From: muh@physics.Berkeley.EDU (Yury M. Mukharsky)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet
Subject: Re: reply to S. Borodin
Date: 7 Nov 1992 02:32:56 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Nov05.224135.30963@watson.ibm.com> bil@burka..aix.kingston.ibm.com (Igor Belchinskiy) writes:
>
>1. Do you agree that people with the record "Jew" in fifth field of passport
>  had their additional share of problems?
>  Do you agree that people with the record "Jew" in fifth field of passport
>  of one of their parents had additional share of problems also?

Yes, yes

A teper' sverh programmy: comment.

According to Slozhnitsyn people from territories occupied during WWII
had special passport numbers. Do you agree they had some problems, too.

>
>2. Which term would you propose to use as definitive for mentioned
>  anomaly? (please, don't suggest communism, etc. - we all know that
>  real communists (TM) don't know about nations)

Totalitarism (like it :)?) and antosemitism.

>
>3. If the answer to the second question is "antisemitism" (suprisingly)
>  and you don't think that "state antisemitism" existed, than, please,
>  tell, what were sources of this antisemitism in the Russia. (again,
>  please, don't suggest private antipathies - otherwise, considering
>  the simple fact that every Jew in Russia had this or that problem
>  because of his passport record, I should conclude that these private
>  antipathies are very common in Russia which in turn is equivalent 
>  to declaring Russians rather antisemitic).
>
OK. You want some essay on the origin of antisemitism? I would refer you
to the bibliography in M.Zeleny articles. I can only give my private
and apparently not perfect opinion. V opravdanie mogu skasat', chto
moi adres nachinaetsja s physics, a nazvanie etoj gruppy ne soderzhit
slova Jewish, tak chto ja ne objazan byt' glubok :).

1. Religion. In Soviet times this was not really important, but it layed
a foundation for anti-semitism, which lasted at these times.
2. Jews on average harder working and less stochastic people. I do not
know why, I'm not going to the roots. That make them more succesful.

That leads to envy.

They also keeps to each other. Some of reasons
are religion and oppression. This last part is sort of vicious circle.

Combine these two things and you will result in protectionism. 

3. Politics: That is what Borodin and Antonov talking about all the time.
Let me give you example. When I was to go abroad for the first time, I was
a grad. student. A month a so before the time grad student defected to the
west. Mine and all other gar student's trips "sochli nectselesoobraznymi".
All grad students! (We were scaring one guy who was bald that the defector was
bald and ... ) I do not see why distinction between people based on some 
non-related to subject (or in fact related but in weird totalitarian way)
feature is better then on other feature.

That is what you are calling state anti-semitism. It may be enhanced by
private anti-semitism of officials.

4. There are not many examples of two nations living closely together and
not having national conflicts. 


Just my $.02.

Yury M.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet