Math as a Tool of Anti-Semitism

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)A Brief History of Anti-Semitism in The Soviet UnionAntisemitism has a long history in Russia. Tensions over immigrating Jewish populations date back to the 11th and 12th centuries when Jews expelled from Western Europe settled in the area that is today's Ukraine (Saul, 1999). Institutionalized discrimination dates back to the early czars of Imperial Russia, when the state encouraged anti-Semitic policies during a time of Eastern Orthodox zeal, attempting to impose the Russian national identity across the empire (Rambaud, 1898). In this time period, there were several brutal pogroms in what is now Ukraine.The state discrimination continued with more restrictive policies. This had the effect of radicalizing Jewish populations who joined the ranks of the revolutionaries. There was a brief period after the Bolshevik Revolution, when the situation seemed to have improved. Discriminatory laws were redacted and revolutionaries aimed for a society of equality. Lenin himself campaigned to try and discourage antisemitism (Vershik, 1994). These progressive ideals laid down by the leaders of the revolution have survived, and the current Russian government maintains that discrimination based on ethnicity is illegal. But just as racism remains here in America half a century after the civil rights movement, antisemitism is alive and well today in the former soviet republics.While I studied abroad in Kyrgyzstan and traveled through former Soviet Republics and Russia, the topic of Jews came up with regularity in conversations with people across generations and ethnicities. People often ask me if I am Jewish both at home and abroad. People say that I just "look Jewish" whatever that means. The difference is that in the former Soviet Republics the people inquiring would not try to hide their relief when I informed them that I am in fact not Jewish. Several different people I met in my travels have voiced their mistrust of Jews in general. The stereotype that I heard most often was that Jews are too clever, too smart, and control exclusive organizations. It is a kind of irony then, that the bigots in the math department of Moscow State University employed these clever and sneaky math problems to exclude the unwanted Jewish students from their math department.Entrance Exam ProcedureThe general procedure for admission to a Soviet university consisted of a written and oral test. The written portion of the entrance exam consisted of a few simple problems to test computational accuracy and one or two more challenging questions in order to test mathematical knowledge. Shen(1994) notes that only perfect papers were counted and allowed to advance and there is evidence of either discrimination or incompetence on the part of the examiners at the written level. For example, the answer to one particular question was "x - 1 or x - 2", a student wrote "x = 1; 2 and that answer was marked wrong (Kanevskii, 1980). If a student passed the written exam, they then had to pass the oral exam.The concept of an oral exam is unfamiliar here in America, but it is a mainstay in the Russian education system. Students walk into the room and take a piece of paper from a pile at the front of the classroom. This piece of paper has two questions on it and is called the bilyet or ticket. The students are given some time to prepare their answers with only paper and pencil. When a student has an answer, they raise their had and an examiner comes by to check the solutions. Then the examiner asks one follow up question, evaluates the solutions, and dismisses the student (Frenkel, 2013).These exams, however, were different for a Jewish student. The oral exam could last as long as five and a half hours in one case (Kanevskii, 1980). Students were given follow up problems one after another until they failed one of them, at which point there were given a failing grade (Kanevskii, 1980). Sometimes they were dismissed on a minute technicality. …