"The fifth line" on the Soviet passport which listed the bearer's "nationality" (what we would usually call ethnicity in English) was only removed from Russian passports in 1997. But Edward Frenkel was picked out as a Jew because of his surname even though his nationality was listed as Russian, like most children of mixed marriages between Russian and non-Russian parents.<p>What if Edward Frenkel's father had been Russian and his mother Jewish instead of the other way round? Well, the commander of the Soviet Air Force in Ukraine when the Soviet Union broker up was Kostyantyn Morozov, then Konstantin Morozov. He had a Russian surname and his nationality was listed as Russian. If it had been known that he had a Ukrainian mother and had Ukrainian sympathies, he would never have been given such a powerful post by the Soviet authorities. As it was, Morozov announced his allegiance to the pro-independence cause to become the first defense minister of an independent Ukraine and to establish the Ukrainian armed forces.<p>Would the breakup of the Soviet Union have gone differently if all the high-ranking generals in control of Soviet forces in the biggest non-Russian republic were pro-Russian? It makes you wonder how many accidents of history can be traced to the arbitrary custom of inheriting surnames from fathers.
The line about how under official doctrines all nationalities were equal reminds me of a story I learned in college.<p>In the early days under Lenin, Stalin was appointed to formulate the Party's nationalities policy. One of the policies they came up with was that each of the nationalities was supposed to have a national homeland. Under the Czars, Jews were required to live within a "Pale of Settlement" which was in the extreme west of their European holdings. So somewhere in that neighborhood would have been a logical spot. Instead Stalin decided to found the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, capital city Birobidzhan, on the border with China in far south-east Russia about 400 miles inland from the northern Japan Sea. Many thousands of Jews were deported to this wasteland, where needless to say they did not prosper.<p>It is a sad testament to how manipulated the US communists were that when I told this story to my grandmother who had been active in those movements, that she had heard of Birobidzhan, and that they used to sing songs about it in Yiddish and thought of it as a Jewish Worker's paradise.
Sadly, ethnic discrimination is still pretty rampant in areas of the former Soviet Union. Although it does seem to be getting better. I suppose it takes more than a generation or two for that to fade away.
If you're interested in seeing some of these "killer questions" there's a book of them called "You failed your math test, Comrade Einstein."<p>Coral CDN link (since the author's file server seems ridiculously slow):
<a href="http://www.ftpi.umn.edu.nyud.net/shifman/ComradeEinstein.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.ftpi.umn.edu.nyud.net/shifman/ComradeEinstein.pdf</a>
Despite being messed up, there's a sort of cultural logic to it. Here's the thing, a lot of cultures really want to keep things to themselves. The mentally goes like this: "This land is ours, our ancestors fought for it so our culture can have a place to flourish and live on, it's not here for you, get out please." It's not just a European thing, Asian countries are the same way they don't even give you the chance to become a citizen. I've learned to understand it as a natural part of human psychology. It's also not a problem when there's only one ethnicity in the whole country like Japan which is 98% ethnic Japanese but a lot of European countries tend to let others in who are different than them (Jews, Roma, North Africans, Arabs, Indians) and then have problems with assimilation and integration.<p>Russia's kind of weird, didn't they just open a Jewish history museum dubbed the "Jewish Disney Land" to try to get more Jews to move back? <a href="http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/article/state-of-art-jewish-museum-opens-in-moscow/471347.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/article/state-of-...</a> Somehow I think leaders want Jews back but the public doesn't.
I have collected some of the stories and links to further reading here: <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/community/kerosinka/1633.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.livejournal.com/community/kerosinka/1633.html</a> Majority of the material is in Russian, but a large minority in English, for those interested.
It is bit more complex.<p>Socialism discriminated 'intellectuals' in favor of 'proletariat'. For example son of doctor had lower chances compared to son of factory worker. Jews were perceived as intellectuals.<p>Similar discrimination is today in US. Jews are discriminated for being white.
I shall tell you one name - Landau.<p>The "fifth line" was not a problem. What is a problem is when russian jew with Soviet M Sc in maths goes through NARIC in the UK, he gets B Sc only. It is the West who is discriminating Soviet degrees.
For those interested in deeper understanding and more interesting facts (yes, distribution of Jewish Math university entrants was not even, and applied sciences in the USSR gained a lot from that) - the classy article by Mark Saul, Kerosinka: An Episode in the History of Soviet Mathematics. Notices of the AMS, vol.46, no.10, November 1999. (<a href="http://www.ams.org/notices/199910/fea-saul.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.ams.org/notices/199910/fea-saul.pdf</a>)
Propaganda at those times said that Jewish people will get "the best education in the world" for free and then leave the USSR without paying back for it.
Previous HN discussion:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4752047" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4752047</a><p>Top thread points out that the US obviously does the same thing.