage of the country's population is enslaved in these prisons. The DPRK's human rights violations go well beyond the oft-cited starvation of the populace. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57556662/north-korean-prisoner-escaped-after-23-brutal-years/ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57556662/north-korean-... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5216332 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5216332 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5091962 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5091962

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]