Posted last two times[1][2] one of these stories came around, comment applicable here:
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.
In 1987 I and my friend from school went to Moscow to apply to MATI (Moscovskii Aviatsionno Technologicheskii Institut). I am Jewish, my friend Jewish as well. While in line to submit some additional paperwork, we were approached by an administrator, who walked us to the side, and frankly told us to take our documents somewhere else. As Jews, we would never be admitted to the Institut. no matter what.
We went to one of the more Jewish institutes: MIIT (Moskovskii Institut Zheleznodoroshnogo Transporta). The other Jewish place was Moskovskii Institute Stali i Splavov.
I know nothing of the parent or their experiences. Unfortunately, it fits a pattern. That could be coincidence in the case of this comment, but I think the overall pattern is worth pointing out:
A common response to reports of any kind of discrimination is to downplay them -- it's not as bad as people report, they are a little paranoid, exaggerating, spreading stories, etc. If you watch for the pattern you can see it happenning a lot.
It's good, old fashioned FUD[1]: It minimizes the current issue, and more importantly it creates a situation where there are doubts about the credibility any future reporters of discrimination and problems. Finally, it's easy, when it doesn't affect you, to say someone else's problems are no big deal, they're just exaggerating, etc. 'Comedy is you fall down a manhole; tragedy is I stub my toe'.
In my experience, the truth is the opposite of what the FUD says: Discrimination is vastly underplayed, not exaggerated. Think how often the story you read is about a practice that's gone on for years or decades, and you had no idea. The group facing discrimination has much less of a voice, they don't control the media and movies aren't made about their experiences, and they are intimidated into not speaking out (partly due to comments like the ones I'm criticizing: The majority will simply discredit and smear them anyway).
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I'll also add that the parent comment fits another pattern: It's all anecdote. It's all based on hypothesis, and subjective analysis and impressions with no real basis.
Furthermore, when people are described as refugees from anti-Semitism, without going into specifics, this gives a very different impression to the public, than when they are described as people moving away due to the same kind of discrimination that Asian Americans face in university admissions.
It's the lack of direct comparisons, which in turn follows from the lack of specifics, that allows people to get an exaggerated sense of the extent of anti-Semitism.
A large number of my friends who are jewish Russian immigrants. I literally only know one Eastern European gentile. He claims everyone wanted to leave the Soviet Union.
I think churches also sponsored Russian immigrants in the 80s and 90s.
Update: I found this site[1].
Both the tsarist Russian and Soviet governments placed restrictions on emigration. In 1885 the imperial Russian government passed a decree that prohibited all emigration except that of Poles and Jews, which explains the small numbers of non-Jewish Russians in the United States before World War I. By the early 1920s, the Bolshevik/communist-led Soviet government implemented further controls that effectively banned all emigration. As for the second-wave White Russian refugees who fled between 1920 and 1922, they were stripped of their citizenship in absentia and could never legally return home. This situation was the same for the post-World War II DPs, who were viewed as Nazi collaborators and traitors by the Soviet authorities.
In contrast, the fourth wave of Russian immigration that began in late 1969 was legal. It was formally limited to Jews, who were allowed to leave the Soviet Union for Israel as part of the agreements reached between the United States and the Soviet Union during the era of détente. In return for allowing Jews to leave, the United States and other western powers expanded the economic, cultural, and intellectual ties with their communist rival. Although Jews leaving the Soviet Union were only granted permission to go to Israel, many had the United States as their true goal; and by 1985 nearly 300,000 had reached the United States.
After 1985 the more liberal policy of the Soviet government under Mikhail Gorbachev allowed anyone to leave the Soviet Union, and thousands more Jewish and non-Jewish Russians immigrated to the United States. Because Russia is an independent country with a democratically elected government, newcomers cannot justify their claim to emigrate on the grounds of political or religious persecution. This has resulted in a slowing of Russian emigration during the last decade of the twentieth century.
Reminds me of when I am in my car at a stop light and a man looks over at me. I always think "wow if I was a woman or if I was black I would think that that is the reason they are looking at me".
> I always think "wow if I was a woman or if I was black I would think that that is the reason they are looking at me".
This statement imagines what an imaginary person would be thinking, and implies that it represents the thinking of billions of people.
I wish my subjective imagination was so reliable. Think of all the time I could save studying facts, improving my analytical skills, and most of all, learning from and listening to other people who have different perspectives and experiences than I do. 'I imagine, therefore they are.'
Well no because if a person turns their head to look they don't necessarily know in advance that the person is good looking! (It might be the car that I drive though...). Now of course if I was to do that with women it wouldn't be based on the car of course!
Posted last time[1] one of these stories came around, comment applicable here:
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.
As a counter point, I came to the United States in 1996 -- my dad and brother had H1-B visas and my mother and I had H4 visas. These are all non-immigrant issues, much less non-refugee. We have since obtained green cards and naturalized. My grandparents resisted coming to the United States until few years ago (when my grandmother passed away and we had to bring my grandfather over so that our family could take care of him) and warned me against talking to any "refugees" when I would come to the US.
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.
Yes, it happens sometimes, but most of the time there is no need to invent a story that was true. Embellishments of true stories are more typical.
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.
Some of what you say certainly fits with what Russians I have spoken with have told me. That EVERYONE was treated like crap, it wasn't limited to Jews.
Regarding immigration: I don't know if there was much selection bias as we were in the immigration queue for 10 years before being selected. The Anti-Defamation League told Bill Clinton that the situation in Russia was getting worse (1996), and he increased the annual quota of Russian Jews allowed to enter the US.
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!
The original comment was meant for another article with a similar premise did not mean to impinge your credibility specifically.
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.
Why do you think they had to make up "hard" problems to lower grade for Jews if they, according to the OP, could just denny them admission without any reason in the first place?
It's huge. It permeates all levels of the society. There are jokes, stereotypes and anecdotes that are essentially part of the culture. Most (if not all) of the people have at some point been subjected to them, and even if they are not antisemitic, they are certainly aware of the singling out of Jews.
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.
Note that with dissolution of the Soviet Union at least some republics - parts of Russia (e.g., Tatarstan, Bashkortostan) started to see discrimination against ethnical Russians. This increased movement of Russians closer to Moscow - or, say, to south-western parts of Russia, like Krasnodar region, with Russian majority.
Russia is huge and probably there are places that you comment describes accurately, but it is not so in my experience - most of the jokes about Jews I heard from a guy who is Jew and he don't seem to have any problems with his career.
I don't know. My well-off Jewish relatives in Russia don't report discrimination, but that I believe is a factor of their position or demeanor and not absence of antisemitism.
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.
Right now I'd say that being jewish is ok compared to some other nationalities, as there are quite a few reports of people murdered on the street in major cities for looking like immigrants from Caucasus or being black, but I haven't noticed such reports about jews.
If I visited Russia, do you supposed I'd experience more problems by being American or by being Jewish? Or would I even be likely to experience any problems at all?
Ha, what an interesting disagreement! One of the commentators said "it's huge", and I was just about to say that it is generally less than it used to be and has more of the legendary than practical status. Things can easily change back to what they used to be, but currently they seem to be okay. However, I need to mention that I have not lived in that country for 20 years now, and although have been visiting often, sometimes more than once a year, my view is not of the one who has to make a living there. I may not notice some undercurrents.
My impression (which is almost 100% from reading Ian Frasier's Travels in Siberia) is that nothing has a simple answer in Russia, and the question was probably ill-posed, but I appreciate everyone's reply. Even if the reports are contradictory, they help paint a picture.
